Jason Heppell
The concept of a modern 'Jewish politics' is used to describe and explain the participation of the Jewish people in the political arenas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European society.1 In an age of mass politics, the Jews came to play a significant role in the life of the nation states and to express their political aspirations on an unprecedented scale. The formation of a Jewish left represented the ideals and aims of a section of radicalised Jewish intellectuals and a largely secularised class-conscious Jewish proletariat. In the East European multinational states, the Bund and the various socialist-Zionist parties played a distinct and important part in the political life of the Jewish masses. However, whereas these clearly 'Jewish' groups seem to fit the criteria for entry into the realm of 'Jewish polities', it less apparent whether the activity of left-wing Jews in non-Jewish socialist parties does so. The greater integration and lack of explicitly Jewish political structures, especially in Western democratic Labour movements, makes differentiating between Jewish and non-Jewish politics particularly difficult. Exactly where the boundaries are set affects one's conclusions about the nature of the subject as it determines the range of source material available for study. Definition is, therefore, a fundamental aspect of 'Jewish politics' as it is with Jewish history in general. Delimitation is a complicated, sometimes tortuous, process, but in outlining the contours of the subject it can prove rewarding in revealing the nature of 'Jewish polities'.
The difficulties involved in the process of defining 'Jewish politics' can best be demonstrated through studies of the fringe elements of Jewish political behaviour, where inclusion or exclusion is contested the most. Subjects apparently peripheral can reveal much that is intrinsic to the core. The complex history of the Jewish Bureau (JB) of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in the inter-war and war years, offers an opportunity for such a study. Communism poses particular problems for 'Jewish polities'. The traditional historiographical distinction which forms the basis for modern Jewish history, between 'Western' emancipated Jewry and the 'Eastern' Jewish nation, is not easily applied to communism. Communist parties were active and moderately successful in both spheres despite the supposed differences between 'East' and 'West'.2 Communism also has a universal and class-based ideology which appears to be in contradiction to the ethnic particularism implied in the concept of 'Jewish polities'.
One solution as to whether Jewish involvement in communism represents 'Jewish politics' or not, is by applying an 'exclusive' definition that concentrates only upon the 'Jewish sections'. Nearly every communist party in a country with a major Jewish population had such a body. The Communist parties of the United States, Poland, the Soviet Union, Canada, Australia, Hungary, France, Austria and Palestine all had an official Jewish component at some time in their history.3 Ezra Mendelsohn, while recognising the 'thorny problem' of deciding which organisations should be admitted to the domain of 'Jewish polities', does include these sections (including those found in socialist parties other than Communist) in his seminal work, On Modern Jewish Politics.4 His own definition of modern 'Jewish politics' encompasses such sections alongside the Zionist, Orthodox and Bundist political organisations that developed from the nineteenth century onwards:
The phrase Jewish politics as employed here refers to the programs formulated by these new movements, that is, the different ways in which they viewed the future of the Jewish people and their proposals for solving once and for all, the celebrated Jewish Question, and the competition among them for hegemony on what was sometimes called the 'Jewish street'.5
For Mendelsohn, Jewish sections and their programs were the sole examples of 'Jewish politics' within the Communist world. Jewish sections were 'halfway houses', temporarily located 'between the ultimately doomed ghetto and a future of universal brotherhood'.6 However, the CPGB's own section shows that this conclusion is only half the story. The policies of the CPGB, the role of the Soviet Union, the influence exercised by the Jewish community, Palestinian developments and the dilemmas of Jewish-Communist identity are all part of the wider relationship between Jewish Communists and their party. A study concerned only with the policies of the Jewish section can limit as well as illuminate the phenomenon of Jewish communism.
Another alternative to the 'exclusive' focus upon the Jewish sections is the 'inclusive' approach of Henry Srebrnik in his study on London Jews and British communism. The CPGB, although never a large party,8 did have greater influence than its size would suggest, particularly in the trade unions. However, the doubling of its parliamentary contingent in the July 1945 general election only meant an increase from one MP to two. This one success was due to the election of Phil Piratin to the Mile End seat, a constituency in the heart of the Jewish East End. This event, along with Communist successes in the local municipal elections later in the year, has led Srebrnik to argue for its significance in terms of 'ethnic group politics';9 the moment when the CPGB achieved 'political hegemony'10 over the local Jewish population. The Mile End election, he believes, was the result of an 'ethno-ideological movement' based on the Jewish community acting as a self-contained group, separate socially, politically and culturally from the surrounding gentile society.11 Established in the 1930s, and in which the party's own Jewish section came to play a leading role, Jewish communism, as 'social movement', went beyond class and institutional allegiances in an attempt to produce social change.12 All dimensions of the relationship between Jews and communism can, therefore, be included within the realm of 'Jewish polities'.
Indeed, approximately 7 per cent of the CPGB's full-time workers, the 'cadres', those that staffed the party hierarchy and positions of leadership in its organisations, were Jewish.13 As Jews formed less than 1 per cent of the population as a whole, the disproportionate numbers involved places British Jewish communists firmly within a general trend, noticed in the relationship between Jews and communism in other countries.14 There can also be little doubt of the strong 'Jewish vote' for the Communist Party in Stepney or the CPGB's involvement in 'Jewish' issues such as combating anti-Semitism. However, whether one can argue that Communist success in the East End really represents a synthesis of ethnicity and politics or the domination of the ethnic over class, is questionable. The divisive impact of acculturation and party loyalty upon Jewish Communists alone casts doubt on an 'inclusive' unity thesis. A shared ethnicity can be a source of friction as well as understanding.
This chapter will seek to reassess the role of the ethnicity in the 1945 election as well as reconsidering the nature of the Jewish sections and the question of what 'Jewish politics' is. It will be suggested that politicised ethnicity, whether as institutional section or ethnic movement, cannot by itself explain the-complex phenomenon of 'Jewish communism'. Instead, it is argued that Jewish left wing politics can only be understood through the intimate connections between political party, ethnic/non-ethnic identities and historical developments. To emphasise the paramount importance of the party, the actual structure of the CPGB will act as the framework of interpretation in order to clearly reveal the subjects parameters and the interdependency of ethnicity and political structure. Three sections outline the argument, each one representing in descending order the basic organisational and political levels of the CPGB: the party leadership, the district parties and the grass roots membership. This study spans the period of the Jewish Bureau of the CPGB from its foundation in 1936 through to its (non) involvement in the 1945 Communist election victory.
The decisions of the Communist Party political leadership are the most important factors in understanding the creation of a Jewish section within the CPGB. Policy in the Communist Party was made under the guiding principle of 'democratic centralism'; decisions were taken by a small leadership élite and then relayed to the lower levels of the party structure where they were to be accepted without question. Rank and file involvement in decision-making was limited, although the ordinary members did have considerable scope in how they implemented these policies. The leadership itself was subject to the discipline of the Soviet Union as, technically, the CPGB was merely a subsection of the Comintern, the international organisation responsible for the development of world wide communism. This meant, in general, subordination to the policies of the USSR. Soviet intervention at various times in the CPGB was usually conclusive, often dramatic and certainly contentious. However, day-to-day interference on every issue was far from the norm. Party leaders were usually left to implement policy on their own, though strictly within perceived Moscow priorities. Other concerns, therefore, did influence decision-making, namely internal factors such as the Party's structural features moulded by its adaptation to British political life; and external pressures, including the attitudes of the British population and world events. The origins of the CPGB's Jewish Bureau can be seen within the interrelationships between these internal and external factors with an intermittent though decisive involvement by the Soviet Union.
Srebrnik has suggested that the change in Soviet policy introduced into world communism by the Seventh Comintern Congress of 1935 led the CPGB to adopt a favourable attitude towards Jewish concerns.15 The success of fascism in Germany had led to the ending of the Class Against Class period where social democratic parties had been categorised as 'social-fascists' by the communists in a bid for leadership of the working class. The new strategy was the Popular Front whose aim was to build alliances among other 'progressive' forces in the fight against fascism. As well as changing the attitude towards other socialist parties, the middle class and the intellectuals, Srebrnik argues the Congress also affected their approach towards Anglo-Jewry as 'Jewish Communists were encouraged to assume political and moral leadership of a broad alliance within the Jewish community'.16
The Congress was influential in the formation of the Jewish Bureau, but not necessarily in the way one would expect. The Soviet Union's negative perception of Jewish interests rather than any positive steps it took towards 'ethno-politics' would be the key issue.17 The Congress and its consequences were also not the only bridges between the Jewish community and communism, as the wider political and party context was particularly important.
