In the nineteenth century, Britain developed a reputation within Europe for religious tolerance. In the last quarter of the century, antisemitism in Western Europe saw a transformation from being rooted in religion to being a question of race. The advent of racial antisemitism as the primary current of anti-Jewish hate was brought on by the growing assimilation of Jewish communities in Western Europe so that they were no longer an easily identifiable religious minority. Britain, however, with its relatively small Jewish community, had much lower rates of antisemitic violence. This reputation made the United Kingdom an attractive country for Jews, particularly those from Russia where large-scale massacres of the Jews, known as pogroms, were regularly carried out with state support, as well as where the Jewish community had failed to assimilate to the same degree in Russia as it had in France and Germany, due to the even greater degree of segregation Jews experienced within the Russian Empire. The Jewish community in the UK went from numbering approximately 60,000 to roughly 350,000 from 1880 to the Second World War, the majority of which settled in Britain’s industrial hubs. Manchester became home to the largest community of Jews in the country, outside of London. The community developed in the northern districts of the city centred in Cheetham. The Manchester Jewish Museum, still found in Cheetham today, was established in 1894 in the New Synagogue which had fallen into disuse and by the turn of the century Cheetham alone housed nine synagogues.
The rapid increase in the Jewish population in Britain and the greater presence the Jews had as a religious and ethnic minority within the UK coincided with the First World War. During the war, as anti-German sentiment spread, so did antisemitic violence in Britain, as Jews became associated with the Central Powers. From then on, British antisemitism became increasingly normalised. In an essay from 1945 in the Contemporary Jewish Record titled “Antisemitism in Britain”, George Orwell quotes several remarks he had heard in his day-to-day life, including those made by someone who was a “chartered accountant, intelligent, left-wing in an undirected way” who claimed, “these bloody Yids are all pro-German. They’d change sides tomorrow if the Nazis got here. I see a lot of them in my business. They admire Hitler at the bottom of their hearts. They’ll always suck up to anyone who kicks them.” Such discourse became normalised yet remained on the fringes of political discourse.
Someone who did admire the Nazis was Oswald Mosley. A British politician and a veteran of the First World War, Mosley began his political career as a Conservative Member of Parliament with a reputation as a powerful orator. He later joined the Labour Party, but Mosley grew disillusioned with mainstream politics’ commitments to laissez-faire economics; enamoured by the developments he saw in Italy under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, he founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF). The BUF adopted fascist elements of exhibiting militarism and expansionism, strong leadership, and ultranationalism, vouching to combat what they saw as degeneration of British society. They were susceptible to antisemitism, but not in a way that was linked to Germanophobia but rather to their Nazi inspiration. The BUF had their own paramilitary wing, known as the Stewards, who were often called the Blackshirts in reference to their black uniforms and the Blackshirts of Fascist Italy who inspired the Stewards’ uniforms. Mosley also married his second wife at the home of Joseph Goebbels in Berlin with Adolf Hitler attending as their guest of honour.
Oswald Mosley, despite being born in London, hailed from a wealthy Manchester family, who hold the title of baronets of Ancoats, an area in the north of Manchester. Mosley was himself styled as Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet. Mosley Street, which runs through the centre of Manchester is named for the family. The BUF’s connection to Manchester ran deeper than that, however. The earliest meetings of the group were held at Hyndman Hall in Salford and their earliest demonstrations were in Queen’s Park in Harpurhey. The BUF saw Manchester, with its large urban middle- and working-class population, as a city that was degenerating culturally due to the large immigrant population. This view of Manchester was a key target for the growth of their movement. So large were the BUF’s ambitions for Manchester that they established themselves at 17 Northumberland Street, Higher Broughton, Salford. This was to be the BUF’s main headquarters for northern England. In total, Greater Manchester saw eight BUF branches spread across various towns.
This spread was met with opposition from many on the left but also from the Jewish community of northern Manchester who found themselves so close to the BUF’s operations. The operations around Cheetham were met with confrontation from the Challenge Club which were often violent. The Challenge Club, a Young Communist League branch composed of Jews from Cheetham, led such opposition. Such opposition from Manchester’s Jewish community meant that for all the BUF’s attempts at establishing itself in Manchester, it never left the political fringes. As fascism in Italy and Germany fell, so did the BUF, but it would do so having failed to garner widespread support. Today, walking past 17 Northumberland Street in Salford, you are met not with a BUF headquarters, but a synagogue, a worthy outcome for a community that stood up to the BUF’s ideology of hate.