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Bread, Brotherhood and the Ballot Box:

The life and times of Solomon Lever (1895 – 1959), union

leader and Mayor of Hackney

Journey of a great-nephew’s research into the life of the late Solomon Lever

The story and images brought together on this website sets out the great-nephew’s

research into the public and personal life of the late Solomon Lever (1895 - 1959), whose

life was tragically cut short in his early sixties.

“Uncle Solly” – as he was known in my family – was a Jewish immigrant to London who

rose to political and community leadership in the first half of the 20th century. He

became general secretary of one of the smallest trades unions and had his plenary

addresses at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) broadcast to the nation. He also became

Mayor of Hackney.

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I grew up knowing of his prominent role through my father (Charles Lever), who told me

his memories of going to the cinema as a child with Grandpa Manny and seeing “Uncle

Solly” on the newsreels denouncing the re-armament of Germany from the TUC podium.

Years later, studying for my Master’s degree in a dusty corner of a social science library

in Oxford, I found a berth next to the TUC annals. After five months, I had an epiphany

and looked up my surname in the index. Hey presto, two of his Congress speeches were

found in minutes and photocopied for my family.

Further inspiration came from stumbling across the wonderful, mayoral portraits on the

four corridors surrounding the old council chamber in Hackney Town Hall. The Jewish,

black and Asian, and male and female, faces surely form the most diverse line up of

mayors in Britain. And there among them is “Uncle Solly”, captured in oils.

This article was originally written as an essay for Birkbeck College’s Extra-Mural

Certificate in the History of London (2008). Following further research, I wrote ‘Bread,

Brotherhood and the Ballot Box’ as two articles in issues 15 and 16 of The Cable (2011).

This is the superb journal of the Jewish East End Celebration Society

There is more research that could be done, for example if I could track down the archives

of The Worker’s Circle and the committee papers of Hackney Council, as well as delving

into papers held in bodies such as Toynbee Hall and the Whitechapel Gallery.

Meanwhile, this puts what I have found out so far into the broader social, cultural and

political currents of the Jewish East End, as well as in the context of national politics and

international events from the mid-19th

to mid-20th

centuries.

You can download and read as a full paper, or follow the story chapter-by-chapter. The

last chapter lists all the references, which are cited in brackets in each chapter.

In the spirit of web publishing, any corrections or new information will be gratefully

received, and acknowledged and incorporated on this website.

My particular thanks are due to the following:

My late father, Charles Lever, to which this research is dedicated

My aunt, Greta Gitlin, who provided important corrections and encouragement, as did

my cousin, Gerald Lever, via airmail from Melbourne

Martin Jacobs, my cousin, for the postings he made on JewishGen KehilaLinks

Andy James, my friend and intrepid genealogist who tracked down Census data

Jennifer Rockliff in the Information Service at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and

Christine Coates, Librarian of the TUC Collections (in London Metropolitan

University) for helping me find online union related material.

David Walker of the Jewish East End Celebration Society (JEECS), who greatly

improved the articles when editing for publication in The Cable, and who forwarded

me most of the scanned images previously used.

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Finally, special thanks to my brother, Dave Shirman, for building this website.

Jason Lever,

Brighton, England

November 2013.

Chapter 1 - Introducing Solomon Lever and his life trajectory: ‘Take one Jew

and immediately you have an opposition party’ (ref: Kops).

This quotation is through the lens of one of the Jewish East End’s foremost, second

generation writers, Bernard Kops. It is a pithy observation of its population’s political

temperament, at the “ballot box” and on the streets, in the closing decades of the

nineteenth and through to the first quarter of the twentieth centuries.

Describing the Jewish East End, a recent correspondent to The Cable magazine set out

that although ‘in the main a land of impecunious people, it was rich in culture, rife with

activity and pervasive of deep friendship and mutual aid’ (ref: Tarmon).

These aspects of ‘mutual aid’ and ‘rife with activity’ resonate well with the ‘Bread’,

‘Brotherhood’ and “Ballot Box’ themes of the life of this author’s great-uncle, Solomon

Lever.

As well, the importance of ‘culture’ to first and second generation Jewish immigrants

harked back to the “Yiddishism” of their homelands. As the ties of religion became more

relaxed, it supported, too, a more secular and intellectual advancement of mind – as

individuals – and economic and social progression – as a political movement and

community.

The latter qualities are what mostly concern us here as we consider the life trajectory of a

Jewish immigrant to the East End of London in occupational (‘Bread’), mutual support

(‘Brotherhood’) and political (‘Ballot Box’) terms – and his contribution to Jewish and

non-Jewish East End life.

How typical was Solomon Lever, with his high achieving communal and political

leadership roles?

Chapter 2 - The Jewish East End: First port of call of the Lever family

The term “East End” came into regular usage at the time of the great wave of Jewish

immigration into this central-eastern area of the capital city from the 1880s. References

can be found as early as 1861, such as in Henry Mayhew’s “London” (ref: Kalman).

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In William Booth’s magisterial “Life and Labour of the People of London” studies of the

1880s, the boroughs of Bethnal Green, Stepney, Poplar and Shoreditch were the East

End.

By the time of its updating forty years later, Hackney and Stoke Newington, and also

East and West Ham, Barking, Leyton, Walthamstow and Tottenham, were included in

this wider definition in the “New Survey of London Life and Labour” (ref: Lipman).

A Toynbee Hall survey by its trustees in 1899 showed a central core of about three-

quarters of a mile in which nearly all streets had at least 50% – and about a quarter of

them 95% or more – Jewish residents (ref: Lipman). A decade earlier, Booth/Llewelyn

Smith survey research had found that Bethnal Green, Stepney and Poplar were three of

the five poorest areas of inner working-class London in 1889 (ref: Weightman &

Humphries).

The exact boundaries of the Jewish East End have been contended, especially given

Jewish out-migration into the metropolitan London areas of Dalston, Stoke Newington,

Hackney, Clapton and Stamford Hill in the first third of the twentieth century, before

subsequent moves into suburban London either side of the Second World War.

Chapter 3 - A family history of Solomon Lever: Arriving in the East End as a

small boy.

(Note: not unusually at the time, there are inconsistencies of spelling of the pre-Lever

surname, Levitsky, Levetsky and Lavatsky.)

The first, main population shift of Jews from the original East End in a north-easterly

direction was the case with “Uncle Solly”, who lived at 49 Victoria Park, Hackney,

London E9.

Solomon’s family originated in the village of Narifka (or Narewka) near the town of

Byelstok (Bialystok), which had various names owing to changing borders over the

centuries. It had been in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, then the Kingdom of

Prussia, part of the Russian Empire, within the Soviet Union and now it is in Poland. At

the end of the nineteenth century, 42,000 of its 66,000 population was Jewish.

In the wake of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, a series of laws expelled many

Jewish communities in Russia. An ever-growing list of economic prohibitions also bore

down heavily on Jews. Brutal pogroms took place at the turn of the century, with the

result that some 100,000 Russian and Polish Jews emigrated to Britain between 1881-

1905 (Ref: Brook) – and, among them, was Solomon following the piecemeal emigration

of his family. The Białystok pogrom occurred between 14–16 June 1906, with between

81 and 88 people killed and about 80 people wounded

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82ystok_pogrom)

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His uncle, Henry, was the first member of the Lever family to arrive in England. He later

took the pioneer Zionist route to Palestine in the 1920s. Solomon’s father, Nachman

(Nathan) came to England in about 1899. One of Nathan’s sisters, Elena (Esther)

followed the course of two of her older brothers in emigrating to London in 1901 aged

16. She later emigrated to Australia. There were twelve siblings in all.

Solomon’s grandparents, Yossel (Joseph) and Sara (Sarah) Levitsky emigrated to

England in 1908 with the help of Esther, bringing their youngest child, Jenny. Jenny

Clive went on to become a pioneering businesswoman in launderettes.

The grandparents made “aliyah” in 1913, leaving London for Palestine. Joseph died on

20 January 1916 during the siege of Jerusalem and Sarah on 12 June 1919. Genealogical

research takes back the ancestry of Sara Levitsky (née Varon) four generations via her

father, Abraham Tzvi Varon (ref: Jacobs).

English Census records chronicles a Nathan Levetsky as a boarder in Bethnal Green

South aged 28 in 1901, adding to the 95,425 Russian and Poles recorded in that census,

which meant Russian and Polish Jews (ref: Fishman, 1979).

Nathan’s sons – Solomon (b. 1895), Harris (Harry) (b. 1897) and Morris (Moishe) (b.

