The torment of British Jews

When I was a child, learning about the Holocaust, I used to believe that what happened to the Jews in Germany could never happen here. My reasons for this were vague and cultural; Dad’s Army, comic operetta contrasted with Wagner, the sheer silliness of Hitler’s strutting. No country with a sense of humour could ever surely even follow a Hitler type to the pub, let alone into a world war. Now I’ve put away childish things, and though I have a youthful spirit, every day I feel another year older. Because in my lifetime, in my country, people are tormenting the Jews.

It was a wonderful feeling that day in 1977 at the anti-National Front demo in New Cross when I nearly got trampled to death by a police horse – easily the best incident of my 17-year life thus far. To the right of me, Rastafarians; to the left of me a beautifully-dressed old man waving a walking stick in the direction of the march and yelling ‘Jew-baiters – damn Jew-baiters!’ United in the cause of anti-racism, we knew who the enemy was.