The CPGB had always shown a limited awareness of Jewish concerns. The Unity Conference of 1920 which brought together various socialist groups to create the British Communist Party may not have involved organised Jewish elements, as was the case with the founding of its American sister party,18 but it did issue a resolution condemning the murder of Jewish Communists by the Polish, Romanian and Hungarian governments, thus suggesting the activities of a Jewish contingent.19 Moreover, the Communist-controlled front organisation, the League Against Imperialism, supervised a Jewish Workers Council which in 1930 published anti-Zionist propaganda.20 There was to a limited extent an intrinsic 'ethnic' element to the CPGB which may have predisposed it favourably towards Jewish matters. Britain is a multinational and multiethnic state and the membership of the CPGB fully reflected this. The party leadership through the inter-war period, based in the Political Bureau and Central Committee, although containing only one Jew, Andrew Rothstein,21 did have comrades of Irish, Welsh, Scottish, English and even Indo-Swedish background. The CPGB was politically involved in Ireland, in certain countries of the Empire (especially India) and had attempted to organise black workers in the docklands of Liverpool.22 Jews had been members of the party from its foundation. The rise of fascism would bring many more into the Communist solar system, though the CPGB was active against the British Union of Fascists and aware of its anti-Semitism well before the 1935 Congress.23 The party leader, Harry Pollitt, stated in November 1934 that the fight against fascism was to be 'the supreme task of our Party'.24
The Popular Front did reinforce the anti-fascist direction taken by CPGB, especially by placing a greater emphasis on drawing all sections of the national community into the fight, but it did not lead to the creation of the party's Jewish Bureau. The crucial aspect of CPGB policy which drew the party towards Anglo-Jewry was its desire to gain a foothold in a working class community, to create a 'little Moscow'. A small party with limited resources, the CPGB could concentrate only upon building its support within a few select areas. East London with its harsh socio-economic conditions and vibrant left-leaning local politics was an area well suited for the development of the Communist Party. Many senior party figures, including Harry Pollitt, had been politically active in London's East End and amongst its Jewish socialists for many years.25 Although the Class Against Class policy turned the Communists against Labour, it did not turn the CPGB away from the raison d'être of British politics - parliamentary elections, in this respect, the by-election held late 1930 in the East End constituency of Whitechapel proved vital in Jewish-Communist relations. The party put forward Pollitt as its candidate. The need to adapt to local conditions meant that the CPGB produced election material and held meetings directly aimed at the Jewish workers. The Communists lost, but, due to the intense activity and positive reception the party received, the campaign had led to a consolidation of their position in the area and was duly seen as a 'success' and an 'inspiration' by the leadership.26 Rajani Palme Dutt, the party's leading theoretician, presented a report on the by-election to the Political Bureau in which he stated that he now saw Whitechapel as Pollitt's 'permanent future local base' and that 'it is such local rooting of the party in a series of working class centres that we must now need to build up'.27 This, in addition to the rise of fascism, made the 'Jewish Street' of the East End one of, if not the, most important regions for the party. The consequences of the party's desire for 'roots' was that progress in Stepney made the party stronger, but at the same time forced it to become more responsive to demands from the local population. The CPGB was not prepared for this, a weakness that led to the formation of the party's own Jewish Bureau.
In April 1936 a wave or Arab-Jewish violence swept through Palestine. It produced an emotive response from Anglo-Jewry as the fear of pogroms was revived. The Communist Party was caught off guard as little time had been spent developing its policy on Palestine. The CPGB normally treated the Yishuv or any aspects of the 'Jewish Question' as part of the wider Middle East Imperialist problem. Little had been said or done by the party when similar incidents had occurred in 1929. In 1936 things were to be very different. Warnings had already been given two years earlier by two Political Bureau members, Johnny Campbell and John Gollan, that the party was not prepared on this issue, but they were ignored.28 The Seventh Congress had inaugurated the Popular Front policy, but, in the discussions on national conditions, it was the Palestinian Arab delegate position that held sway over any consideration of Jewish interests.29 The CPGB maintained the Soviet line with its pro-Arab, anti-Yishuv bias.
Within a month of the outbreak of open conflict in Palestine, the leadership held its first ever detailed debates on the 'Jewish Question'. A resolution on Palestine was presented, but there was little doubt that the subtext was the Party's reaction to pressure from the Jewish community. As Ben Bradley, the Colonial Department secretary, admitted:
we have been driven to the situation of discussion of this question because of the apparent revolt of the Jewish population against the line of the Party. It is not only something which has happened recently but since the 7th Congress. Since the delegates from the Arab countries made their contributions there, there has been a considerable discussion in Palestine and other countries against the line laid down by the 7th World Congress.30
Confusion and recriminations ensued among the party leaders. Those closely connected with the East End pointed out the need to move carefully because of the consequences it could have among Jewish workers, particularly with the success of fascist anti-Semitism on the Continent. Others accepted the Soviet line outright with little accommodation of Jewish concerns. General agreement was reached that there must be clarity on the 'Jewish Question'. The Political Bureau produced a package of measures to deal with the problem. One decision was to issue a press statement which deliberately ignored most of the Palestine controversy and concentrated instead on the fight against fascism and the role Jewish workers had to play in it. To avoid a repetition of the difficulties caused by the party's lack of preparation, it was also decided 'that an advisory board should be set up that can keep the Political Bureau in touch with current questions and advise upon what is taking place amongst the various Jewish organisations'.31 This was the initial catalyst for the founding of the party's Jewish Bureau.32 The setting up of a Jewish body in this way was not unique to the CPGB. The Palestinian Communist Party also set up its own Jewish section in 1936 in similar circumstances.33 However, the party still maintained a largely pro-Arab position in its official publications. According to one of its correspondents in the Labour Monthly 'The present disturbances in Palestine are therefore unpleasant but reasonable'.34
With few Jews in the leadership elite and with no precedent for such a body, the party had to look elsewhere for interested and knowledgeable comrades to staff the section. The bureau's membership in fact came from a section of Jewish Communists based in a non-party association, the 'Hackney Study Group'.35 Set up in 1932 by a small nucleus of Communists active since the late 1920s, the group's aim was to act as a 'centre for Marxist Educational work among the Jewish people' .36 Most of its members, including its two main figures, Lazar Zaidman and Sam Alexander, were leading figures in the Workers' Circle, a left-wing Jewish Friendly Society, with its headquarters in Great Alie Street Stepney, London. Zaidman and Alexander had temporarily lapsed from party membership at the time of the Study Group's formation, which may explain the latter's non-party basis. However, they were both committed Communists as can be seen by their activity within a variety of Soviet-Jewish agricultural settlement committees37 and both still 'sought a field of activity [with] which we could help the Party'.38 As relatively well-known figures in the East End and with close links to the London District Committee, it is to them that the Party turned with its aim of setting up a Jewish section. Discussions were held in which Zaidman played a 'leading role' and which culminated in the formation of the Jewish Bureau.39 He was elected secretary and remained so until 1939.
