JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

The sensational death of Robert Maxwell in November
1991 was followed rapidly by the collapse of his business empire
and the revelation that he had stolen hundreds of millions
of pounds from his employees’ pension fund in order to
prop up the share value of his companies. His sons were subsequently
arrested for abetting this fraud and await trial. Although
Maxwell’s ostentatious burial on the Mount of Olives
could not help but draw attention to his Jewish roots, media
commentary was relatively restrained. However, it was widely
considered that Maxwell and the Jewish entrepreneurs in the
Guinness case were outsiders in the City. This denied them
protection by the “old boys” network when their schemes, in
no way unique, ran foul of the law.
British Jews were, on the whole, spared violent forms of
antisemitism. The exception was 1990 when, over a 12-month
period there were 29 cases of vandalism against Jewish cemeteries,
synagogues, and Holocaust memorials in the London
area alone and seven reported cases of physical assault on Jewish
persons. This violence is miniscule compared to the assault
on non-white minorities, but the attacks provoked media
comment and provoked reassuring statements from the
prime minister in May 1990.
The most prevalent form of anti-Jewish action in Britain
has been the distribution of antisemitic literature. In November
1990, Greville Janner, MP, sponsored an early day motion
in the House of Commons which attracted the names of 100
MPs in support of suppressing the circulation of Holocaust
Denial material. In March 1991, Dowager Lady Birdwood was
charged under the Public Order Act (1986) for distributing
the ritual murder accusation against the Jews. She was subsequently
found guilty and given a two-year unconditional
discharge. In December 1992, glossily produced pseudo-
Ḥanukkah cards containing doggerel that embraced antisemitic
libels were sent to hundreds of Jewish organizations and
prominent individuals. Police investigations failed to identify
the source of this “hate mail” and the Government has consistently
rebuffed pleas by the Board of Deputies, most recently
in October 1992, for a community libel law.
The announcement that a gathering of Holocaust Denial
practitioners would be held in London in November
1991 led to demands that the home secretary ban the entry
of Robert Faurrison and Fred Leuchter. Leuchter actually entered
the country illegally and was deported after showing
up at a “conference” that was heavily-picketed by anti-fascist
groups. David *Irving, sometime British historian and now
a propagandist well known for addressing neo-Nazi rallies
in Germany, had become a linchpin in this shadowy global
network.
Jews and the Holocaust figured in several historical controversies.
In 1987 Jim Allen’s anti-Zionist play Perdition deployed
the canard that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis.
Production was canceled after expressions of outrage from
the Jewish community and intense media scrutiny, but this
only inflamed the debate. The War Crimes Bill occasioned
many reflections on the Holocaust, often yoked disturbingly
england
to Jewish terrorism in Palestine in 1946–47. In January 1992,
when Irving claimed to have discovered new Eichmann papers
the press treated him as a right-wing historian whose views
merited serious reportage. In July 1992, the Sunday Times
caused a storm of controversy by employing him to transcribe
and comment on newly revealed portions of Goebbels’
diary.
Alan Clark, junior defense minister, was widely condemned
in December 1991 for attending a party to launch the
revised version of Irving’s book Hitler’s War in which Irving
states that Hitler was innocent of the Final Solution and denies
the existence of gas chambers for killing Jews. Clark later
endorsed a political biography of Churchill by John Charmley,
which appeared in January 1993, that suggested Britain
should have made peace with Hitler in 1940 or 1941. Clark
and Charmley agreed that there was little to choose between
Stalinism and Nazism, and that the plight of the Jews under
Nazism was a marginal issue. The exposure in the Guardian
newspaper in May and December 1992 of war crimes in the
Nazi-occupied Channel Islands, and the concurrence of the
local authorities in the deportation of Jews, shed a different
light on the matter. The Irving affair reached a head when Irving
filed a libel suit in 1996 against Deborah Lipstadt and her
British publisher, Penguin Books, claiming that Lipstadt’s Denying
the Holocaust had accused him of being a Nazi apologist,
Holocaust denier, racist, and antisemite. Lipstadt contended
that this was precisely what he was, and the Court agreed in
its 2001 verdict denying his suit.
Controversy also surrounded efforts to set up an eruv
in the London borough of Barnet. The project was launched
by the United Synagogue “Eruv Committee” in 1987. In June
1992 it was passed by the Public Works Committee of Barnet
Council. It was then considered by the Hampstead Garden
Suburb Trust, which manages this architecturally unique
suburban area. At a stormy meeting in September 1992, the
Trust’s chairman, Lord MacGregor, was censured for approving
a letter to Barnet Council advising it to reject the plan and
calling the eruv “a very unpleasant exhibition of fundamentalism.”
He subsequently resigned. This fracas made the eruv
into a heated issue locally and in the national newspapers. On
February 24, 1993, the council’s planning committee defeated
the eruv proposal by 11 to 7 votes. Jewish councilors were split
and it generated fierce opposition from both Orthodox and
“assimilationist” Jews. It was also attacked by non-Jews unable
to accept the public expression of Jewish difference.
In June 1992 the prime minister, John Major, appointed
two Jews to his new government: Michael Howard became
secretary of state for the environment and Malcolm Rifkind
was appointed secretary of state for defense. After a cabinet
reshuffle in March 1993, Howard was made home secretary. In
November 2003, however, Howard was elected leader of the
British Conservative Party, the first Jewish leader of a government
or opposition party in Britain in the 20th century. Howard
stepped down after the 2005 elections. Another reshuffle
in September 1995 led to Rifkind’s appointment as foreign sec-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 425