1901) – joined their father either side of his re-marriage after the death of his first wife,

Leah. There is a marriage record for Nathan Lavetsky and Rachel Rosenbloom in 1905 in

the St George in the East district of the East End.

In the 1911 Census, Nathan’s sons Solomon, Harris and Morris are recorded as

naturalised Russians and Nathan, Solomon and Harris give their occupations as cabinet

makers of bedroom suites. Solomon’s step-sister, Fanny (b. 1907) and step-brothers,

Hyman (Hymie) (b. 1909) and Emanuel (Manny) (b. 1910) – the author’s grandfather –

are also recorded. Joseph (Joe) (b. 1919), the youngest step-brother who was not on this

Census list, soon came along to make up the whole family.

On Manny’s birth certificate, less than a year earlier, the family is recorded as living at 28

North Place, Mile End; by the Census date, they are living a stone’s throw away from the

famous Columbia Road flower market in Bethnal Green (at 107 Virginia Road).

A Deed of Poll, dated 20 August 1923, which is in the family shows the official changing

of the family surname from ‘Lavatsky’ to ‘Lever’. Nathan and his ‘heirs and issues’,

were living then at 70 Morning Lane, Mare Street, and he was now a ‘grocer and

provision dealer’.

Harry became a very anglicised, women’s clothing representative across England, while

“Mad Moishe” disappeared from the family fold and was last seen heading towards – and

never returning from – Dagenham. Harry’s claim to fame was that his wife ran off with

an Indian maharajah, an event that made the newspapers.

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But Solomon’s high profile in the Jewish and wider community evolved through ‘Bread,

Brotherhood and the Ballot Box’.

Chapter 4 - A Jewish East End education for Solomon: A JFS boy

Most Jewish children had to be accommodated in schools run by the local school boards

or by Christian denominations, often in a hostile climate (ref: Brook; Osborne). Yet,

Solomon was among approximately 6,000 Jewish pupils educated in six Jewish schools,

in his case the Jews’ Free School (JFS). This was before JFS followed its Jewish families

out of the East End to north-west London, first to Camden and later to Kingsbury.

Solomon’s schooling probably ended at 14, though with English not the main language at

home, he may have taken advantage of the Russo-Jewish Committee’s free adult classes

in English. These were described by the Daily Chronicle in 1908 as ‘ghetto evening

schools, the schools where the adult Russian and German Jews… clutch at their last hope

of knowledge’ (ref: Black G).

What is certain is that he was essentially self-taught through his teens and twenties while

he took up the family trade of cabinet-making. This probably included the “University of

the Ghetto”, as the reading room of the Whitechapel Public Library and Free Art Gallery

(1892) was known, because of the way Jewish working people spent time there educating

themselves.

The Library even employed Yiddish speaking assistants in the early 1900s (ref: Nurse),

though during the decade before its closure in 2005, its shelves ‘groaned with titles in

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Bengali, Urdu, Gujarati and Somali’ (ref: Hall), displacing the preponderance of the

Yiddish volumes of Solomon’s time.

Chapter 5 - Joining East End cultural and communal associations:

Involvement in Toynbee Hall and The Workers’ Circle

Between 1870 and 1914, secularisation and assimilation in the Jewish East End meant the

synagogue gradually lost the undisputed place it had occupied in the Russian Pale of

Settlement as ‘the hub of communal and cultural life’ (ref: Gartner).

The great novelist, Israel Zangwill, in “Children of the Ghetto” (1892), could still

describe the East End synagogue as ‘their salon and their lecture hall. It supplied them

not only with their religion, but their art and letters, their politics and their public

amusements’.

However, by the 1930s, ‘many of the religious traditions and observances which the

immigrants had brought with them had lapsed’ (ref: Fishman, 1979). Instead, a

significant minority – including Solomon – were finding space to pursue educational,

political and cultural activities through institutions such as Toynbee Hall and the

Workers’ Circle.

Settlements like Toynbee Hall were established with substantial Jewish immigrant

participation in their educational and cultural activities (ref: Gartner). James Mallon CH

was a long-serving Warden (1919 to 1954) and he headed the Council of Citizens of East

London which united a number of anti-fascist groups (ref: Sokoloff). Solomon Lever was

likely to have been involved in various activities at Toynbee Hall, which founded the

Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1901. Solomon later became a Trustee of the Galley.

Pre-emigration, one prominent response of eastern European Jews to ‘increasing

securalisation and modernisation [was] Yiddishism, the ethnic and cultural programmes

of the Marxist Jewish Bund’ – in full, the General Jewish Labour Alliance in Russia,

Poland and Lithuania! (ref: Srebnik). Hence the founding in London’s East End of the

Workers’ Circle (Der Arbeitering) – and often referred to just as “The Circle” – in Alie

Street by Jewish immigrant workmen. It was different to other mutual aid organisations

in being a workers’ organisation – as it described itself, ‘an order of workers for workers,

and for progressive thought’ (Ref: Rocker).

By 1921 there were over 1,000 members, and nearly 3,000 by 1935. Charles Poulsen, in

“Scenes from a Stepney Youth”, described it as a ‘social and educational centre [plus

friendly society]… [for] tailors, pressers, machinists, cabinetmakers – all the gamut of

local trades’ (ref: Poulsen). An interviewee in “Our East End” recalls that each room in

the big house ‘was a different union or different organisation’ (ref: Dudgeon).

Active Workers’ Circle members including Solomon Lever are cited among the

participants in the opening of a folk house on Adler Street in 1943 by the Association of

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Jewish Writers and Journalists (ref: Srebnik). Solomon was in Branch One and on the

central Management Committee.

Chapter 6 - Solomon as a cabinet maker: The family and a Jewish trade

In the early and mid-Victorian periods, Jews were closely associated with street trades

such as selling sponges and spectacles, and as proprietors of “swag-shops”, which sold a

wide array of goods including braces, garters, rubies and time-pieces (ref: Mayhew).

Yet Jewish immigrants in the last quarter of the 19th

century tended to continue in

familiar artisan trades from the “old country”, such as tailoring. Orthodox Jewish

observance prevented employment on a Saturday at a time when the six-day working

week was the norm. Hence the attraction for many of having a Jewish employer. This

was compounded by anti-alien prejudice of mainstay East End industries such as in the

docks.

This helps explain the pattern of occupations recorded at the Poor Jews’ Temporary

Shelter: 29 per cent made garments, 23 per cent were in trade and commerce, 9 per cent

made boots and shoes and 7 per cent described themselves as carpenters (1895-96 to

1907-08). Among the many remaining trades was baking (ref: Gartner).

Many arrived with cabinet-making skills in every field of domestic furniture, from

general carpenters to specialist woodturners, carvers and marquetry workers (ref: Black

G). Jerry White records that cabinet making was the third highest employment type in the

Jewish residential population of the Rothschild Buildings in 1900 (ref: White, 2003).

The growth of a middle class and of more prosperous artisans in the Victorian period

created a demand for cheaper furniture. This was the main market for the East End

furniture trade, centred on Curtain Road but soon spreading out along Bethnal Green

Road and Hackney Road (ref: Kirkham).

While some picked up their first knowledge of timber and tools in cabinet making classes

at school, in Solomon’s case his father had been an apprentice to the craftsman who laid a

new floor of St. Petersburg Cathedral.

Solomon followed this trade in the specific area of bedroom suites with his father and

brother after he left school.

Chapter 7 – From cabinet maker to trade union general secretary: The battle

to establish Jewish unions

When Solomon entered the world of work in the late 1910s, overcrowding and chronic

poverty were increasing in the East End. Cut-throat competition in cabinet making made

it a precarious living, with long hours and low wages.

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Jewish immigrants arrived into a system in which “native” tailors and shoe-makers, in

particular, had already begun to toil within ‘the full rigours of the sweating system’.

Sweatshop conditions of 13-hour working days were fuelled by starvation wages. This

also applied ‘to a lesser extent in cabinet-making and baking’ (ref: Jones).

Distinctly Jewish unions began to form in some sectors, for example the short-lived

Hebrew Cabinet Makers Union. With the majority of cabinet making workshops run by a

master with maybe four to eight men under him, it was not a trade conducive to

collectivism (ref: Gartner; White).

In 1892, only about 1,200 of some 30,000 immigrant Jewish workers were members of

Jewish trades unions in London (ref: Alderman). Jewish unions ‘rose and fell rapidly,

often vanishing without a trace’ in the first decade of the twentieth century (ref:

Bermant). With fairly rapid assimilation into the English working-classes, the need for

separate Jewish unions was questioned.