Limited to an advisory capacity in a few select areas and with sparse resources at its disposal, the JB proved to be largely ineffectual and irrelevant throughout the inter-war period. It was active only at an obscure level, publishing occasional articles for party journals alongside other (non-JB) contributors on the subject.40 Eric Hobsbawm, the noted Marxist historian, recalls how, as a young Jewish student in the Cambridge University branch of the Communist Party in the late 1930s, he was instructed by the party to 'take up Jewish matters'. Zaidman was amongst those who came up from East London to meet him and the few other Jewish Communist undergraduates at Cambridge. Their discussions achieved nothing.41 Hobsbawm showed little interest and the Jewish Bureau had no coercive power available to enforce its will. The bureau had no influential patrons at the party centre and remained an unimportant adjunct to London District activities. Joe Jacobs, the Stepney Communist Party branch secretary during the 1930s, does not mention the JB, Zaidman or Alexander once in his detailed autobiographical account of East London Communist politics.42 The members of the JB were involved in London anti-fascist CPGB activities in the 1930s, especially in the communist dominated Jewish People's Council Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism (JPC). However, as an organisation, the bureau did not make any noticeable impact. There was no concerted drive to deal directly with Jewish problems, except on anti-Semitism, though even this was placed firmly within the context of the national and international struggle against fascism and capitalism, as much a threat to the Gentiles as it was to the Jews.43
Indeed, one should not exaggerate the extent to which the CPGB was involved in 'ethno-politics' or wished to be perceived as such even after the JB's formation. The party tried to avoid close association between its own policies and that of Jewish interests. Mindful of the anti-Semitic 'Bolshevism is Jewish' bogey and its use in the heartlands of East London fascism, the Political Bureau noted in 1937 that:
We have to face the position where 5% of the Bethnal Green comrades are Jewish. When considering the fascist activity in the streets ... it is obviously necessary for the Party to arrange poster parades, [however,] large scale parades are needed with comrades who are not all Jewish.44
Although the JB had a limited degree of autonomy in its activities, there was little doubt that the party leadership had ultimate control and that Soviet policy would always be in the end the true guiding principle. At the outbreak of the war in September 1939 the JB was dissolved.45 There is, unfortunately, little archival material to explain this development. However, one can assume that it is connected with the Nazi-Soviet Pact signed a few weeks before the invasion and the consequent desire of the CPGB to avoid the difficulties that the presence of a Jewish section might create once war began. It was certainly not the only area of party activity to be affected. As well as the resignation of Harry Pollitt as party leader, the JPC was reduced to a skeleton form and within a few months wound up altogether despite the continuing presence of anti-Semitism in the East End.46 The party's 'Bright Shining Star' of anti-fascism imploded into a black hole.47
That the party viewed its Jewish section initially in terms of Soviet policy can again be seen by the reforming of the JB in 1941, 'at the request of the Party Centre',48 following the invasion of the Soviet Union by the German army. The fight for the survival of the Soviet Union became the overriding concern of the British Communist Party. It sought to use the Anglo-Jewish community in line with the policies of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC). Formed soon after the invasion and based in Kubyishev and Moscow, the JAFC's purpose was to promote a pro-Soviet policy for political and financial reasons amongst the world's Jewish communities, principally those of the USA, Canada and Britain.49 The founding congress was reported on the 29 August 1941 by the main Anglo-Jewish community newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle,50 and soon after by the CPGB journal, World News and Views.51 The Soviet Embassy in London began immediately to make contacts with Anglo-Jewish groups, including the Orthodox Agudist Organisation,52 and to release propaganda material on Soviet Jewry through the Soviet War News, the daily bulletin of the embassy's press department.53 Previously only a trickle of Jewish news from the USSR would reach the West; now a flood of articles on the heroic actions of Red Army Jews and the atrocities of the Nazis were published in the Jewish Chronicle. In turn, the paper adopted, along with large sections of the Jewish community,54 a more sympathetic view of the Soviet Union than ever before, much to the satisfaction of the JAFC.55
It is in this context that Palme Dutt, the party leader most sensitive to changes in Soviet policy, summoned Zaidman to King Street, the party's headquarters in London, and re-established the JB with Zaidman as its first secretary.56 This was not the only aspect of the British Party's change in approach to the Jewish community. Leading Jewish Communists were also brought in to propagate the new line: Ivor Montagu, son of a eminent Anglo-Jewish family and senior article writer for the Daily Worker, gave a talk in December 1941 to the Anglo-Palestinian Club on the need for Jews to fight with the Soviet Union and against Hitler.57 This talk contrasted sharply with the one presented at the Workers Circle in February 1940 titled 'Jews Against the War'.58 Alongside the Jewish Chronicle's favourable reporting of the Soviet Union, the Daily Worker increased markedly its reporting of Jewish issues. In an attempt to spread the message of the JAFC, the communist Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee published the pamphlet Jews Against Hitler: Appeal and Report of the International Conference of Jews held In Moscow August 24th 1941.
Despite its refounding, the JB again had little impact within the CPGB or the Jewish community. It remained largely confined to only a limited sphere of activity, mainly the pro-Soviet fund raising organisations set up following the JAFC appeal: the Jewish 1942 Committee,59 and its successors, the United Jewish Committee (UJC), and the Jewish Fund For Soviet Russia (JFSR).60 In fact, the transformation of the UJC into the JFSR was due to the compromise forced on the JB by the Anglo-Jewish establishment. Because of its weak position within British Jewry, the JB had to cede control of this pro-Soviet group to the Board of Deputies and other senior community figures and organisations in order to gain their involvement.61
The next decisive event in the history of the Jewish section involved a direct contact with the JAFC. The committee's two leading figures, Solomon Mikhoels, director of the Moscow Yiddish Theatre, and Itzik Fefer, the famous Yiddish poet, embarked on a propaganda mission among the allied Jewish communities in October 1943. This was 'the high point of the new relationship between Soviet and world Jewry',62 the first official contact between Soviet Jews and the Diaspora since the 1917 Revolution. The particular timing of the visit was an attempt to deflect attention away from the murder by the Soviets of the two Bundist leaders, Victor Alter and Henryk Erlich as well as an answer to the desperate war time predicament of the USSR.63
After visiting the USA, Canada and Mexico, Mikhoels and Fefer arrived in London on 30 October and stayed until 22 November. Touring and lecturing throughout the country on a pro-Soviet platform, they received an enthusiastic welcome from Anglo-Jewry, including such notables as Chief Rabbi Hertz and the full membership of the Board of Deputies.64 However, Mikhoels and Fefer had another purpose as well as propaganda: making contact with the JB of the Communist Party. In a meeting at the Hyde Park Hotel, London, Mikhoels and Fefer discussed the situation in the Soviet Union with Zaidman and the other leading Jewish Communists, Alec Waterman, Chimen Abramsky and Hyman Levy. They encouraged the British Jewish Communists to become more involved in the Jewish community and to collect funds for the Soviet Union.65 In turn, the JB along with the Soviet Ambassador in London sent reports to the JAFC on the progress of pro-Communist sympathies within the Anglo-Jewish community.66
The fact that these two senior Soviet officials had asked to see the members of the JB made a considerable impression on Dutt. He called the JB members to King Street and after discussions the Jewish section acquired a new status, signified by the allocation of a room for their work within the King Street building.67 The JB now came under Dutt's personal supervision where it was made a subcommittee at the party centre responsible to the Colonial and International Bureaux. Previously, the JB had been supervised by the London District Committee and had held its meetings in members' homes. The physical relocation from the private sphere to the inner sanctum of the Communist Party represented an important symbolic and political movement upwards within party structures and consciousness. The removal of Zaidman as secretary and his replacement with Hyman Levy, Professor of Mathematics at the Imperial College London, was part of this profile raising process.
The twisted path of Soviet foreign policy had led finally to the creation of a fully functioning Jewish section at the heart of the party machine. The Bureau68 now began a process of acquiring policy responsibility on Jewish matters from other areas of the party and developing and publishing its own proposals on subjects ranging from Zionism to the idea of a Jewish army. In 1945 the Bureau produced a statement, The Jewish Question, a detailed outline of their ideas and policy proposals. Nevertheless, the Bureau's primary aim during the Second World War was to raise support for the Soviet Union amongst the Jewish people through calls for a 'United Front' against fascism. The bureau members planned to engage other Jewish Communists in this effort under the name of 'Jewish Work'. Their results were to prove disappointing.
In order for the re-established Jewish section to assert itself within the party and the Jewish community it had to develop its position in the areas of the country where the Jewish population lived, namely East London, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.
The JB organised, with the party's support, the first ever National Conference of Jewish party members on 31 January 1943. Forty-three Jewish Communists from throughout the country attended including representatives from most centres of Jewish life.69 The JB's report on the conference set itself the key tasks of establishing and coordinating regional Bureaux.70 By the time of the second conference in October this goal had been achieved.
To act on a national level, however, the Jewish section needed the support of the real power in the localities: the District and City party committees, the second tier of party organisation. There were usually 18 District committees, one for each of the main geo-political regions such as Scotland, Lancashire, Yorkshire and London. Some of these Districts would be closely connected with the City committees of its major population centres. These committees implemented party policy on a regional level, giving direction and guidance to local campaigns and party members. Their response to the JB was to prove critical in the success or failure of its provincial plans.
District and City committees were not passive recipients of King Street-imposed policy. They could negotiate to a limited extent with the Party Centre and they would generally interpret orders from there to match local conditions. What really mattered for the success of a policy was the amount of time and resources available that the local District leadership had to give to it and the political importance of the person or department giving the order. If a directive came from Harry Pollitt or the Industrial Department, for example, then it would have priority consideration. The difficulty for the JB was that it was a relatively new subcommittee of the International Department, with little real backing from its head, Palme Dutt. This meant that the establishment of JBs in their districts would be accepted, but only the bare minimum of support would be given to them. Problems would further arise if the JBs tried to draw on District resources, especially if they made any demands on the primary instrument for the advancement of the party in the localities: the party membership itself and in particular its activist core.
