Behind the Headlines a Major Row on the Immigration Issue

A sizzling row has broken out between leading Jewish politicians following an attempt to involve the Jewish community in the latest arguments about immigration between the Labor government and the opposition Conservative Party.

The row was touched off by Sir Keith Joseph, the foremost Jew in the Conservative Party, who tried to enlist Jewish support for his party’s tough new line against colored immigration. Sir Keith, chief policy advisor to Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, the opposition leader, made his appeal to voters at 11ford North, a London constituency where a parliamentary election will be held this week, and where the Jewish vote is decisive.

Sir Keith cautioned British Jews against identifying themselves with present-day immigrants simply because their own families had been immigrants to Britain. He said that whereas the Jews had assimilated successfully by their own efforts, the present immigrants, from different cultures, were far too numerous to do so. The Jews, “who are just like everyone else only more so,” should therefore support the Conservatives on immigration, Sir Keith said. “We ignore this at our peril, “he warned.

The protests sparked off by Sir Keith’s appeal were on two levels–firstly, against the policies he was preaching, and secondly, against his attempt to enlist a distinct Jewish vote.

‘THE LOWEST OF THE LOW’

Ian Mikardo, MP, an outspoken left-wing Laborite, describing the attempt to involve Jewish electors in the anti-immigrant campaign as “the lowest of the low,” declared that “a Jew, appealing to Jews in Sir Keith’s terms, degrades the ethical traditions of the Jewish community.”

The great majority of the Jewish electors in IIford North were themselves the sons and daughters and grandchildren of immigrants who fled from Tsarist Russia and settled in the East End, he said. “The racists of those days attacked that Jewish community in the same terms, almost word for word, as today’s racists use about the Asian communities,” Mikardo said.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews issued the protest against Sir Keith’s bid for a distinctly Jewish vote. Greville Janner, MP, the Board’s vice-president, stressed that Jewish citizens in Britain belonged to all the main parties, and voted according to their consciences.

Other critics of Sir Keith, accusing him of inconsistency, recalled his own wariness of the Jewish vote at the election shortly after the Yom Kippur War. Sir Keith was then a member of the Conservative Cabinet which stopped vital ammunition from being shipped out to Israel. His public silence on the matter is believed to have cost him Jewish votes in his own constituency in Leeds, despite his attempt to concentrate on purely domestic matters and to attack the Labor Party’s Middle East record.

Despite the storm which Sir Keith has provoked, it is doubtful he has alienated the entire Jewish community. Observers here believe that the Conservative Party was deliberately using the IIford North by-election to test its attempt to win votes over immigration and that Sir Keith’s speech was thought out well in advance.

A SURVEY OF IIFORD’S JEWS

To find out the feelings of IIford’s Jews, the Conservative Party carried out a discreet inquiry there, conducted by Alfred Sherman, a rightwing Jewish journalist who works for a Conservative policy research institute.

Sherman is said to have discovered that IIford’s Jews were indeed, in Sir Keith’s words, like the rest of the British public “only more so” in their attitude towards notional political issues, including colored immigration.

Sherman’s findings are partly confirmed by evidence that IIford’s Jews had awakened very late to the anti-Semitic implications of the anti-immigrant National Front Movement. Although the Board of Deputies has waged a lengthy campaign to expose the Nazi inclinations of the Front’s leaders, Jewish Conservatives in IIford had turned a deaf ear to the Board’s campaign.

What woke up the IIford community at the last minute was the sudden prospect of street battles in their own neighborhood between the National Front and its militant left-wing opponents who were planning to assemble in IIford for another bloody confrontation. Local communal leaders sought the Board of Deputies’ help in opposing the National Front’s plan to hold a parade through their district, and Jewish taxi drivers threatened to counter the march with a cavalcade of cabs.

The last-minute decision of London’s police chief to ban a march Saturday, together with other marches throughout the capital for the next two months, was partly caused by fear that IIford Jewry, whatever its feelings about colored immigration, could not stomach the sight of racists marching past its front doors and would go into action.

Ironically, the Front’s march was banned under a law passed to prevent repetitions of the anti-Semitic marches Oswald Mosley organized through London’s East End in the 1930s. The attempt to make British Jews forget their own fight against racism may not be so easy after all.