Earning the Right to Belong: British Jews and Domestic Fascism in the 1930s

The degree to which British Jews can claim full membership of the nation has been a contentious issue throughout modern Anglo-Jewish history.  This question was particularly divisive during the 1930s due to the rise of the British Union of Fascists, whose rhetoric of exclusion placed “alien” Jews outside the bounds of the national community.  This episode exposed a deep divide within Anglo-Jewry over how to oppose the campaigns of the B.U.F., highlighting the gap between an Anglo-Jewish elite long resident in Britain and the working-class Jewish communities created by mass immigration in the preceding decades.  This paper will explore these issues by examining Jewish youth clubs in the East End of London.  These clubs, paradigmatic examples of the philanthropic efforts of elite members of Anglo-Jewry, were the main points of contact between the two sections of the community and thereby the most intimate arena for debates over the proper response to fascism.  These debates illustrate very different conceptions of how British Jews could stake their claim to national membership.  Club leaders argued that the main cause of anti-semitism was Jewish misbehavior, and that only Jewish virtue could demonstrate their right to belong.  Club members, however, vigorously rejected this analysis and asserted that a confrontational and aggressive response to fascist activity was the best way to demonstrate their fitness to be British citizens.  The significance of these events stretches beyond the immediate context of Anglo-Jewish history, for they illustrate the complexities of issues of inclusion and exclusion in diverse societies.  This particular debate over the boundaries of the national community took place wholly within the confines of a minority community, as the two leading segments of that community contested the best way for British Jews to earn their right to belong.