The Lancashire District shows these problems clearly. Manchester with the second largest Jewish community in Britain, estimated at 30,000, had the most active provincial JB and the worst relationship with its local party organisation. The Lancashire District committee complained in April 1943 over the demands from the JB for the release of a comrade from District responsibilities for activities in 'Jewish Work'. The Manchester Bureau turned to the national body for advice. Recognising its own lack of influence, the national bureau replied that the matter had to be dealt with locally.71 It did not have the power to impose itself as there was too much risk in aggravating local power structures whose support they desperately needed. What caused concern for the JΒ in particular were the tensions that arose between the District and the local bureau over the establishment of a Manchester Branch of the JFSR.72 Relations deteriorated to such an extent that by mid-1943 the National JB was recommending a complete change in the personnel of the Manchester Bureau to improve the situation vis-à-vis its District organisation.73 The situation did not improve in the short term.74
A similar experience was repeated in Leeds. The National Bureau sent comrades in 1943 to establish links with Jewish party members in the city. The Leeds comrades approached their local leader, the Yorkshire District secretary, Reuben Falber (who was also Jewish), over what they should do. Falber was hostile to the idea and although he did not block the setting up of such a bureau he recalled why he gave it little support:
I was not keen on the project because I felt that these sub-committees tended to take the activists away from the work in the branches and that the work amongst the Jewish people in Leeds should really be in the hands of the Leeds city committee and particularly the North East Leeds branch which covered Chapeltown and Moortown, the principal Jewish areas in the city where there were synagogues, Jewish clubs, Jewish shops and where Jewish people in general lived and congregated.75
The fact that a District secretary would show so little concern with the JB shows how little importance the party assigned to it. When the second Jewish conference was being planned, its initial date was rejected by Harry Pollitt as it would coincide with District Conferences and a national recruiting campaign.76 It was obvious to the party and to the JB where the political priorities lay.
The weakness of the JB within the CPGB led to two further problems. First, it was unable to control autonomous action by its provincial Bureaux. The Leeds JB issued a statement on the execution of Erlich and Alter. That a decision to release material on such a sensitive issue should be taken on a local level without the prior consent of the national body drew a sharp rebuke from the JB leadership against not only the Leeds comrades, but also the District committee for allowing the statement to appear in the first place.77
Second, uncertainty concerning the JB's status could be found throughout the CPGB, not just in the provincial areas. An attempt was made by the London District committee in May 1943 to merge the JB with the existing Colonial Bureau, effectively liquidating the Jewish section. If the JB's activities had been purely in connection with international Jewish concerns then its case for independent existence would have been weak. However, the bureau managed to survive by a direct appeal to the secretariat of the party's Central Committee. The bureau pointed out that 'the Jews of England, of which 260,000 live in and around the London area form a stable section of the population with organisations and problems deeply rooted in England' and that 'their problems are not of a Colonial character'. To merge the Jewish section with another bureau would have been 'grist to the mill' of the Zionists and others who claim that the Jews are an alien presence in this country.78 Ironically, it was to be the visit of Mikhoels and Feffer a few months later which secured the bureau's position by making it a subcommittee of the party's International Department.
The JB recognised the problems it faced and tried to find reasons for them. In its own newsletter they argued that 'in the course of our work many difficulties are encountered which are basically due to the newness of Communist activities among Jews'. It complained about the absence of experienced cadres and knowledge 'from which to draw lessons and guidance' and criticised the party for failing to deal with 'Jewish Work' in the past.79 It is apparent that despite the JB's formation in the mid-1930s it would take several years before the party dealt seriously with Jewish issues.
The situation did improve with time as the bureau began to embed itself within the Party structure particularly following the elevation in party status due to the Mikhoels and Fefer visit. A more positive assessment of its work was given at the Third Conference of Jewish Communists in January 1945. However, the opening statement by Palme Dutt addressed concerns still expressed over the JB's role in the CPGB. One weakness, the CPGB had, Dutt noted, when dealing with areas it had never really dealt with before was
to try to solve the approach of the Party on the basis of wanting to set up our own special committees, special organisations and the like. The existence of the NJC [National Jewish Committee] of the Party is a perfectly straightforward and normal method of organising the Party's work in another particular sphere.80
By allaying doubts in the party concerning the JB, Dutt was seeking to give it credibility and authority within the party structure. He concluded that his statement was intended for the party as a whole and that:
The Executive Committee desires, and it will require some pressure to ensure, that it he considered and discussed in the main general membership of the Party and especially by the District Committees of the Party, so that there is a clarity on the kind of questions and on our approach to them.81
District party opposition meant, however, more than just local obstruction to a 'Jewish policy'. It represented also the problematical relationship between political activity by Jews and the concept of 'Jewish polities'. The Districts and the JB did not have any history of dealing with each other. As the JB noted following the January National Conference, the provincial delegates had shown that 'they had never dealt seriously with Jewish work' One delegate from Salford declared at the conference that there were 20,000 Jews in his District but activities up to this point had been 'insignificant'.83 This is despite the intense period of anti-fascist activity of the 1930s which brought into the Communist Party thousands of Jews. The Jewish involvement in the Aid-for-Spain movement, the International Brigades, the anti-Mosley demonstrations and the fight against anti-Semitism, set against the background of the rise of continental fascism, did not lead the CPGB at national or local level either to formulate any program for solving the 'Jewish Question' or to create any effective organisational structure sensitive to Jewish needs. The notion that an 'ethno-ideological movement' existed in the East End during this time has to be treated with caution. Just because Jews became politically active did not by itself result in a recognisable 'Jewish' political framework or ideology. Practically all political activity by Jewish Communists was through the Communist Party structure, its branches, front organisations, factory groups, its journals and its party hierarchy. Response to Jewish concerns was as much a result of external events and their interpretation by the party leaders, national and local, as it was to internal pressure from Jewish party members. Even when a response was forthcoming, it did not necessarily meet with success. The JB of the 1930s was ineffective and very localised in its activities. The JB of 1943 may have been of a different nature and acting at a time more favourable for Communist development in the Jewish community, but it was still in largely uncharted waters and making little headway. How much this was the case can be shown by the relationship between the JB and the ordinary Jewish party members.
The organisational difficulties the JB faced did impede but not altogether prevent its policies from filtering down to the lowest but crucial level of the CPGB structure, the ordinary branch membership. Once again, however, the Bureau received a response it did not want. The most severe setback the JB faced was the negative reaction of the grass roots to 'Jewish Work'.
At a London Jewish Committee meeting in November 1944, Alec Waterman remarked on their lack of success:
The efforts of this committee to date, has failed, no comrades from East London having been found either capable or willing to do Jewish Work. Our role as advisors was sterile, since there existed not one comrade whom we could advise ... We had been plugging away for two years in advising and in efforts to get someone locally interested in Jewish work, with absolutely no result.84
The leadership of the Communist Party was well aware of this issue, as was apparent from a letter sent by Harry Pollitt to the first Jewish Communist conference:
May I suggest that based on my own experience since our party was first formed and especially in the East End of London that the greatest stumbling block to doing effective work of a mass character amongst the Jewish people is the reluctance of our own Jewish comrades to recognise this as only possible for them to carry out and that it is their Party duty to do so.85
This was a constant theme throughout this conference and those that followed. But what accounts for this 'reluctance'? The critical factor is the problem of Jewish Communist identity. Jewish identity is a complex phenomenon. Historians approach the subject more with caution than confidence. Amorphous and ambiguous in some contexts, strikingly clear in others, Jewish identity is further confused in the political sphere by the competing claims of party loyalties. Jewish Communists' primary political loyalty was to communism. However, on the level of identity each would have a different relationship with his or her Jewishness, an identity developed mainly during the members pre-party lives. The question is: how did this manifest itself within the Communist Party and especially in relation to 'Jewish Work'? Henry Pelling has suggested that the influx of young Jews in the 1930s joined with the generation of Jewish communists from the party's earliest period to form a link between the old and the new Communist membership.86 In fact, the very opposite was to prove the case as the Communist Party struggled to cope with inter-generational cultural differences translating into intra-party conflict.
