Welsh Journals

riots were significant in being the only recorded acts of anti-semitic violence by a group of non-Jews in Britain between the time of the 'Jew Bill' of 1753 and the violence which followed the hanging of the two British sergeants and other atrocities in Palestine by Zionist terrorists just after the Second World War.3 Unlike continental Europe, Britain has been remarkably free of anti- semitic violence. It is especially puzzling, therefore, that virtually the only known instance of anti-Jewish rioting in Britain occurred in south Wales, a region with a minute Jewish population and no lasting traditions of anti-semitism (in contrast to, say, the East End of London and areas adjacent to it, where a large Jewish population attracted a degree of anti-semitism, exploited during the 1930s by Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.) The 1911 rioting has been termed a 'pogrom' and a 'semi-pogrom' by Dr Henriques, thus likening it to the murderous anti-Jewish attacks in Czarist Russia, infamous around the world, in which literally thousands of Jews were killed.4 All previous historians of this subject have asserted that a wellspring of anti- semitism existed in south Wales in the Edwardian period, its roots in Welsh nonconformist revivalism and so-called 'rich Jew' anti-semitism of the extreme left, which manifested itself in hostility to unpopular Jewish shopkeepers and 'rack-renters'. Most of the commentators on the 1911 riots also believe they were organized in advance and 3 The 'Jew Bill' of 1753 was an attempt by the Whig government of the day to enact legislation to facilitate the naturalization of foreign-born Jews. Its passage led to an enormous agitation against Jews, stirred up by the Tory opposition, which then ended completely when the Bill was repealed in December 1753. After the Second World War (and, disturbingly, after the horrors of the Holocaust were well-known), Jewish shops were looted, and synagogues daubed with swastikas, when two British sergeants were hanged in Palestine by extremist Zionist terrorists. (On this see David Leitch, 'Explosion at the King David Hotel', in Michael Sissons and Philip French (eds.), The Age of Austerity, 1945-51 (Harmondsworth, 1964)). 4 Ursula Henriques, 'The Jews of South Wales', Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1992), p. 162; idem, 'The Jewish Community of Cardiff', in The Jews of South Wales, p. 40. 5 See, e.g., Alderman, 'The Jew as Scapegoat?', pp. 67-8. (Alderman's several articles on this topic are very similar; 'The Jew as Scapegoat?' is the most comprehensive.) "Rich Jew" anti-semitism' singled out Jewish 'capitalists' and 'financiers' for abuse. It was certainly an element in much left-wing rhetoric of the Edwardian period, especially around the time of the Boer War.