Busaholic
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 7 Jun 2014
- Messages
- 14,078
I hadn't heard about the anti-semitism either, but I do know that a fellow named Waldron Smithers was elected Conservative MP for Orpington in 1945 and was behind a petition called the Fighting Fund for Freedom that was adopted by certain locally prominent Tories in areas not so far from Orpington to promote disguised (or not so) antisemitism. The League of Empire Loyalists was founded in 1954(?) and attracted many of the Conservative disposition, including an MP or two as well as refugees from Oswald Mosley's disbanded Fascists. At the period in question there was far more antisemitism among Tories than among Labourites at MP or local party level. Labour had many prominent Jewish MPs (Manny Shinwell, the Silkin brothers, later on Gerald Kaufman) while the Tories had few, Keith Joseph being the obvious exception and he was always an outsider. History (which incorporated politics) was my favourite subject at school and the history master made no secret of his admiration for Disraeli, in his opinion the best Prime Minister Britain had ever had, and he was of course a Jew. Half my class came from the Petts Wood/Orpington area too, but I came from a grittier place!It cannot have helped that he was a Treasury insider at a time when his boss, Selwyn Lloyd, had introduce an extremely unpopular pay policy that hit the usual targets - nurses, teachers, etc, and increased taxes on sweets, ice cream and the like (the 'Pocket Money Tax', that was not lost on me). Selwyn Lloyd was sacked in the 'Night of the Long Knives' as MacMillan desperately tried to cling to power and popularity. I hadn't heard about the anti-semitism before, but I can believe it, they were not tolerant times.