The Communist Party's primary demand on its membership was for support for its policies and their assistance in their implementation. The party would have preferred a strong communist identity to facilitate effective party work and to prevent dissent. But the CPGB was a small party with limited resources available for a concerted drive to impose such an identity. In the spaces between party loyalty and party identity room existed for other elements, provided they did not conflict or interfere with party demands. Two sets of identities can be discerned amongst the British Jewish Communists in relation to 'Jewish Work'. One is a distinctive 'nucleus' and the other a broader less well-defined 'type'. The former I have called 'Jewish activists', the latter 'grass root Communist Jews', Neither is hermetically sealed from the other, nor can these terms necessarily be used in areas of party and Jewish life outside of the context of the JB.
The Jewish activists were a small group, little more than a dozen with a handful of supporters in various institutions and localities. Nearly all were older, first generation immigrants whose language and early cultural background was non-British. They had a keen interest in Jewish history and a passionate concern for their fellow Jews in Eastern Europe. Many had actually started their socialist careers in Romania, Russia or Poland. The majority of them were members of the London Communist branches of the Workers' Circle. Issie Panner's book, published in 1942, Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Question,87 dedicated to the members of the Hackney Study Group, was an attempt to place the Jews as a people within an historical Marxist analysis and it broadly reflects the groups ideological stance. It was this fairly well organised and coherent group which sought to actively improve the condition of the Jewish people through communism that came to form the backbone of the JB.
The vast majority of Jewish Communists, however, were second or third generation English-speaking Anglicised Jews who had joined the CPGB as youths during the great anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s. They were active in local affairs only, although a few were to rise to positions of authority within the Communist Party hierarchy. They were not organised in any way except through the CPGB structure of factory and local branches. The most important political difference was not between them and their fellow Communists but between them and other Jews and Gentile non-Communists. They were Communist Jews not Jewish Communists. Within the context of political activity, they were not 'Jewish' variants of a Communist, but were rather Jews separated from their ethnic community by their Communist beliefs. As individuals, a few Communist Jews would show an interest in specifically 'Jewish' activities, but most did not. It was here, on the 'Jewish Street', in the areas of Cheetham (Manchester), Leylands (Leeds), Stepney and Hackney, that the strongest resistance to 'Jewish Work' took place.88
Whereas the JB's problems with the District parties were about practical concerns over policy and its implementation, the tensions that arose with the grass root Communist Jews were related to identity issues. A particularly severe attack on the JB's views came from Alfred Sherman.89 In an article titled 'Jewish Nationality: a Pernicious Illusion', he argued that Jewish national rights and culture had been rendered 'historically redundant' by the development of society.90 There could be no 'centre path', it was either assimilation or segregation.91 Jewish comrades were to work amongst Jews in order to 'break down the ghetto walls from inside' by encouraging assimilation, not by emphasising Jewish differences.92 He reserved his real venom for the Jewish activists. In another article, 'Marxism and the Jewish Question', he remarked that the JB's The Jewish Question, though an advance on Panner's Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Question, still had 'glaring weaknesses' and that:
It is always well to remember that the least assimilated of Jewish comrades in the UK who are alien to the majority of British Jewry tend to claim themselves to be representatives of Jewish comrades as a whole ignoring the fact that the majority of the Jewish comrades in the party think of themselves as communists rather than as Jews and do not claim any special hearing on the Jewish problem which the Rabbinical faction, as for example Zaidman, rather tend to think of as their own personal property in true petite-bourgeoisie style.93
The 'Rabbinical faction' understood the division between themselves and the younger Jewish communists very well. They stressed in their educational literature that the 'older generation [of British Jewry] has regard for Yiddish culture and feeling of kinship with Jewish workers abroad',94 a feeling the majority of members of the JB shared. In their understanding of the problem, the Jewish activists emphasised the impact that joining the party had on Jewish Communists. In a confidential document, Party Work Amongst the Jews in Britain: Presentation of the Problem, supplied to the CPGB leadership by the Bureau in December 1943, its first point was:
It is characteristic of Jewish Communists that they are largely isolated from Jewish life and from Jewish organisations. This is due to their having broken away from these in their approach towards a revolutionary outlook and towards Party membership. Jewish Party members are mainly occupied in other spheres of party activity.95
The act of joining the party could lead to a separation from the Jewish community, though it was not necessarily an immediate consequence. It took several years before Dennis Angel's Communist beliefs led to his split from his family and the Jewish community. However, it produced a strong reaction against his past. A report on Angel in connection with allocation of party work stated that because of his Jewish background, 'Jewish Work' may be his forte, but the report noted, 'he expresses a strong distaste to the suggestion that he might work in this field and says that he has long ceased to have any contact with people in Jewish organisations'.96
The term applied by the party and the JB to the contentious relations with grass root Communist Jews was 'sectarianism'. This is one of the most pejorative terms in the Communist lexicon, though it is not easy to define. It touches on the fundamental problem that extreme political groups have in attempting to reconcile their ideological beliefs with the need to participate in the external world. Party members belong to an organisation that seeks to change fundamentally the society in which they live. A sense of insularity from that world is induced with the desire to prove their party loyalty, the failure of fundamental change, and personal discrimination in employment and other spheres of everyday life. Yet, this 'sectarianism' causes tension with the party authorities who realise that it is partly through involvement in the external world that the party can succeed and thus prove the truth of its convictions. The Jewish Communist had the additional burdens of the continuing process of integration into the national culture and away from the world of their fathers and mothers. The JB, by applying the term 'sectarianism' to the problems it faced with other Jewish Communists, sought to place its critique within this most critical form of intra-party discourse. It was not merely a 'Jewish' matter, it was first and foremost a communist problem. However, for the JB, in no other area of party work had Jewish Communists shown as great a degree of 'sectarianism' as they did towards 'Jewish Work'.97
It was not that Communist Jews became fanatical communist ideologues or that they had swapped one 'faith' for another. Most Communist Jews were neither particularly religious before joining the party nor did they become proficient Marxists after. Devotion to the Marxist ideology, which communists seldom showed, is not the same as loyalty to 'The Party', which most Communists did express. The creation of alternative social networks based on the CPGB provided adequate compensation for loss of ties to previous institutions and so reduced the incentive to remain in or become involved with Jewish institutions. The reaction of Communist Jews to calls for them to become involved in Jewish affairs was sometimes more of astonishment than ideological hostility. Reuben Falber explained his reluctance to become involved: 'because what would it mean? I wasn't going to join a Zionist organisation! So how do you take part in these activities? You join a synagogue?!'98 Nor was this a question of 'self-hatred'. Falber later became chairman of the National JB in the 1950s. His initial resistance as Yorkshire District secretary to the Leeds JB was mainly due to his primary loyalty to his party position and the consequent need to allocate resources according to the present political situation and the strength or weaknesses of competing interests.
Differences between the grass roots Communist Jews and the Jewish activists were, therefore, not always related to questions of identity. As outlined already, there were organisational problems which hampered the Jewish activists: most Jewish Communists had never even heard of the JB. For those who had, the extra burden of 'Jewish Work' may have been too much to bear alongside other party commitments. The Communist Party did not throw its weight behind the Jewish activists, so Communist Jews were not forced to choose between their party and their past. If they had to, it would be more than likely they would have supported the party. There were very few resignations from the Jewish comrades following the Nazi-Soviet Pact.99 This was an event of far more consequence than the policies of the JB and which would have involved personal dilemmas of greater significance than those posed by 'Jewish Work'. In the terms of political sociology, the formation of the JB did not cause 'social division' to translate effectively into 'political cleavage'.100
The Jewish activists did try to bridge the gap between themselves and the grass roots with lectures, party classes, articles, a specialist journal, the Jewish Clarion and by the limited amount of pressure they could exert through the party hierarchy. The main aim of the First Conference of Jewish Communists had been to forge 'a closer link between the Party, the Jewish Communists and the Jewish people'.101 However, the patterns of socialisation were very different, a legacy the Jewish activists, despite all their efforts, found difficult to overcome. The integration of the younger generation into non-Jewish society was pervasive and continuous and was apparent in many areas of Jewish life in the 1930s and 40s. The increase in intermarriage, the decline in children attending Cheder, the regularity with which Jews broke the mitzvot concerning Sabbath work were all indicators of these deep-rooted social processes. The turn to communism and away from the Jewish community by a section of Jewish youth was just one echo of the impact of modernity. As the former Communist Raphael Samuel eloquently, if somewhat imaginatively, reflected:
For my mother's generation Communism, though not intended as such, was a way of being English, a bridge by which the children of the ghetto entered the national culture. It was also, in some sense, a break from the hereditary upbringing, as my mother put it, 'to emancipate ourselves from the narrowness of a religious environment'. It served them as a surrogate for university, and a more spiritual version of it, a unity of theory and practice, the discovery of a wider comradeship, an apprenticeship in learning and life.102
One could argue how far Communist Jews were already part of British society before they joined the party and to what extent the marginalised CPGB integrated them further, but Samuel's view does strike a chord in certain respects. In terms of introducing a section of the Jewish people to the traditions and practices of British politics, the CPGB certainly offered one path amongst many. Nevertheless, it was an unusual form of acculturation and one should not stress too far the idea that by joining the Communist Party Jews became 'English'.
