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British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945-67

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British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945-67 British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945-67 Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Leicester by Joshua Cohen Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies School of History, Politics and International Relations May 2019 Abstract British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945-67 Joshua Cohen This thesis explores the extent to which the Holocaust shaped British antifascism in the period 1945-1967. It makes an original contribution in setting out the first dedicated analysis of the relationship between consciousness of the Nazi genocide and motivations for confronting fascism in Britain. The study has interrogated institutional archival records to assess the presence of the Holocaust in the private discourses, propaganda and campaign strategies of a wide variety of antifascist organisations. Personal motivations for antifascist activism have been engaged with through analysis of memoirs, autobiographies and oral histories. The thesis will demonstrate that the Holocaust was often absent from antifascist rhetoric, and so should be decentred from understandings that assume constant affinity between Holocaust remembrance and British antifascism. Instead, antifascism in this period was often conceptualised in a patriotic framework, as coda to the Second World War, or viewed through left-wing analyses of class struggle which obscured fascism’s ‘racial’ victims. However, the central importance of this study lies in its revealing that a Holocaust-inspired resistance to fascism was emerging in this period and beginning to co-exist with patriotic and other forms of antifascism. The ‘lessons’ of the Holocaust for antifascists were the subject of agonised internal disputes and became a point of open conflict between militant and establishment Anglo- Jewish organisations. The genocide was also politicised in a number of antifascist campaigns, including on the Left and in the name of civil liberties. The thesis therefore argues for 1945-67 as a vital transitional period when use of the Holocaust as a weapon against fascism was developing, albeit sometimes on the fringes of antifascist discourse. In this way, the period presaged the more confident later invocations of the genocide, including in activism against the National Front in the 1970s. 2 Acknowledgments I am hugely grateful to my supervisors, Paul Moore and Sally Horrocks, for their constant support, care and advice - and for keeping ‘imposter syndrome’ at bay with their encouragement. Other academic staff gave invaluable feedback when reviewing thesis drafts: I am indebted to Larissa Allwork, Simon Gunn, Alexander Korb, Aubrey Newman and Stephen Wagg. Research took me to archives around the country where staff were unfailingly helpful. In particular, I am grateful to the Board of Deputies of British Jews for granting access to the archives of its Jewish Defence Committee, held at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide. I am also especially grateful to Dan Jones and his academic supervisor, Paul Jackson at the University of Northampton’s Searchlight archive for making me feel welcome over a number of visits and involving me in a collaborative research seminar. I would like to thank Colin Hyde for providing oral history training (and for the money-saving loan of recording equipment!). The author Jo Bloom, filmmaker Jes Benstock and Rachel Burns of UK Jewish Film gave invaluable help in finding willing interview subjects. I am especially indebted to all the people who gave up their time to share their memories of antifascism with me – it was a privilege to hear them. Gerry Gable and Harry Kaufman have taken a long-term interest in my work: I am thankful for this and the extra insights they provided. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, both within the University of Leicester. Finally, I would like to thank all my wonderful family but especially Bina. Without your practical support and encouragement I would not have been able to even begin this work. 3 Preface My thanks to Kevin Morgan, editor of Twentieth Century Communism, for allowing material first published in the journal (issue 14, ‘Spring 2018’, pp.115- 37) to reappear in Chapter 2 of this thesis. 4 Table of Contents List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................... 6 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 8 Research aims ........................................................................................................... 11 Literature review ........................................................................................................ 12 Key terms .................................................................................................................. 36 Periodisation .............................................................................................................. 42 Methodology .............................................................................................................. 45 Thesis structure ......................................................................................................... 50 Chapter 1: ‘We got rid of the bastards’: the Holocaust, the Second World War and Anglo-Jewish responses to fascism, 1945-51 ........................................... 53 The Board of Deputies, AJEX and the Holocaust ...................................................... 54 ‘A fragment of that stunned horror’: The Holocaust and 43 Group activism .............. 65 Jewish antifascists remember their struggle .............................................................. 75 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 86 Chapter 2: Never forget? The Holocaust and left-wing antifascism, 1945-51 .. 89 Labour in power: the promise of antifascism ............................................................. 90 The CPGB and the Holocaust ................................................................................... 93 ‘Not Nazi Germany but British India!’The Holocaust in RCP polemic ...................... 109 The NCCL: antifascism, the Holocaust and civil liberties ........................................ 116 Trade unions and labour movement organisations ................................................. 121 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 123 Chapter 3: The Holocaust, antifascism, race and immigration, 1951-1960 ... 125 ‘Unfortunate heckling by a Jew’: the fascist focus shifts away from antisemitism ... 129 The Notting Hill riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane ........................................ 144 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 164 Chapter 4: ‘Somehow getting their own back on Hitler’: British antifascism and the Holocaust, 1960-67. ................................................................................. 168 Back to Nazism: the far-right and antifascism in the early 1960s ............................ 169 The Eichmann trial and British antifascism, 1960-62 .............................................. 176 ‘I decided that afternoon to be a Jew myself’: resisting the NSM ............................ 181 ‘Who after Auschwitz still clings to racial politics’: the Holocaust and 1960s’ anti- racism ...................................................................................................................... 199 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 211 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 215 Bibliography ................................................................................................. 223 5 List of Abbreviations AACP Association for the Advancement of Coloured People AJEX Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women AJR Association of Jewish Refugees BM British Movement BNP British National Party BUF British Union of Fascists CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain CPPA Coloured People’s Progressive Association CPUSA Communist Party of the United States of America CST Community Security Trust JAC Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee JACOB Jewish Aid Committee of Britain JDC Jewish Defence Committee (of the Board of Deputies of British Jews) LCC London County Council LEL League of Empire Loyalists MCF Movement for Colonial Freedom NCCL National Council for Civil Liberties NF National Front NLP National Labour Party NSM National Socialist Movement 6 RCP Revolutionary Communist Party SSL Socialist Labour League TUC Trades Union Congress UM Union Movement WDL White Defence League WIG West Indian Gazette and Afro-Caribbean News YCL Young Communist League 7 Introduction Britain witnessed a fascist revival even during the Second World War. In 1944, the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women held an openly fascist meeting in London’s Hyde Park.1 At the war’s end, it was possible to encounter both newspaper photographs of the liberated Nazi camps and the letters ‘PJ’ scrawled on synagogue walls – signifying ‘Perish Judah’ and translated from the Nazi slogan Juda Verrecke.2 By 1948, encouraging signs of fascist
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