According to Rudolf Rocker, the Jewish trade unions took steps to build contacts with the

general trades union movement in the country, becoming active in major disputes and

strikes. Yet, they tried to ‘provide for the cultural needs of the Jewish workers’ (Ref:

Rocker).

There was greater stability in smaller trades such as baking (ref: Gartner). Some time

between 1903 and 1909 the London Jewish Bakers Union was formed, evolving from

meetings of refugee bakers held in the Jewish pub in Black Lion Yard and other East End

pubs. It affiliated to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in 1920 (ref: Marsh & Smethurst).

Solomon Lever, one time cabinet maker, was to be its general secretary for over half its

60-year history.

Chapter 8 – Rise of the London Jewish Bakers Union: Jewish baking in the

East End and their American counterparts

In his “Jewish Landlords, Jewish Tenants”, Jerry White argues that ‘class divisions

fractured East End Jewry’ during a period of local union and political radicalism at the

turn of the century. He cites masters being assaulted by striking bakery workers. During

the 1912 tailors’ strike, the London Jewish Bakers Union, and the cigarette makers,

provided free supplies! (ref: White, 1981; Fishman, 1981).

Each of the London Jewish Bakers Union’s loaves of rye and cholla breads came to

display a little label proudly inscribed “Baked by Union Labour” – interestingly not

Jewish Union Labour.

This came about through a small strike called by the union to improve the working

conditions of its member bakers. They called for a trade union label on the bread so that

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the public could see that it originated in a bakery that observed trade union conditions.

After a few weeks, they won this concession after the Jewish women of the East End

refused to take any loaves offered in bakers’ shops or grocery stores that had no such

label! (ref: Rocker).

Echoing their London counterparts, a small square or circle of paper pasted on their

baked goods were designed by the New York City Local 31’s Journeymen Bakers’ and

Confectioners’ International to show customers that they were made by union members

(ref: Balinska).

The banner of the London Jewish Bakers Union has pride of place in the foyer of The

Jewish Museum in Camden Town, London, NW1.

As well as ‘Buy Bread with the Union Label’, it proclaims ‘Unity is Strength’, ‘Strong

Loyalty – Right and Truth’ and ‘Workers of the World Unite’.

The United Ladies’ Tailoring Trade Union (of Jewish workers) similarly had the slogan

of ‘For a Socialist Commonwealth, Toiling Tailors True Together’ (ref: Freedland).

Chapter 9 – Dealing with the challenges of a declining baking industry:

Tougher market conditions from the 1920s

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Household consumption of bread had fallen steadily as families became smaller and

alternative foods cheaper. The “New Survey of London Life and Labour” (1933) by the

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) concluded that the ‘small

Jewish section of the industry’ had particular difficulties. The Jewish baker had longer

hours, including unpopular night work, which contributed to labour shortages.

Slipping from their dry economic analysis, these LSE researchers described how the

characteristic cholla was a ‘peculiarly good quality bread baked in special

patterns…[which] demands a higher degree of skill than the ordinary English loaf’and a

longer baking time.

At the same time, assimilation and population spread across London added to the decline

of the Jewish baking industry. In 1933 there were just 50 Jewish master bakers (members

of the Jewish Master Bakers Protection Society) and about 90 skilled operatives

(organised in the London Jewish Bakers Union). The Union is described as ‘a union

small but powerful in the sense that nearly every Jewish baker belongs to it’ (ref: LSE).

Forty years earlier, in the 1890s, the London Jewish Master Bakers Protection Society

acted to defend themselves in the courts against the terms of the 17th century Bread Act.

This legislation prohibited baking on Sundays. The Society won the case on the grounds

that later Factory and Workshop Acts allowed Jews who did not work on a Saturday

some limited Sunday working rights (ref: Black E).

The socialist credentials of the London Jewish Bakers Union was illustrated by the

unique system of “jobbing” (or called the “credential system”). As a response to the

economic depression, instead of paying unemployment benefit like other unions, it

required each member to stay away from work at regular intervals (such as a day a

month) with his place taken by an unemployed member at the same, regular rates (ref:

LSE).

In an American parallel, part of the resolution of the 1909 bakers’ strike in New York on

the Lower East Side was that bosses allowed their workers to give one night’s work to

unemployed bakers (ref: Balinska).

Chapter 10 – Solomon’s journey to Jewish trade unionism: a socialist path

In his shift from cabinet maker to trades union leader in baking (and later political

leadership), he epitomised Henry Mayhew’s characterisation that ‘the artisans are almost

to a man red-hot politicians’ (‘London Labour and the London Poor’, vol III, 1861) (ref:

Mayhew).

Solomon’s shift from cabinet making to union officialdom may also have been related to

the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The relative youthfulness of the Jewish

population meant that some 14 per cent of British Jews served in the armed forces

compared with 11.5 per cent of the British population generally.

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Solomon was not conscripted into active service though. In common with many East End

furniture makers, his skills were used in aircraft manufacture – as wood was the basic

material for aircraft of the time – serving in the Royal Flying Corps (ref: Black G;

Kirkham).

We have already seen in earlier sections on the origins of the London Jewish Bakers

Union some of the challenges to the development of trades unionism among

predominantly Jewish trades, particularly tailoring and baking.

Solomon Lever’s path in unionism – and later as a prominent Labour Party councillor and

Mayor of Hackney – was likely influenced by socialists providing the early leadership of

Jewish trade unionism. The 19th century Jewish immigrants brought with them the

socialism of the Pale of Settlement and can be said to have more or less introduced trades

unionism – and Zionism – to British Jewry (ref: Alderman, 1983).

A Hebrew Socialist Union was formed in 1876, which ‘acted first as an educative force

to train future political leaders, and secondly as an economic force to bring about Trade

Union consciousness’. Eight years later came a Society of Jewish Socialists, which

spawned an International Workers’ Educational Club (Fishman, 1981; Alderman, 1983).

Yet, by the onset of the First World War there could be little point in ‘speaking of a

Jewish socialist movement in England independent of Jewish trade unionism’ (Gartner).

For Jewish immigrants, socialism was largely taken up in Britain ‘through an industrial

[ie trade union] rather than an ideological [ie revolutionary] medium’ (Alderman, 1983).

Chapter 11 – Interlude of anarchism’s appeal to East End Jews: its role in

unionising Jewish tailors, bakers and cabinet-makers

Anarchism had a short but significant influence on Jewish political and trades union life,

and anarchists played a notable part in the struggle to unionise Jewish trades (ref:

Fishman, 1981) including two of those relevant to Solomon Lever.

This occurred during the transition between Jewish support for socialism and the

municipal reformism of the pre-Second World War Labour Party that was taken up by

Solomon Lever.

For one of its leading thinkers and activists of the time, ‘the fact is that all the Jewish

trade unions in the East End, without exception, were started by the initiative of the

Jewish anarchists... out of the[ir] ceaseless educational work’ (Ref: Rocker). This is

supported by others, in that ‘the small band of Jewish social-democrats and anarchists in

England found that they were in demand… as trade-union managers’ (ref: Alderman,

1983).

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Anarchists were involved in the 1906 tailors’ strike, for example, which resulted in the

working day being reduced to ten and a half hours. In the wake of the 1912 strike, shorter

hours, improved sanitary conditions and union recognition were won with mutual

anarchist and union support (ref: Glinert).

Anarchists founded the Jubilee Club, in Jubilee Street, hosting lectures on art and music

by Jewish intellectuals and pauper scholars, translating Tolstoy and Chekhov into

Yiddish and organising tours of of the British Museum.

Mass meetings of the Federation of Jewish Anarchists took place in the Great Assembly

Hall in Mile End and in the Wonderland in Whitechapel, attended by thousands of

people. The strapline of its Journal, the Arbeter Fraint, set out that it was ‘the organ of

the Federation of Yiddish-Speaking Anarchist Groups of Great Britain and Paris’ ((Ref:

Rocker). Its Jewish roots were also reflected in its motto, at the top of the front page, by

Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be? And if not now, when?” (Ref: Rocker)

Nevertheless, the heyday of anarchism was brief in the radical currents of East End

political life. It stood square against traditional Jewish identity, by rejecting all forms of

authority – whether the state, the church/synagogue or the family. Unsuprisingly, this

limited its popular appeal amongst Jewish East Enders.

In his 1956 autobiographical account in of his days as a leading protagonist of anarchism

in the East End, Rudolf Rocker argues that ‘the libertarian movement among Jewish

workers in Britain not because its forces were spent.... fell a victim of the First World

War, when it had reached its peak’ (Ref: Rocker). In the second year of the war (1915),

the printing press of the Arbeter Fraint was closed by the government.