Communist Jews had not lost their traditional ties completely; they still socialised with Jews, lived in Jewish areas and because of family commitments still celebrated the occasional festival. Most of them were not as hostile to Jewish culture as Sherman or Angel. The JB was also concerned about the small minority of Jewish Communists who were active in Jewish organisations but 'few of our comrades work in these as Communists, nor go beyond the limits of the administrative and organisational functions of these bodies'.103 There was obviously an attempt at compartmentalisation; to separate political from social activities by some Jewish Communists who did not feel a need to reject their position within the Jewish community. All Jewish Communists would be particularly sensitive on the question of anti-Semitism, and many chose to square the circle concerning national rights by being sympathetic towards the Yishuv and yet declaring themselves anti-Zionist. Jewish identity was, therefore, not irrelevant to Communist Jews. They cannot simply be described as 'Communists of Jewish origin' or 'non-Jewish Jews'.104 A recognisable Jewish identity did play an occasional part, to a lesser or greater degree, in several periods of their communist odyssey. However, few would pay much attention to their Jewish background and even fewer would have much sympathy for 'Jewish Work'. There was to be nothing in Britain to match the American Jewish Communist experience with its summer camps, Yiddish press and housing projects.105
The friction between the Jewish activists and the Communist Jews was a cultural conflict between East and West; between the heirs to the Shtetl and the modern hyphenated Jew. For the Jewish activists, the Jewish-Communist link was a bond, for the Communist Jews, it was a polarity which pushed apart without ever quite managing to break free.
The CPGB was not particularly preoccupied with the ethnic identities of its members. What mattered was whether you carried out party instructions or not and as a rule, Jewish Communists carried out their duties as well as any other Communists. What caused particular concern for the grass root Communist Jews, however, was the attempted coordination and labelling of their work as 'Jewish Work'. The political activity of Communists Jews especially before the post-war migration into the suburbs was generally amongst Jews, either in the clothing factories or on their doorsteps. But this was as Communists not as Jews. Just because they were aware of being Jewish does not mean that they wished to act politically as Jews or to be seen to be doing so. Quite the opposite in fact. The policies of the JB appeared to represent what Communist Jews were actually doing in their local campaigning in Jewish areas or in the clothing or furniture trade unions. But, as Palme Dutt noted at the 1945 Conference:
[There is] an old and still marked tendency to regard general party work and propaganda, and general work in the working class and democratic movement as a substitute for concern with Jewish questions and work in Jewish organisations. This is an old type of error familiar in many fields and characteristic of the early stages of work in new spheres. But it is most unsuitable when the Party has reached a strong basis and the leadership of the people in many-sided and wide spheres.106
In other words, it was a political mistake for Communist Jews to deny their roots especially as it would affect the development of the party. For the CPGB, the best wav to be a good Communist was to be a good Jew.
For the Communist Jews, the JB's policies crossed a crucial mental threshold and put their own identity in doubt. By emphasising particularism rather than universalism, Jewishness rather than Britishness, 'Jewish Work' raised questions that many preferred to ignore rather than answer. It is because of the reluctance of Communist Jews to confront their ethnicity that the JB quoted despairingly in their information circular 'the country is full of [Jewish] English-speaking communists engaged in all kinds of Communist work, but not as Jews, not as Jewish Communists'.107
The 1945 Mile End general election victory was a consequence of the interwar and wartime local activist struggles of Communists and Communist Jews amongst a predominantly working-class community. However, one should be cautious in linking votes cast with commitment to that party's ideology or to the notion of the Jewish population's 'powerful group consciousness'.108 The 'Jewish Street' went 'Red' but sympathy does not mean synthesis or hegemony. Nor should one exaggerate the Communist Party's attachment to ethnicity. Jewish motifs were used in party propaganda but one must be wary of seeing this as other than local strategies required for electoral success. The only explicitly 'Jewish' policy pursued by the CPGB during this time, the JB, played no significant part in the election campaign.109 An event in 1936 of far more importance to the election result than the creation of the JB was the formation of the London Stepney Tenants' Defence League. As Michael Shapiro, the League's founder and successful Stepney CPGB candidate in the November council elections, recounted in a report to the party authorities:
It was a genuine united movement of the people drawing together Jews and Christians at a time when anti-Semitic propaganda was being stepped up, helping to isolate and expose both Fascists and right wing local Labour leaders, drawing in and building unity with sections of the Church and winning the warm approval of the organised Labour movement ... Our victories in the 1945 Parliamentary and Municipal elections were based primarily on the reputation and following we had built up in the great prewar struggles. In the general swing to the Left people saw us as the real leaders.110
Note the emphasis on Communist activism, historical circumstance and the ability of the local party to go beyond the Jewish community. An 'inclusive' approach towards Jewish Communism and its place in 'Jewish politics' may fuse the 'ethnic' with the 'movement' but in doing so confuses the general and the particular. Ethnicity is only one element in a complex matrix uniting party, locality and historical circumstance. Srebrnik's movement away from a purely class-based analysis is welcome, but not all the answers can be found in the ethnic. The party was its own driving force in the East End of London. It benefited from local factors but it also led and organised the protests that it helped create, not for 'ethnic' purposes but for its own policy reasons. By 1945, the Communists finally had their base; 'roots' that fed the party tree, not a frame that bore a tabernacle.
Is the London Mile End election then a case of 'Jewish Polities'? Does the failure of the JB to have an impact illustrate the fragility or strength of the concept 'Jewish polities'? Is in fact the JB an example of 'Jewish Politics' at all? Its successes and failures as well as its very existence owed as much to the involvement of the Soviet Union and the structure of the CPGB than the activities of its Jewish members. Indeed, the very people who were to carry out 'Jewish Work', the ordinary Jewish membership, were reluctant or even hostile to involvement in anything that might be described as 'Jewish polities'. Conversely, it is obvious 'Jewish politics' is involved in some way with the Communist Jews, as they were the focal point for the JB's activities, and indeed, their resistance to the Bureau reveals a great deal about the modern Jewish condition itself. But, is the link between Jewish identity and Jewish politics self-evident? Where does Communist politics end and Jewish politics begin? When is a Jew acting politically as a Jew and when is he or she acting as a socialist, a proletarian or a Briton?
Mendelsohn's 'exclusive' concentration upon the Jewish sections as clear examples of Jewish politics within the context of communist history seems also, therefore, to require revision in the case of the CPGB's own bureau. The conceptual boundary of Jewish versus non-Jewish politics that split the JB from the Communist Jews is undermined by both questioning the 'Jewish' dimension of the JB and by the rethinking of the 'Jewishness' of the Communist Jews. Where Srebrnik might have gone too far in his analysis of Jews and Communism, Mendelsohn may not have gone far enough. The change in perception from separation, of Jewish Communist from party structure, to relationship, between party and Jews, necessitates a reevaluation and redefining of what is 'Jewish polities'.
The difficulties involved in judging where the boundary lies between Jewish and non-Jewish politics is not merely an obstacle in the way of the search for greater understanding, but is of significance in revealing a paradox of modern 'Jewish polities': modernity creates both unity and disunity, it fashions collective political will and establishes party division, it mobilises the masses and yet turns them away from each other. Alongside the unifying methods of mass mobilisation lie the ruptures produced by class, gender, nationality, generation, ideology and, above all, party loyalty. With the greater access to the non-Jewish world comes a obfuscation of the distinction between the Jew/non-Jew dialectic, not just between political structures, but within individuals as well. Beside institutional formation comes identity fragmentation. 'Jewish politics' is thus a multilayered and multifaceted phenomenon whose focus can shift according to the observer's and subject's perspective. A definition that avoids these complexities and tensions risks missing the point.
