Liverpool has a colourful history. We all know its wealth was largely founded on the Slave Trade and the dreadful poverty of the nineteenth century had been well documented. Sometimes, however, shocking events just disappear into the mists of time without a mention in the history of the city.
The events of August Bank Holiday, 1947 showed a side of Britain that we may well wish to hide. Britain occupied Palestine and Jewish guerrillas were at war with the colonial power. Two British army sergeants were captured and, in reprisal for Britain?s hanging of captured Jewish fighters, hanged. A great outcry followed, and in a wave of anti-semitism, Jewish communities in Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester were attacked. In Birkenhead, slaughterhouse workers had refused to process any more meat for Jewish consumption until the attacks on British soldiers in Palestine stopped. In Liverpool, crowds of angry young men gathered in Jewish areas and attacked shops and businesses.
My account is taken from Jerusalem Your Name is Liberty, by Walter Lever, a one-time Communist who lived in Manchester.
‘On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city centre which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer and, by the evening, the mob?s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.
Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.’
By the end of the weekend, anti-Jewish riots had taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool, with minor disturbances in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read: ?Hold your fire. These premises are British.? In Eccles, a former sergeant major named John Regan was fined ?15 for telling a crowd of 700: ?Hitler was right. Exterminate every Jew ? every man, woman and child. What are you afraid of? There?s only a handful of police.?
Arsonists in West Derby set fire to a wooden synagogue and the caretaker was attacked and badly injured when he opened the gates to the fire brigade; workers at Canada Dock in Liverpool returned from the holidays to find ?Death to all Jews? painted above the entrance. The photograph shows the burnt-out wooden synagogue in West Derby Cemetery. Just two years after British troops had liberated Bergen-Belsen, the language of the Third Reich had resurfaced, this time at home. Anger about what had happened in Palestine was one thing, but it seemed to have unleashed something far more vicious.
“Liverpool has a colourful history. We all know its wealth was largely founded on the Slave Trade..” I’m not sure that is at all accurate. Even at the height of the slave trade, less than 10% of outbound shipping was for Africa. Moreover, if you look at tonnages and slave ships/exports at the peak end of the slave period 1750-1807, they are generally accepted to be at a maximum of 33% of the total. Certainly, no historian has ever argued that they made up more than 50% at any point in time. Following the abolition of slavery in 1807, total exports from Liverpool increased – while most of the slave business went elsewhere, for example to Holland. Liverpool actually didn’t need this despicable trade to be wealthy, and while returns to investors on slave ships were generally around 20%, there were better margins to be made on more palatable cargoes. I would argue that Liverpool made a catastrophic error getting involved in the trade – but furthermore that it was actually unnecessary from a financial point of view.
In 1947 I was 21 but don’t remember any of it. Probably because I was otherwise “tied up” (Down a coalmine).
Having had many Jewish neighbours and friends over the years I’ve never understood anti-Semitism, but will admit I do not like what goes on in Israel, nor do I understand the attitude of the Jewish people there.
I grew up near Taggert Avenue in Childwall, where in the 1960s/early 1970s our chemist was Mr Cohen. The only story I ever heard about him was that anti-semites had once smashed the large front window of his shop. The story was told to me as if it was Blackshirts in the 1930s but I was hearing the story 30 or 40 years later, and dates can slip in these stories, so perhaps Mr Cohen’s was one of the shops targetted in 1947 – unless he was unfortunate enough to be targetted twice. He was a lovely man and great with us children – a smily face in a dark shop full of bottles – hello to any of his relatives who might be reading! Like you say Colin, a terrible episode in the city’s history.
On a parallel track, has anyone heard of the Fascist club in Button Street? This too would be 1930s/40s The vague story I’ve heard is that it was legitimate (I’m not sure when the Fascists in Britain were disbanded) and that there was a chain/network of these clubs across the country. Any thoughts?
This type of mob reaction was more common in the old days and happened everywhere. There are so many distractions in modern life that it’s difficult to stir people to take any kind of direct action influenced by something in the news. Britain has either become a more tolerant better informed society or less interested in the news. Perhaps a bit of both of these reflect society today.
Dave Fowler is absolutely correct. Furthermore, as far as I can ascertain, slaves were never actually imported into or from, the city, as it was part of the triangular trade, amply explained elsewhere.
To David Lewis I would say that I lived in a cul-de-sac off the lower part of Dunbabin Road and knew the Taggart Ave area well, (girl friends etc!). I first experienced the horror of Marmite sandwiches at a kids party (I was 9) about 1935 at a house not far from Taggart Ave..
As an admire of the Polish race, I am sad to say that that is a country where I have experienced surprising anti-Semitism amongst the older generation..
I ccame to this site because I was trying to verify my memory of a Mr. Cohen’s shop at the top to Tunnel Road near Smithdown Road having the windows put in during the 1947 riots. Maybe my memory is faulty, but for sure I didn’t know Taggart Avenue existed in those days.
I remember clearly the Jewish shops in Smithtown Road being attacked in 1947.
Windows smashed,looting taking place.
Certainly Three or four shops were attacked near the junction of Smithtown Road and Ullet Road
I also remember the response from some of the Jewish community.
Notices in the shop windows saying, Thank you, 6 years in the British Army is this the thanks we receive.
I would LOVE to track down this John Regan…so I can kill him SLOWLY. From about 1974, I knew a Shirley Shackman and her three kids through my mum. They were a lovely bunch of people and we were nearly always going down to Epping Grove to visit them. I remember being taken to the kosher butchers at the top of Dunbabin Road by Shirley and I regarded Adam, Nina & Keith as siblings. Personally, I would love to KILL anyone who was involved in the anti-Jewish riots of 1965 because Jews are nice people (well, except for that liar of a coroner who said that the Hillsborough 95 were all dead at 3:15) – I’d even go to a synagogue only that I can’t understand Hebrew.
What many people don’t know (and take note of this, all hard-line muzzers) is that Judaism was the basis of Islam. Anyway, Shalom.