Soon a different left-wing ideology took hold – communism. A significant number of

East End Jews joined the Communist Party, attracted by the Russian Revolution. At the

same time, many also joined trades unions.

In Bill Fishman’s political eulogy, by the 1920s anarchists were ‘already an

anachronism, shadowy ghosts of another era’– and, post-war, never recovered its

adherents faced with ‘the triple pull of Zionism, Orthodoxy and Communism’ (Fishman,

1979).

Chapter 12 – Solomon Lever finds his home in the Labour Party: the cause of

municipal socialism

While many Jewish East End socialists became Communists in the 1920s and 1930s,

many also found their way into the Labour party and to the cause of municipal socialism.

One was Solomon Lever, staunch in his Labour party allegiance as a union leader from

the late 1920s and Hackney councillor from 1945, a period when Labour was struggling

to establish a firm East End support base in areas with significant Jewish populations.

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Labour’s difficulty in attracting Jewish East-Enders has been attributed to the persistence

of casual labour and workshop production, which meant the “factory effect” that

propelled people toward voting Labour was missing. This was also a time when ‘many

socialists flirted with, or joined, the Communist Party of Great Britain’ in the 1920s and

1930s (Beech & Hickson).

A convincing case is also made, notably by Marc Brodie in ‘The Politics of the Poor: The

East End of London 1885-1914’, that the ‘“personal” element…[was the] major

overriding influence on the politics of the working class in the East End’, including on

Jewish political allegiances (Brodie).

This “personal” element can be demonstrated by looking at Jewish voting patterns in East

End constituencies from the mid-19th

century.

Chapter 13 – The Liberal and Conservative parties: their traditional claims

to Jewish votes

Anglo-Jewry had long-standing Liberal leanings following that party’s championing of

Jewish political emancipation in the 1840s and 1850s (ref: Brodie). This compared

favourably to ‘the strength of Conservative hostility to emancipation’ (ref: Alderman,

1983). Five Jews were adopted as candidates to be Members of Parliament (MPs) in the

1840s and all Jewish MPs of this period were Liberals.

Nevertheless, East End Jews’ political allegiances continued to fluctuate between the two

main parties well into the twentieth century. The one overwhelmingly Jewish ward in

Stepney constituency in the 1900s was regarded as ‘a “hotbed of Toryism”’ and the free

trade position of the Liberals also limited Jewish support (ref: Brodie). Cabinet-makers

were told by their masters to vote Conservative because if they voted Liberal the market

would be flooded with cheap furniture from abroad (ref: Samuel). Yet, ‘the Conservatives

failed to win a Jewish following in the East End’ (ref: Srebnik).

‘The endurance of Liberal loyalties among, at least, working-class London Jews’ owed

much to Whitechapel’s Liberal MP at the end of the 19th century, Sir Samuel Montagu,

Yiddish-speaking doyen of the Anglo–Jewish establishment. His legacy of good works

included founding the Federation of Synagogues, which catered for the poor immigrant

community of the East End – including the Lever family – by unifying a plethora of tiny

“shtiebel” communities, based on Central and Eastern European home towns (ref:

Alderman, 1983).

Half a century after Liberal Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, introduced a Jewish

Disabilities Bill in 1848, Liberal Party Jewish support still held up. This was aided by the

restrictive measures of the Aliens Act (1905) brought in by the Conservative government

(ref: Srebnik).

15

The Liberals won a landslide election in 1906 and Herbert Samuel – a member of a

distinguished Anglo-Jewish political family, who had campaigned against the measure in

opposition – became one of the Ministers administering the new law limiting the numbers

of East European Jews entering the country. However, the Liberals may have gained

some credit when, following the 1905 (abortive) Russian Revolution, the Home Secretary

instructed Immigration Boards to give immigrants seeking asylum on religious or

political grounds “the benefit of the doubt” (Glover).

Yet, for someone of Solomon Lever’s generation and background, the established

institutions of Anglo-Jewry and their Liberal leanings likely held little sway. Sir Samuel

died in 1911, and by the time Solomon Lever was making his way in the world as a

cabinet maker in the 1920s the influence of the old Anglo-Jewish establishment had

declined.

Chapter 14 – The Labour Party consolidates its Jewish votes: Solomon enters

union leadership

Labour’s entry into the coalition government in 1915 made the party more mainstream.

The extended franchise in 1918 brought it more working-class (including Jewish) voters

and growing post-war economic and social pressures helped create demands for social

reform, all in the Labour Party’s favour (ref: Alderman 1983; Weightman and

Humphries).

During the First World War, socialists had already gained appeal by opposing the

government’s “conscription or deportation” policy, which had led to anti-Jewish riots in

London and Leeds.

By the mid-1930s, Labour was the normal political home of the mass of working-class

Jews as well as many middle-class Jews. Increasing prosperity in the clothing and the

boot and shoe trades created the population shift of Jews from the East End to Hackney,

Stamford Hill, Walthamstow, Bow and Leyton, yet many remained Labour supporters

(ref: Alderman 1983 and 1981).

By the end of the 1920s, Solomon Lever was grappling with the finances of the London

Jewish Bakers Union. Michael Pruth (or Prooth), general secretary, had been deported to

Russia after riding a white horse in a demonstration during the general strike in 1926. His

successor, L. Brenner, was convicted of misappropriating funds. H. Wilson was jailed for

forgery.

From 1929, under Solomon Lever’s stewardship, ‘the administration of the union as a

whole was put in order’ and he remained at its helm for three decades (ref: Wayne).

Chapter 15 – The appeal of East End councils’ social reform: influencing

Solomon to remain within the Labour fold

16

Labour came to dominate many east London councils. The 1919 London County Council

(LCC) elections brought strong Labour gains in Hackney, Bethnal Green and Poplar on

the back of pledges to improve welfare services and living standards. This included

introducing free school milk, abolished fifty years later for the over-sevens by a

Conservative Education Secretary, the late Lady (Margaret) Thatcher.

When Solomon Lever was growing up an East End housing crisis saw rents rise sharply.

Despite the LCC, but not the boroughs, undertaking some slum clearance, consolidation

prevailed at its headquarters at County Hall and working-class, Jewish councillors like

Solomon Lever demanded action on housing, inadequate air raid precautions and

countering fascism (ref: Weightman and Humphries).

There were some high-profile successes, notably what became known as “Poplarism”

under the leadership of George Lansbury in Poplar Council. The pioneering provision of

services included baths, free libraries and paying its employees (of both sexes) a

minimum wage. From 1932, Mile End Municipal Baths offered a first-class swimming

pool, first and second-class slipper baths and Turkish and Russian baths (ref: Weightman

and Humphries; Taylor).

Chapter 16 – The rise and fall of communist support among Jews: the effect

of the Second World War

In spite of social reform by the LCC and municipal socialism by East End boroughs,

there was still a constituency for the Communist Party of Great Britain among Jewish

voters. This was not least because of 15 to 20 per cent unemployment in Stepney and

Poplar in the 1930s. This enabled Stepney Communist Party ‘to win over sections and

organisations within the Jewish community’ (ref: Weightman and Humphries; Srebnik).

The party’s anti-fascist credentials added to its support, and it remained attractive to

Jewish East-Enders through to the Second World War. As the late Emanuel Litvinoff

recorded in ‘Journey Through a Small Planet’, he drifted into communism when he was

about eleven and attended pioneer meetings where he was told that there was no anti-

Semitism in the Soviet Union and that ‘after the Revolution there would be no Jews left,

only workers’ (ref: Litvinoff).

In relation to fighting fascism in the East End, some argue that the Association of Jewish

Friendly Societies was as active as the Communist Party in the grassroots fight against

the British Union of Fascists, and it was the dockers – and not the Communist Party –

who had voluntarily taken on the task of defending Cable Street in 1936.

For others, while the Labour Party advised opponents of Mosley and his Blackshirts to

stay at home, it was the Communist Party that adopted a policy of direct opposition (ref:

Jewish East End 1840-1930).

17

The London Jewish Bakers Union was notable among the organisations affiliated to the

Jewish People’s Council Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism. At a major fundraising

bazaar in December 1927, Jewish bakers provided food for the 3,360 people attracted

over eight evenings (ref: Rosenberg).

The Communist Party remained attractive to Jewish East-Enders right up until the start of

World War Two, still being seen as a force for ‘self-defence’ by its willingness ‘to fight

Fascism and anti-Semitism’. Indeed, the Communist candidate in Mile End, Phil Piratin,

was elected in the 1945 general election on a wave of post-war euphoria, with the help, it

is estimated, of ‘old-fashioned latkes-and-strudel Jewish campaigning’ gaining at least

2,500 Jewish votes, about half his total (ref: Freedland; Alderman 1981, 1983).