Nevertheless, a recognition of multiplicity and ambiguity within the field of 'Jewish polities' only helps us so far. One has still to decide which parts of identity are involved and how and why they relate to each other. Nor is it simply a question of personal choice but also one of power, coercion and control. An overall structure that could enable a viable definition of 'Jewish politics' to be developed may be offered by grounding our understanding in historical and institutional context. As well as a balanced appraisal of the importance of ethnicity and society, particular importance must be attached to the dominant form of political activity in the twentieth century: the political party. Lying between section and movement, the party is more than just a backcloth for the actors of Jewish identity to be viewed against, but has instead an integral role in the whole play. Most political activity by Jews in the modern era, 'East' and 'West', was channelled through political parties, Jewish and non-Jewish, and/or party systems. Trapped between state and society, Jews had little alternative but to act within the intermediary political arena of the party. Political parties are as much products of modernity as Jewish integration and it is no coincidence that the histories of both are closely intertwined.
Jews did not take political decisions in a vacuum but usually within the context of party politics. Without an understanding of how the party operates, what language it uses, how it forms its policies, how it implements them and the consequences for its Jewish members, little can be gained from the application of the term 'Jewish politics' to the political activities of Jews in the modern era. Rather than starting within the ambiguities of the Jewish community and Jewish identity and seeking to explain Jewish political activity from an internal perspective, one can use the clearer institutional boundaries and structure of the party to bring a wider external political and social environment to bear upon the actions of its Jewish party members. This is not to derogate the part Jewish identity has in explaining Jewish political activity, but rather to reveal its relative importance and rich complexity through the prism of political structure. Party is both framework and factor; without it no understanding of the Jews and the left, and maybe even modern 'Jewish polities', is possible
1. For an introduction to this subject see, Frankel, J. (1981), Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews 1862-1917, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Mendelsohn, E. (1993), On Modem Jewish Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Lederhendler, E. (1989), The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. For the debate over 'East' versus 'West' Jewish politics see the articles Hyman, P. (1992), 'Was there a "Jewish Politics" in Western and Central Europe?', and Frankel, J. (1992), 'Modern Jewish Politics East and West (1840-1939)', both in Z. Gitelman (ed.), The Quest for Utopia: Jewish Political Ideas and Institutions Throughout the Ages, London: Sharpe.
3. See, for example, Dothan, S. (1975), 'The Jewish Section of the Palestine Communist Party, 1937-1939', pp. 234-62 in D. Capri and G. Yogev (eds), Zionism: Studies in the History of the Zionist Movement and of the Jewish Community in Palestine, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University; Gitelman, Z. (1972), Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics - The Jewish Section of the CPSU 1917-1930, Princeton: Princeton University Press; Zucker, Β. (1991), 'The Jewish Bureau: The Organisation of American Jewish Communists in the 1930s', in M. Cohen (ed.), Bar-Ilan Studies in History III, Bar-Ilan: Bar-Ilan University Press.
4. Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics.
5. Ibid., preface.
6. Ibid., p. 28.
7. Srebrnik, H. F. (1995), London Jews and British Communism, 1935-45, Ilford: Valentine Mitchell.
8. Its membership never exceeded 20,000 before the Second World War and indeed struggled to reach half that throughout most of the inter-war period.
9. Srebrnik, London Jews, p. 1.
10. Ibid., p. 151.
11. Ibid., p. 4.
12. Ibid., pp. 11-19. Srebrnik was unfortunately not granted access to the archives of the CPGB during his research in the 1970s and 1980s. Since the completion and publication of his thesis the Communist Party Archives (CPA) have become available for study in the National Labour History Museum, Manchester, and much of what is presented in this chapter has been taken from them.
13. Figures taken from an analysis of CPGB's biographical collection held at the Labour history Museum, Manchester. Note that this figure only applies to cadres not the ordinary membership so one must be cautious in extrapolating the exact numbers of Jews within the party as a whole from this 7 per cent figure.
14. For example, in the Polish Communist Party's youth section Jews constituted 51 per cent of its membership in 1930. The proportion of Jews in the party never fell below 22 per cent in the inter-war period and was significantly higher in the cities: Schatz, J. (1991), The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 96.
15. Srebmik, London Jews, pp. 13-14.
16. Ibid.
17. Srebrnik does not mention the Jewish Bureau of the 1930s even though he references an article written by it in 1937, ibid., p. 122. Srebrnik does discuss the National Jewish Committee (NJC) during the war period though he does not address any connection with the earlier Jewish Bureau. The NJC, he argues, was established in April 1943 (p. 72) although he later quotes a NJC document from February 1943 (p. 79).
18. Zucker, 'The Jewish Bureau', Bar-Han Studies in History III, Ramat-Gan, pp. 135-47. The Jewish Federations were an integral part of the American CP's two founding parties, the Communist Labor Party and the Communist Party of America.
19. Communist Party of Great Britain (1920), Communist Unity Convention, London July 31 & August 1 1920: Official Report, London: The National Labour Press Ltd, pp. 21-2.
20. CPA CI reel 11 Political Bureau 1930, 17/18 August.
21. Although, according to Jewish religious law, he was not Jewish as his mother was a non-Jew.
22. CPA CI reel 11 Political Bureau 1930,21 August.
23. CPA CI reel 14 Political Bureau 1933, 18 May and in connection with Lancashire, reel 5/6 Central Committee 1934-35, 1 February 1935.
24. CPA CI reel 15 Political Bureau 1934-35, 15 November 1934.
25. Pollitt showed a considerable understanding of the Jewish community in the secret meeting called by Neville Laski, the head of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to discuss with the important Labour Party figure, Herbert Morrison, joint action against the fascists. See Holmes, C. (1976), 'East End Anti-Semitism, 1936', Society for the Study of Labour History, (32) Spring, pp. 26-33
26. CPA CI reel 11 Political Bureau 1930 12 December. The Communists achieved 2106 votes. The success here was contrasted with the failure in the recent Shipley by-election where the party was seen as isolated from the masses. In the general election of 1931 the Communist vote went up by a further 500.
27. Ibid., 11 December. Pollitt, though, shifted his candidature from Stepney to Rhondda, South Wales, for subsequent elections.
28. CPA CI reel 15 Political Bureau 1935-1935, 4 May 1934.
29. Imprecor (1935), 15, 17 October, no. 54, pp. 1344-5; 21 November, no. 62, p. 1541; 2 December, no. 65, pp. 1617-18. See also Budeiri, M. (1979), The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948, London: Ithaca Press, pp. 80-83; Dothan, op. cit., pp. 244-5, p. 259.
30. CPA CI reel 7 Central Committee 1936, 5 June.
31. CPA CI reel 16 Political Bureau 1936-1937, 21 May 1936.
32. Note, however, that the first secretary of the Jewish Bureau, Lazar Zaidman in his own account (CPA CP/CENT/PERS/8/14) gives the date of the founding of the bureau as 1935, a year before the riots in Palestine. However, the Political Bureau obviously had no knowledge that such a body existed within its party in 1936 which makes it highly unlikely that it did exist before the May/June meetings as only the Political Bureau had the authority to set up such a body. Zaidman's account was written in 1952 so he may have given the wrong date by accident. The Jewish Bureau was also referred to occasionally as the Jewish Advisory Bureau/Committee which appears to reflect the original intentions of the May/June meetings.
33. Budeiri, op. cit., p. 99.
34. British Resident, 'The Events in Palestine', Labour Monthly, 18 July 1936, (7), p. 412.
35. CPA CP/CENT/PERS/8/14 Lazar Zaidman and CP/CENT/ PERS/01/01 Sam Alexander. Hackney is an area of East London north of Stepney.
36. CPA CP/CENT/PERS/8/14 'Lazar Zaidman - An appreciation (speech by John Mahon)'.
37. These included ICOR an organisation linked to Biro-Bidzjan, the Soviet Union's own Jewish 'homeland'.
38. CPA CP/CENT/PERS/01/01 Sam Alexander.
39. CPA CP/CENT/PERS/8/14 Lazar Zaidman.
40. See 'A reply to S. Townsend Warner by the Jewish Bureau of the Communist Party' (1937), Discussion, 1 (14), 22-4. In the same journal see articles by 'Zionist Socialist' and Bridgeman, R. (1937), 1 (10), 17-22, and three articles under the heading 'Communism, Zionism and the Jews', 1 (13), March 1937, 14-24.
41. Letter from Eric Hobsbawm to author, 30 September 1997.
42. Jacobs, Joe (1978), Out of the Ghetto: My Youth in the East End: Communism and Fascism 1913-1939, London: Janet Simon. He does however mention 'the people in the Workers' Circle' (p. 229) who were members of the CPGB including Issie Rennap and Alf Holland both of whom were either members of the Hackney Study Group or close to it.