Yet it lost significant Jewish support when their leader, Issie Panner, pronounced during

the War that Zionism conflicted with the rich, revolutionary tradition of Jewish history

admired by Marx and Lenin. At the same time, revelations were emerging about the

persecution of Russian Jews (ref: Srebnik).

Chapter 17 – Surging Labourism after the war: Solomon’s election as a

Hackney councillor

18

Meanwhile, within the Labour movement, Solomon Lever pursued a path between the

centre ground of Herbert Morrison and Hugh Dalton (nationally) and radical innovation

(locally).

At the time of taking up the reins as general secretary of the London Jewish Bakers

Union, he would have seen four Jewish Labour MPs returned in the 1935 general

election. In 1945, most of the 34 Jewish Labour candidates were elected, whereas all five

Jewish Conservative and 16 Jewish Liberal candidates lost (ref: Alderman 1983).

East End constituencies with large Jewish populations, including Bethnal Green and

Stepney, returned Labour MPs and in Hackney, Solomon Lever was elected a Labour

councillor.

He served on a wide range of committees from 1945 to 1956. He was chairman of the

Civil Defence committee and vice-chairman of Public Libraries, and was elected Mayor

of Hackney by his peers in 1951/52.

Chapter 18 – The Labour Party’s support for Zionism: Poale Zion cements

Solomon Lever’s affiliation

Solomon Lever had strong Zionist affinities – his grandfather and uncle had both gone to

Palestine – and he was critical of the Labour Government elected in 1945 because after

its early backing for Zionism before the Second World War, the Labour party’s approach

had changed.

The precise degree to which Solomon’s Labour loyalties were challenged by the anti-

fascist credentials of the Communist party is not known. What is likely is that Poale

Zion’s strong support for Labour had helped attract him to the party in the first place. In

turn, Bevin’s policies as Foreign Secretary called into question his full support to the

newly elected Labour Government after 1945.

Poale Zion was a movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers circles founded in Russia

in 1901. It had branches in London in 1903/04 and Leeds in 1905. The aim was to

popularise Zionism within unions and among Labour politicians, saying in the 1918

general election that not only did the Labour Party ‘stand for labour under good

conditions… [but also] redemption of our own National Home, Palestine’ (ref: Alderman

1983).

Anthony Asquith, Liberal party leader, further lost Jewish support in 1922 by arguing in a

speech in Paisley for Britain’s withdrawal from its obligations in Palestine as part of a

wider foreign policy of retrenchment. This backtracked on the Balfour Declaration, the

first significant declaration by a world power in favour of a Jewish “national home” in

Palestine which was made under the auspices of the Lloyd George Coalition, with the

prominent leadership of the Liberals.

19

At the same time, half of the Jews returned to Parliament in the inter-war 1918, 1922 and

1923 elections were Conservatives. Nevertheless many of these Members were out-and-

out anti-Zionists and feared that supporting a Jewish national home would bring their

loyalty to Britain into question.

In opposition to the National Government of the 1920s, the Labour Party ‘found it easy to

support the ideal of the National Home’. Labour and Trades Union Congress (TUC)

conferences in the 1920s regularly supported the idea of a Jewish National Home

influenced by Poale Zion. Labour’s leader, Ramsay MacDonald, visited Palestine in 1922

and reiterated this policy (ref: Jenner and Taylor; Alderman 1983).

Chapter 19 – Short-lived Labour-Zionist honeymoon: Testing Solomon

Lever’s party loyalty

The Liberal Party’s eclipse as a national political force by the mid-1920s aided ‘new

Jewish voters, gravitat[ing] towards Labour’ (ref: Alderman 1983).

Zionist support for Labour reached its apogee when a 1939 Conservative Government

White Paper abandoned the Balfour Declaration and supported Palestine becoming an

independent state within ten years, but with Jews in a minority. Its terms restricted Jewish

purchase of Arab land and property and put a restriction on Jewish immigration to ensure

that Jews would make up no more than one-third of the total population.

Opposition to this White Paper became Labour policy, and as late as the 1940 Labour

Party conference motions were carried backing unlimited Jewish immigration to

Palestine.

However, this changed after the Second World War. Once in power and forming a

majority government, the Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, announced in

November 1945 that the Government stood by the White Paper. This followed the

wartime Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, stating at the end of the War that Jewish

refugees should now be returned to Europe, ‘lest they become an explosive element in the

country’ (ref: Srebnik).

Only six out of those 34 Jewish Labour MPs expressed opposition to Bevin’s policy. This

was followed by the 1946 party conference’s rejection of a proposal to outlaw anti-

Semitism, giving more cause for a rift between Anglo-Jewry and Labour (ref: Alderman

1983).

Some Jewish Labour Party supporters felt that that ‘Zionism was exploited by the Labour

Party in the mid-twentieth century in order to win the allegiance of Jewish voters’, and

had now served its purpose (ref: Alderman 1983).

This policy reversal on Zionism may have reinforced Solomon Lever’s resolve to resist

regular overtures to him to stand as a Labour parliamentary candidate. As a Labour

20

councillor and local community leader, he could progress the municipal socialist path

while retaining the independence to criticise those government policies on issues of

profound belief and conscience.

This thesis will be argued by examining his four main speeches made at Trades Union

Congress (TUC) conferences between 1938 and 1958.

Chapter 20 – Solomon Lever’s 1947 broadcast speech from the TUC podium:

broadside against fascism’s resurgence in Britain

Solomon’s unhappiness with major aspects of Labour policies on anti-fascism and on

Palestine/Israel came to the fore in speeches broadcast from the TUC podium.

Prominent trade unionists had previously gone public with their concerns at the hesitancy

of the Labour Party’s anti-fascist policies. In 1938, the Jewish Bakers Union delegate,

Solomon Lever, tabled a resolution at the TUC congress in Blackpool, stating that:

‘This Congress condemns the introduction of anti-Semitism into British politics

and strongly resents attempts by a Fascist organisation to introduce it into the

Trade Union movement. This Congress pledges to fight this evil...’

(Jewish Chronicle, 02.09.38)

Post-war, he raised continuing concerns about a resurgence of fascism. The activities of

Blackshirts – and counter-actions by the 43 Group – in Mare Street, Kingsland Road and

Ridley Road Market in Hackney and Dalston were very close to his home and work life.

Interestingly, as this author now lives in Brighton, weekly meetings of fascists in the

guise of the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women were held on Saturday

afternoons at The Level, which served as an authorised speakers’ corner. Morris

Beckman devotes a chapter of The 43 Group to describing the “Great Rally Disaster” in

June 1948.

A local branch of the 43 Group of largely Jewish ex-serviceman, dedicated to direct

action against fascist activity, successfully took up the cudgels against several hundred

Union Movement (Blackshirt) rallyists. Organisers of the 43 Group had prior warning of

the British Union of Fascists’ plans for a recruitment drive on The Level. On their arrival,

the fascists were met by a hail of bricks and fighting went on all afternoon assisted by

‘elderly retired Jewish gentlemen, seemingly rejuvenated by Brighton air, wading into the

fascists with their walking sticks and umbrellas’ (Ref: Beckman, Bance).

As London Jewish Bakers Union delegate for over 20 TUC congresses, Solomon Lever’s

newsreel appearances gave him as much political and public exposure as a maverick

backbench MP. My late father, Charles, recalled being taken to the cinema as a child and

seeing his Uncle Solly appear on the newsreel, speaking at the TUC in Southport on

September 4, 1947 about the return of Blackshirt activities.

21

Mr. S Lever, London Jewish Bakers, set out evidence of the return of Blackshirt activities

(TUC History Online, 1):

‘It is clear that the General Council has not realised the gravity with which trade

union branches in East London regard this menace [of Fascist Activities]. An

organisation calling itself the British League of Ex-Service Men, but which is

really the old British Union of Fascists, is operating just as it did before the war...

They march through the Jewish quarter of London, shouting “Heil Hitler” and

“Heil Mosley”!’

He eloquently linked the manifestation of anti-Semitism with underlying Fascism to

strike the strongest chord with his predominantly non-Jewish and union audience:

‘If this were only a question of attacking the Jews, well, it would not matter very

much. They have taken it for the past two thousand years, and they can take it to

the extent of six million dead in Hitler’s concentration camps, and a few more

insults would not make a very great deal of difference; but this is not the object of

the Fascists, because their aim is the revival of Fascism, and they use anti-

Semitism as a smoke-screen behind which they work... for the cashing in on the

discontent of a section of the people’.

While seeking stronger condemnation from the TUC General Council, the main target of

this speech is the Labour Government:

‘A delegation comprising the Mayor and various other personalities in a district

in East London has waited upon the Home Secretary [James Chuter Ede], without

very much result, and in the meantime Fascism in East London marches on... like

old times, you know, when Mosley and his Blackshirts marched through London

before the war’.

Before he was out of time and wanting to re-state that the threat posed was to the

‘preservation of freedom and tolerance and democracy in this country’, he carefully

relates these anti-Semitic, fascist activities to the fighting in Palestine for the Jewish

State:

‘The Fascists started this campaign a long time before these events in that

unhappy land and let me say that every Jewish trade unionist and every Socialist

condemns those troubles in Palestine more than I can say’.

Solomon Lever was taking pains to ensure that his union brethren could support him on

the issue of Fascist resurgence whilst recognising that public sympathy with the Zionist

cause was being greatly tested by the high-profile deaths of British soldiers during the

struggle for independence.

22

According to Morris Beckman, there was ‘an overwhelming demand from rank and file

for Congress to urge the government to take immediate steps to stamp out fascist activity

in Britain’. Delegates rebelled against the leadership who wanted them to leave the issue

to the General Council.

Two days later, the lead editorial of the Daily Herald referred to the ‘deep uneasiness felt

by the TUC this week [about the growth of fascist activities in London and other cities

that] should convince the government that a way must be found to prohibit anti-Semitic

provocations’ (Ref: Beckman). Yet neither union pressure and some press support nor the

43 Group counter-actions persuaded Atlee’s Labour government to make incitement to

racial hatred illegal.

The full speech can be read at TUC History Online

(Second from left receiving congratulations after his speech, The Daily Herald, 4

September 1947)

23

Chapter 21 – Solomon Lever’s 1948 speech from the TUC podium: Making

the case for the government to recognise the State of Israel

It was, of course, not his status as a Labour councillor but the truly democratic outcome

of TUC rules that allowed him as general secretary of one of the very smallest, affiliated

trade unions to have similar speaking rights at Congress than his “brother” representing

say some half a million miners.

During his long tenure, he had faced a constant challenge of maintaining member

numbers in the London Jewish Bakers Union. The Union had affiliated to the TUC with

200 members in 1920, but its membership had fallen to 40 paying members by the start

of World War Two. This lifted to 70 members by 1945 and rose steadily to over 100 by

1950 (ref: Marsh & Smethurst).

The following extracts of his speech at the TUC annual conference on 10 September

1948 illustrate his heightened concern at the Labour Government’s lack of recognition of

the State of Israel. He had agreed to withdraw his Union’s resolution on Palestine in

return for being permitted to make a statement on the General Council’s report on this

topic (TUC History Online, 2):

‘The sole purpose of our resolution was to remind Congress and the Labour

Movement generally of the many promises which were made to the Jewish people

to help them establish a home in Palestine’.

His approach was to convey near incredulity that such a great country as Britain could be

‘guilty of such bad faith’:

‘Since the days of Cromwell, Britain had the goodwill of every Jew in every

corner of the world... Was not Britain one of the first nations to grant complete

freedom and emancipation to the Jews?’

‘What a tragedy it is, therefore, that to-day, when Jews need Britain’s helping

hand more than they have ever done in their whole history, they find that Britain

is almost alone among the great powers which has not yet recognised the State of

Israel. Jews throughout the world can hardly believe that it is Britain who is

guilty of such bad faith [after the Balfour Declaration]’.

He then raises the stakes by giving many examples of how the Labour Party has

conducted a deplorable volte face, referring to all the conference and TUC resolutions in

favour of ‘building Palestine as the Jewish National Home’:

‘This state of affairs is all the more deplorable because Britain to-day has a

Labour Government in power...

He quotes Clement Attlee before he became Prime Minister, a man he very likely knew,

via Toynbee Hall where Attlee was a resident and one time secretary:

24

‘... There was a strong case for [a Jewish National Home] before the war. There

is an irresistable case now [in 1944], after the unspeakable atrocities of the cold

and calculated German Nazi plan to kill all Jews in Europe’.

He then goads the Government’s position of breaking its promises for its “friends”:

‘Is it for Egypt, who could not afford even one soldier to defend herself against

Hitler. But who can now send an army against Israel...? Or perhaps it is for Iraq,

which had a pro-Axis revolt and stabbed Britain in the back in 1941.... Or is it for

the Mufti [of Jerusalem], the ally and collaborator of Hitler, who had to flee to

Egypt to escape the vengeance of the Allies?’

He brings the speech to a close calling for Britain to give ‘unqualified recognition to the

State of Israel’:

‘For twenty centuries the Jews have been a people without a country...[and] lived

as strangers in countries that did not want them, and have been tortured, killed

and persecuted on a scale without parallel in the history of men... [culminating]

when they died in their millions to satisfy the unholy causes of Fascism.

‘I ask you, comrades, is it not time that the world said to the Jewish people, “You

have had enough of this persecution. You have had enough of slaughter. Here is

your ancient homeland. Go there and live in peace”?’

The full speech can be read at TUC History Online:

Chapter 22 – Solomon Lever’s 1954 speech from the TUC podium: Speaking

out against the rearmament of Germany

In 1954, the London Jewish Bakers Union supported a composite motion (which was

lost) that ‘This Congress expresses its opposition to the rearmament of either Eastern or

Western Germany...’ (TUC History Online, 4).

They were in the company of other unions – from the National Union of Furniture Trade

Operatives to the Scottish Painters Society – in moving motions. Solomon Lever’s

particular motion stated that:

‘Congress views with concern the decision of the Government to rearm the

Germans. Congress is of the opinion that it would be in the best interests of peace

if both East and West Germany remained disarmed for the time being’.

(TUC History Online, 5).

Starting his speech, he ensures for the Congress audience that the wider victims of the

Nazis are remembered too (TUC History Online, 6):

25

‘I want the Germans disarmed because twice in our lifetime have we seen what a

menace an armed Germany can be to Europe to the world and to humanity in

general... Prominent Germans are fleeing to the east.... as a protest against the

rising strength of the Nazis.

‘This small union which I represent, one of the smallest affiliated to Congress,

and the only remaining Jewish trade union in the world outside of Israel, feels

that it owes a duty to 6 million Jewish dead...[and] the many thousand socialists

and trade unionists in the occupied territories which these same Germans

tortured and put to death.’

He makes clear his view of the continuity of both German ‘kultur’ and actual personages

in making his argument extraordinarily candidly and powerfully:

‘Have the people who committed these crimes changed? Most of them are still

alive and they hold responsible positions. It is our view that a disarmed and

subdued Germany can be an asset to the world...

‘A rearmed and cocky Germany with “Deutschland uber alles” as its slogan,

would not think twice again exterminating millions of people to gain its ends....

men have been known to murder each other, but even savages have spared the

children. Not so the Germans’.

The full speech can be read at TUC History Online:

His speech has impact at the highest levels. Later in the day, the TUC general secretary,

Sir Vincent Tewson said, ‘When our friend from the Jewish Bakers spoke this morning

this hall was stilled and our minds went back to debates which we have had here

previously [in 1935]’ (TUC History Online, 7).

Five years later, when J.R. Shanley (National Union of Furniture Trade Operatives)

spoke in debate on the same issue, he said (TUC History Online, 8):

‘I want to remind Congress of the last time we discussed the rearmament of

Germany. This Congress went as quiet as I ever heard it go in the 24 years I have

been coming here... I cannot reproduce the quiet tones of appeal of Solomon

Lever; I can only remind you of his words’.

Chapter 23 – Solomon Lever’s final TUC speech in 1958: Peace in the Middle

East

The Labour government finally officially recognised Israel in 1950, a year in which its

parliamentary majority was slashed from 145 to just 5 seats in the general election.

26

Solomon moved a motion on ‘The Middle East’ in 1958 to relax tensions in the region for

the cause of world peace – with ‘an international guarantee for existing frontiers...’,

including those of Israel, and to ‘transform the existing armistice agreements between the

Arab States and Israel into a peace treaty...’ He presented this as Labour Party policy.

He referred back to speaking in conference debate in 1956, when he made the case for

nascent Arab, nationalist states to take their cue from Israel: ‘as a method of government,

then there is no finer example they can take from Israel’.

Two years later, he refers to propaganda directed against Israel (TUC History Online, 3):

‘Such a torrent of hate has rarely been heard, even from the Nazis in their heydey.