43. See for example the article by Campbell, J. R. (1939), 'Why the Jews are victimised', in the Daily Worker (DW), 8 August, p. 2: 'Anti-Semitism is thus the road to anti-English treachery. The universality of anti-Semitism in the capitalist world is the expression of the universality of the capitalist crisis and is used by German Fascism as a weapon in its drive for world conquest.'
44. CPA CI reel 8 Central Committee 1937, 10 September.
45. CPA CP/CENT/PERS/8/14 Lazar Zaidman.
46. 'Jewish People's Council to be Dissolved. But Need for Defence Remains' (1939), Jewish Chronicle (JC), 22 September 1939, p. 17. Julius Jacobs, the JPC's organising secretary, denied in a letter to the JC, (6 October, p. 9) that the council was to be dissolved just that recommendations were to be made to affiliated organisations. It continued to exist in name only and was finally dissolved in January 1940: 'End of the Jewish People's Council' (1940), JC, 12 January, p. 21. The official reason for closing down the JPC was because of government restrictions and lack of 'financial resources'. The Board of Deputies Defence Committee had also reduced its London activities after the outbreak of war though within a few months it had re-established them: 'Defence Meetings Again' (1940), JC, 23 February, p. 26. This is not to say that local CPGB branches were not active against the fascists in this period though this is an area of Communist activity we know surprisingly little about.
47. For a description of CPGB anti-fascism in Lancashire see Barrett, N. (1997), 'A Bright Shining Star: The CPGB and Anti-Fascist Activism in the 1930s', Science and Society, 61, (1), 10-26.
48. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/8/14 Lazar Zaidman.
49. Redlich, S. (1995), War, Holocaust and Stalinism: A Documented History of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR, Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers.
50. JC, 29 August 1941, p. 8. A manifesto issued by the Moscow Jewish leaders urging Soviet Jews to resist Hitler had been reported earlier in the JC, 11 July 1941, p. 1.
51. 'Jewish Congress Appeal' (1941), World News and Views, 6 September, 21 (36), p. 573.
52. JC, 12 September 1941, p. 9.
53. JC, 3 October 1941, p. 8.
54. Srebrnik, H. (1986), 'Communism and Pro-Soviet Feeling Among the Jews of East London 1935-45', Immigrants and Minorities, 5 November,
55. Redlich, War, Holocaust and Stalinism, 287.
56. CPA CP/CENT/PERS/8/14 Lazar Zaidman and interview by author with Chimen Abramsky, 16 October 1996.
57. JC, 12 December 1941, p. 19.
58. DW, 21 February 1940, p. 4.
59. This was formed after the second JAFC congress on May 24 1942. See the letter to the editor by its secretary, Simon Blumenfield, JC, 19 June 1942, p. 13. See also the support given to it by the JC, 26 June 1942, p. 8.
60. According to the JC direct contact was established between the UJC and the JAFC. Reports about Soviet Jewry were to be sent to the UJC, JC, 31 July 1942, p. 13. The JAFC gave radio broadcasts in Yiddish once a week on Saturday 8.30pm.
61. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Discussion Material for the Enlarged Meeting of the National Jewish Committee (1943), p. 5. The UJC had been very much a child of the JAFC as its secretary, Joseph Leftwich, expressed in a letter to the JC, the UJC 'exists to answer the appeal of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Kubiyshev', JC, 16 October 1942, p. 6. However, the JFSR was more an establishment body, an integral part of Mrs Churchill's Red Cross Aid to Russia Fund, see JC, 25 December 1942, p. 8.
62. Redlich, War Holocaust and Stalinism, p. 74.
63. Ibid., and interview with Chimen Abramsky, 25 March 1998.
64. Srebrnik, 'Pro-Soviet Feeling', pp. 295-7.
65. Interview with Chimen Abramsky, 16 October 1996.
66. Redlich, War, Holocaust and Stalinism, p. 288.
67. Ibid.
68. The Jewish Bureau was renamed the National Jewish Committee in 1943. This was due to the dissolution of the Comintern and the dropping of Comintern terminology such as 'Bureau' and substitution with less Soviet-sounding alternatives. This applied throughout the party not just to the Jewish Bureau. It did not signify any change in the nature of the Jewish section. To avoid confusion, I will continue to refer to the Jewish section as the 'Jewish Bureau' (JB) throughout the article.
69. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Report (National Conference of Jewish Members of the CPGB, 31 January 1943). William Rust, the editor of the Daily Worker, was the party's Central Committee representative at the conference. His wife, Tamara Rust, was of partly Jewish descent.
70. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 The Jewish Bureau, Circular No. 2, 18 February 1943.
71. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 National Jewish Bureau minutes, 20 April 1943.
72. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 National Jewish Bureau minutes, 4 May 1943. See also letter from Zaidman to the Manchester Jewish Bureau, 14 May 1943, concerning this matter and offering guidance on the relations between the DPC and the Bureau.
73. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 National Jewish Bureau minutes, 8 June 1943.
74. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 National Jewish Bureau minutes, 3 August 1943. No JFSR branch had been set up yet. No effective leadership existed and there was, according to the JB, a danger of the bureau 'falling away'.
75. Reuben Falber reply to questionnaire sent by the author, 1 March 1996.
76. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Pollitt letter to the National Jewish Committee, 6 August 1943.
77. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 National Jewish Bureau minutes, 20 April 1943, p. 2.
78. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Letter from the National Jewish Bureau to Secretariat of the Central Committee, 30 May 1943.
79. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Newsletter, 10 October 1943, p. 1.
80. Zaidman Collection, (ZC) The Communist Party National Jewish Committee, Third Annual Enlarged Meeting, 13-14 January 1945.
81. Ibid.
82. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Minutes Jewish Bureau, 15 February 1943.
83. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Report (31 January 1943), p. 3.
84. ZC London Jewish Committee minutes, 11 November 1944.
85. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Report, p. 2.
86. Pelling, H. (1975), The British Communist Party, London: A. and C. Black, p. 82.
87. Rennap, I. (pseudonym) (1942), Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Question, London: The Camelot Press Ltd.
88. Note that similar differences are evident in other national Communist Parties. For the 'non-Jewish Jews' versus the 'Jewish Jews' in the Polish Communist Party see Schatz, J., op. cit., pp. 55, 100,118-27.
89. He later became a leading and influential supporter of the Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
90. ZC, 'Avis' (Alfred Sherman) (1946), 'Jewish Nationality: A Pernicious Illusion', April, p. 7, an unpublished article in the Zaidman collection archive at the University of Sheffield.
91. Ibid., p. 10.
92. Ibid., p. 16.
93. ZC, 'Avis' (Alfred Sherman), Marxism and the Jewish Question, n.d., p. 7.
94. ZC, 118/9f/11 'Notes for Session (Third) of School on Jewish Affairs'.
95. ZC (1943), Party Work Amongst the Jews in Britain: Presentation of the Problem, 9 December.
96. CPA CP/CENT/PERS/01/01 Dennis Walter Angel.
97. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Letter of the National Jewish Committee of the Communist Party, 10 October 1943, p. 1.
98. Interview with Reuben Falber, 1 May 1996.
99. Not that this did not cause difficulties for some. See Mindel, M. (1986), 'Socialist EastEnders', Jewish Socialist, 2 (6), p. 27, for his reaction to the pact.
100. For a brief overview of the theory of political and social cleavage see Maor, M. (1997), Political Parties and Party Systems, London: Routledge, pp. 18-30.
101. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Report (21 January 1943), p. 1.
102. Samuel, R. (1985), 'The Lost World of British Communism', New Left Review, (154), p. 51.
103. ZC (1943), 'Party Work Amongst the Jews in Britain: Presentation of the Problem', 9 December.
104. For the classic account of the 'non-Jewish Jews' see Deutscher, I. (1968), The Non-Jewish Jew and other Essays, London: Oxford University Press.
105. Zucker, op. cit. and Liebman, A. (1979), Jews and the Left, New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 305-25.
106. ZC, The Communist Party National Jewish Committee, Third Annual Enlarged Meeting, 13-14 January 1945. Emphasis added.
107. CPA CP/CENT/CTEE/02/02 Letter, 6 November 1943, p. 7.
108. Srebrnik, London Jews, p. 151.
109. See Piratin's own account (1948), of the election and the earlier years of communist activity in Our Flag Stays Red, London: Thames Publications (reprinted 1978, London: Lawrence and Wishart). He does not mention the Jewish Bureau once.
110. CP/CENT/PERS/6/7 Michael Shapiro.