‘Under a democratic government, the Israelis have transformed the desert into

fertile lands... without the immense revenues the Arabs are getting from oil. [He

contrasts this with Nasser’s ambition] to put an Egyptian dictatorship over the

whole of the Middle East.

‘The region needs technical aid... irrigation, tractors and educational facilities

far more than it needs arms. There is no reason at all why the Arab states should

not utilise to the full their rich natural resources. Israel has shown the world what

people can do when they are imbued with the idea of social reconstruction’.

He concludes by making the links between Israel’s developmental success tand its

socialist and unionist credentials, mindful of his audience:

‘What has Israel had in return? – a tiny bit of a vast territory, a tiny bit not much

bigger than an English county... It must surely be a source of satisfaction to all of

us that in a tiny corner of that vast territory known as “the Middle East”, in

Israel, there exists and thrives a strong and virile Labour and Trade Union

Movement, based on the same ideals as this Congress as ours’.

The full speech can be read at TUC History Online:

Chapter 24 – His Worshipful The Mayor and Mayoress of Hackney 1951/2:

Solomon and Annie Lever

(This chapter is based on his correspondence file accessed in Hackney Archives.)

Solomon Lever was elected by his fellow councillors Mayor of the Metropolitan Borough

of Hackney for a term of one year in 1951/2. This traditional, largely ceremonial role in

municipal government is usually filled by a councillor who has undertaken more onerous

duties by serving on key committees of the council.

27

One letter of congratulations was received from A.G. Tomkins OBE, the general

secretary of the National Union of Furniture Trade Operatives. Solomon Lever’s reply,

dated 12 June 1951, said that ‘...I think I will cherish this one more than any

[congratulations], because it is from the General Secretary of my Trade Union, a Trade

Union on which all my activities in public matters began and where I have received my

apprenticeship’.

From the active citizenry of the borough, Mayor Lever was sought at an events of the

Dalston and District Aquaria Society. While members of this group presumably studied

and collected tropical fish, on the consumption front, he was also invited and gave a

speech at the North West London Herring Week at the LEB Showrooms.

(Left to right: Mayoress of Hackney (Annie), Lord Mayor of London, Lady Mayoress of

London and Mayor of Hackney (Solomon))

As President of the Disabled Soldiers and Sailors (Hackney) Foundation, he was sent

their annual report; similarly, the annual report of the Toynbee [Hall] International

Motorcyclists Association was posted to Solomon Lever, its Vice-President.

Rather grand appeared his invitation to an art exhibition at ‘Windsor Castle’. The clue

was in the speech marks, for this was Windsor Castle on the Lower Clapton Road,

Hackney, E5, not the residency of King George and family.

The north of England successfully beckoned the Mayor of Hackney to Leeds, for a

Special Chanukah Neshef and Dinner held by the Leeds Poale Zion Workers Circle (Div

28

5). It helped to have some connections, as Mayor Lever had long-standing involvement in

Poale Zion and The Workers Circle.

Similarly, he was minded to attend the annual dinner and ball of the Jews’ Free School

(JFS) Association at the Savoy Hotel in February 1952 – that he was recently found to

have been an alumnus was highlighted in the invitation.

Chapter 25 – Family connections in the Mayor’s Parlour: Wife, daughter and

brother play their part

(This chapter is based on his correspondence file accessed in Hackney Archives.)

Family did not miss the opportunity to prevail upon the Mayor’s time. A certain J. Lever

wrote to S. Lever, to seek the latter’s participation for an event of the Hackney

Associated Clubs (Boys’ and Girls’) in December 1951. The formal invitation was from

the Organising Secretary, his brother Joe!

The Mayor also wrote to his wife, Annie, via Miss Gresham (the Mayor’s Secretary) to

seek the Mayoress’s agreement to assume the customary role as Honorary Patron of the

Hackney Branch of the Royal Artillery Association.

His daughter, Isabel, did not miss out on opportunities during the Mayoral year. She

accompanied her father to a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace of Their Majesties

(King George, Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother, Mary). Isabel also entertained the

Mayoress of Southwark and a few friends to afternoon tea in the Mayor’s Parlour,

presumably on a day when her father was out judging herring displays.

Finally, one letter from the Mayor on file was to a certain Mr B Mee, Manager of Arsenal

Football Club in April 1952. Being ‘an ardent supporter of the Arsenal since my school

days’, he wondered if Mr Mee ‘could kindly spare a couple of tickets for the Mayoress

and myself to see Arsenal play in the Cup Final at Wembley’. These were not “freebies”

as a cheque of 10/6 was paid for each ticket upon receipt.

A fair share of tea and sandwiches were recorded in the lists of sundry expenditure

incurred in the Mayor’s Parlour, along with bouquets, gratuities to drivers of charabancs

and three-quarters of a yard of black ribbon for the rosette on the Mayor’s Chain.

Reflecting the times, there was also an entry of 6 boxes of Swan matches and a bill for

scotch, other spirits, cordials and gallons of bitter and ale.

Chapter 26 – Important social issues raised with the Mayor: From housing to

“Uncle Joe”

(This chapter is based on his correspondence file accessed in Hackney Archives.)

29

Some of the correspondence does relate to serious social issues raised by Hackney

residents. Housing problems were most frequently cited, an issue of long concern for

Solomon Lever throughout his life and political career, and crime and playground topics

also featured in correspondence from local residents.

(At this visit to a factory, Solomon is third from the left.)

He was asked to open a new facility offering free chest x-rays for fourteen year olds and

above at St Mary’s Hospital, Plaistow. This was a Mass X-Ray Survey, part preventative

medicine and part epidemiological research, but clearly extra promotion was needed for

ensuring take up, as well as encouraging messages in posters such as ‘there is no need to

strip to the waist’).

He was unable to meet a delegation from the International Women’s Day Committee,

heralding from Manchester. Some contemporary resonances may be found with their

main cause that ‘the whole of our children’s schooling is now threatened by the education

cuts’, because of budgets diverted to ‘arms for the boys in Korea, waiting for the

armistice that never seems to come’.

On the international front, he also declined an invitation to a social and dance of the

British Soviet Friendship Society – Hackney Branch, celebrating its 34th

anniversary on 9

October 1951. He missed out on hearing from a member of the Quaker Peace Mission to

Moscow, newly returned presumably with a slide show and messages of fraternity from

“Uncle Joe” (not his brother, but Mr Stalin).

30

Chapter 27 – The adbuction of Solomon Lever: Enticement by bogus

policemen

As reported on the front page of The Daily Express on 20 July 1959, ‘The telephone at

AMHerst 5319 rang yesterday. The call lured a man to his death – the second London

telephone murder in a week’.

Solomon Lever’s phone rang at just after one o’clock in the morning of Sunday, July 19

1959. The caller identified himself as a detective and told Solomon that a fire had broken

out next to an office he was responsible for and that if he wanted to save documents and

valuables he would have to hurry.

Solomon was acting general secretary of The Workers’ Circle Friendly Society and

secretary of the Pietrokow Provident and Investment Society. Their offices at Circle

House, No 13 Sylvester Path, were shared with the London Jewish Bakers Union. The

building, behind the Hackney Empire, was described by the press as ‘a tall thin house...

[that] used to be a day nursery... [and now was] full of little offices’.

The Workers’ Circle Friendly Society had been formed in 1910 as The Workers Circle

Relief Society. Members paid a small weekly subscription and could obtain small loans.

In 1959, it had 1,478 members. This was down from a peak of about 3,000, and £32,153

in assets (Jewish Chronicle, 24.07.59).

According to his caller, the chair factory next to Circle House was ablaze. A police car

was on its way to his home at 49 Victoria Park, Hackney, to take him there (less than a

mile away). Solomon was aware that the funds in the office safe were due to be

distributed to club members taking their summer holidays.

Just seven minutes later, the door bell rang and a tall, dark man was anxious to whisk

Solomon to his offices, brushing aside his wife, Annie’s, offer to come along too. She

said later to the police that she had asked her husband if he had checked the

“policeman’s” credentials, but he had said there was no time as he hurried out to the

waiting car with a suitcase to move the money and papers. That was the last time she saw

him alive.

According to the Jewish Chronicle (24.07.59), the bogus detectives said:

‘A police car would be called to take him there to remove any money to a place of

safety. Mr Lever dressed and waited. A detective called and Mr Lever went to the

waiting car. After binding and gagging him and leaving him in the car the thieves

went to the office using Mr Lever’s keys to enter the building.

31

They robbed the safe which contained envelopes made out to individual members

of the loan club, and left the premises only a few minutes before the policeman on

the beat came along the street.’

While they missed some other money in the safe, they still took £7,869 of club funds

(which it transpired could have been much more but much of it had very recently been

paid out) and also Solomon Lever.

Chapter 28 – Discovery of Solomon’s body: A mistaken hit-and-run victim

Two hours later, Solomon Lever’s body was found in Epping Forest by a designer, Mr

Bernard Bertschlinger of Hampstead. On his way home from visiting his brother in

Bishops Stortford, he saw a ‘bundle of something’ lying across the gutter and when he

returned to have a closer look, he realised that it was a body and so phoned the police.

A Mr and Mrs Mayland later reported at the August inquest that they were on the way

home from a dog show and a man on the pavement in Rangers-road, Chingford (near

Epping Forest in outer, north east London) signalled for them to stop but they thought he

was a drunkard and drove on.

Meanwhile, Annie Lever had telephoned the savings club and got no reply, and when she

went around to the office she saw no sign of any fire. Returning home and still finding no

sign of her husband, she telephoned the police who gained entry to the office with the

cleaner’s set of keys. They saw the safe door was unlocked and the money missing.

Solomon Lever’s body was found two hours later and Annie Lever identified Solomon’s

body at 3.30am.

Initially, he was mistaken as a hit-and-run road accident victim, but an examining doctor

pointed to the gag marks on Solomon’s mouth and identified weals on his wrists.

Chapter 29 – Inquest: The investigation into Solomon’s death

The cause of death was heart disease or coronary thrombosis. As reported by the Jewish

Chronicle (21.08.59) Dr Alan Grant, pathologist, told the inquest that although it was:

‘a natural death... physical hurt, emotional disturbance or mental anguish would

be the very worst possible thing having regard to the state of Mr Lever’s heart at

the time. It would, he added, be dangerous and liable to cause death.’

Summing up, the Walthamstow coroner, Dr H.H. Kensole, referred to the Homicide Act

(1957), and set out that:

‘The Law two years ago changed what might well have been a murder into a

possible manslaughter. For it is manslaughter if, without any intention of killing,

32

a person nevertheless kills another during the course of unlawful conduct which

causes, or even might cause, the infliction of physical harm’.

The jury was directed to decide whether the person or persons stealing the money had

used actual physical harm, or the threat of it, and had in so doing precipitated the heart

attack which killed Solomon Lever.

After a short retirement, the jury returned a verdict of manslaughter by person or persons

unknown.

No-one was ever charged.

Chapter 30 – The death of Solomon Lever: Family and public reaction

In the words of his aunt, Esther Lash (nee Levy), in an unpublished memoir she wrote in

1962 in Australia:

‘He was only sixty-five years of age, and had planned to go to Canada to visit his

daughter, Lily [his other daughter, Isabel, was also living in Canada], and

grandchildren. His daughter had married a Canadian officer in London during

the war, but poor Solly Lever never lived to see them. His wife, as a widow, had a

nervous breakdown, poor Annie Lever. This news gave us all a terrible shock, as

he was a good man’ (ref: Lash)

In the national and local press reports, he was referred to as ‘a friendly little man born in

Poland’ and ‘known to Jews in London’s East End as “Uncle Sol”’. A member of the

friendly society was quoted as saying ‘it would be difficult to replace such a lovable and

generous man’.

A famous reporter, George Gale (later editor of The Spectator) described Solomon Lever

as ‘a man whom the limelight caught twice’ on page 4 of the Daily Express (ref: Hackney

Archives).

Writing on the day of his death in the Daily Express, he was referring back to Solomon’s

speech in 1954 at the TUC described in an earlier section. Mr Gale remembered the

occasion well, when the issue of German rearmament was ‘convulsing the Labour Party

even more than the hydrogen bomb does today [in 1959]’. ‘A small, grey man climbed to

the rostrum of the Trades Union Congress and made a speech’, a simple speech and one

spoken very quietly. He observed that ‘if there were any votes not yet committed but were

ready that day to be swayed it was Solomon Lever who swayed them’.

George Gale concluded by saying that was ‘just one more death, one more act of lunacy

– or panic, or greed. This time it was a good man, a quiet man, a man whose life was

given to service’.

33

Chapter 31 – Solomon’s funeral and obituary: An appreciation

His Jewish Chronicle obituary stated that:

‘This kindly, unassuming former Mayor of Hackney was a well-loved figure not

only in the Jewish social and trade union circles in which he moved but also in

the wider sphere of local politics...

‘At the 1947 [TUC] Congress at Southport he was cheered by delegates for a

brilliant speech denouncing the fascist activities of the British League of ex-

Servicemen. At Brighton in 1954 he spoke eloquently against the rearmament of

Germany’.

Online records of ITN, which provided the main national news bulletins for the

commercial ITV network, lists 25 feet of footage (40 seconds) of his funeral in Hackney,

including the ‘coffin out of synagogue’, ‘mourners on synagogue steps’ and hearse

moving with ‘both sides of street lined with crowds’.

The Jewish Chronicle estimated crowds of 2,000 people, including local MPs, Mayors

and Councillors and trade union members.

Four years after his death, Lever Court was named after him – a block of 14 maisonettes

built for £46,500 on a former bombed site in Valentine Road, a stone’s throw from

Hackney Town Hall where his portrait hangs outside the old council chamber.

34

35

His widow, Mrs A (Annie) Lever was invited to name the dwellings in memory of

Solomon Lever. The fine, blue marble plaque remains in situ, after nearly fifty years.

Chapter 32 – The death knell of the London Jewish Bakers Union: The

remaining crumbs

The London Jewish Bakers Union outlived its general secretary, Solomon Lever, but his

tragic death in 1959 ‘almost certainly contributed to the eventual collapse of the union by

removing a key figure’ (ref: Wayne).

An undated newspaper article by Peter Whaley, entitled, ‘57 bakers throw in the sponge’,

states that ‘The trade union that just never stopped growing SMALLER and smaller is

about to disappear altogether. It is the London Jewish Bakers Union, which has shrunk to

only 57 ageing members since refugees from Czarist Russia set it up in the 1890s’ (ref:

Hackney Archives).

36

A Daily Worker reporter pointed out that 57 members was even fewer than the Wool

Shear Workers (64) or the Spring Trapmakers’ Society (90), and ‘truly a handful’

compared with the Warpdressers and Twisters (142) from the world of northern mills

and textiles (ref: Hackney Archives).

The same reporter went on to say that a ballot was to take place on ‘whether the few

crumbs [pun intended!] that remain of ...[the] union should not be kneaded into the

Amalgamated Union of Operative Bakers, Confectioners and Allied Workers’.

As late as 1964, it was still participating in national, Food Trades conferences with

unions such as the Scottish Union of Bakers and Allied Workers and the Transport and

General Workers Union (ref: TUC History Online, 9).

It finally ceased to function in 1966 and was formally dissolved in 1970 (ref: Wayne

cited in Marsh & Smethurst).

Chapter 33 – An appaisal: Solomon Lever’s life of political and community

leadership

How typical was Solomon Lever of first generation, Jewish immigrants, who ‘largely

assumed control in the 1930s and 1940s’ of communal and political leadership positions

in Jewish and wider society (ref: Gartner)?

He began his long association with the Labour movement at 16 when he joined the

Independent Cabinet Makers’ Association trade union. Around the time of his move into

local politics, Solomon and Annie took in a Kindertransport brother (Freddy) and sister

(Trudi), alongside their daughters, Lily (Lilian) and Isabel. (Their parents survived the

Holocaust and the reunited family went to live in Israel.)

For some East End Jews, the decline of religious observance was mirrored by attraction

to a rival “faith” of ‘the extreme left and militant atheism’ (ref: Bermant). But this did not

apply to Solomon Lever, who eschewed the Communist Party and kept up his Judaism as

a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and serving on Hackney Synagogue’s

management board.

He was also a Justice of the Peace (JP), a member of the Trades Advisory Council, and a

member of the LCC Divisional Tuberculosis Care Committee.

Staunchly Labour, Solomon Lever rejected overtures to stand for Parliament, preferring

the independence not to have to always “toe the party line”. He may have identified with

the judgement of Bertha Sokoloff, that ‘for good or ill, the Labour Party, warts and all, is

the political party of the British Left’ (ref: Sokoloff).

37

East End historian Bill Fishman summed up the East End Jewish immigrant’s

contribution to the host community as being formed of ‘a sense of social justice, derived

from their own suffering [from pogroms], which they translated into political action…

many joined the labour movement and rendered pioneer and selfless service to their

cause’ (ref: Fishman, 1981).

That aptly describes my great-uncle, “Uncle Solly”.

38

Chapter 34 – Bibliography

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39

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40

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41

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