Curious. What proof is there that this was the motivation? Abolitionism was almost a certainty in the UK by the start of the Nineteenth Century. The Quakers had been preaching about it for nearly a century. The judicial service unilaterally outlawed the practice in England and Wales stating “the air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe” in Somersett’s case, and thereafter the move had large popular support.
Golders Green is largely Jewish, as mentioned, but if you go just north of there - to a place called Stamford Hill - then you will be hard pushed finding anyone who isn’t Jewish. That’s where all the orthodox ones live so they’re kinda easy to spot.
They didn’t view the world as a place occupied by sub-humans to be destroyed. They weren’t the Nazis with racial theories.
a) They didn’t consider anyone to be sub-human and
b) They didn’t want to destroy anyone
They considered people as not British and therefore not civilised and they thought they could educate them and bring the light of civilisation to them.
Nonsense, plundering other people’s resources had very little to do with paying for England’s wars. (Incidently they were Britain’s wars - as a Scot my ancestors had something to do with it.) For much of the 18th/19th centuries the UK spend less on the military than its rivals. When during wars the spending went up this was paid for by taxes on Britains (including those who happened to live in the Americas - though that didn’t work out too well 
)or by borrowing - again internally. It was trade and then industrialisation within a stable liberal state that allowed governments to raise large sums - not plundering.
No way would I pretend that bad things did not happen during Britain’s colonial past but generally this was not a deliberate policy (unlike, say, the Belgian Congo) and you also have to consider the alternative. Counter-factual arguments are normally pretty meaningless but the regimes British rule replaced were not generally all sweetness and light, enlightened democrats putting the best interest of their populations first.
One final thought on this. amanset, do you generally ask people directly, “Are you Jewish?” when you meet them? Or straight out ask them for their religion? The point several people have made is that most British Jews do not stand out from the rest of the population so unless you actually ask directly you are not going to know whether they are Jewish by religion or birth. And being a Brit, I can’t imagine asking anyone this sort of question - even having known them for ages. 
You sure do. Are you claiming to have asked everyone you’ve met what religion and/or ethnic background they are? Had you met, say, Nigella Lawson, Mick Jones, Sharon Osbourne, Helena Bonham Carter or Karl Popper you are confident you would have assessed them as being of Jewish descent?
What proportion of British people you’ve met have been Jewish, and what proportion would you have needed it to be in order for it not to be fishy? For the record they are estimated to number 300,000 out of Britain’s 60,000,000 or 0.5% (1 in 20).
**“Fewer”. **I still don’t see what you are getting at. Connected in what way? Are you implying there are some secret Jews in Britain? Or that there has been some secret pogrom that has killed them or driven them out? What exactly is the nature of the fishiness you feel?
Given that you have signally failed to communicate your meaning to several people over several posts, you might reconsider who is having the communication problem here.
Of course I don’t as frankly the specific Jewishness of someone isn’t particularly important to me. Nor is their Muslimness or Hinduness or loads of other words that probably don’t really exist. However, I do enjoy discussing cultural background and I will very often ask people about that. You may not find it interesting. I do.
Seriously, this feels like you are all one step away from accusing me of something really quite distasteful and are bating me, to see if you can get me to say something to “prove” the opinion you have clearly already made of me. You seem to think I have an obsession with Jews and whether they are around me or not, whereas in reality all I did was say (and then clarified to add “knowingly”) that in the first twenty-five years or so I didn’t meet any and, going by the historical levels of anti-semitism in the UK (which is how this came up IIRC, someone offered that as possibly “the most evil episode in British history”) I found it quite interesting.
You know what? Until I was 24 I’d never knowingly met a Mormon either and even then the first Mormons I knowingly met were in the US, not the UK. I’ve never knowingly met a Scientologist. But this hasn’t come up in this thread as, as far as I am aware, there has never been a situation in the UK where they were treated so badly that someone would think of it as possibly “the most evil episode in British history”.
No of course I haven’t, but I certainly discuss it a lot. For the umpteenth time, for this very reason, I clarified things using the word “knowingly”.
And no, I do not ever “assessed them as being of Jewish descent”. I chat to people and a common question is about cultural background as I find that interesting.
I find the insinuation in this post quite distasteful and insulting.
Which, according to the CIA World Factbook is less than a third of the percentage of Jews in the US Population (Protestant 51.3%, Roman Catholic 23.9%, Mormon 1.7%, other Christian 1.6%, Jewish 1.7%, Buddhist 0.7%, Muslim 0.6%, other or unspecified 2.5%, unaffiliated 12.1%, none 4% (2007 est.)). That’s quite a significant difference considering the historical ties between the two countries. Considering that the Nazis didn’t invade the UK (and hence go about murdering the Jews, amongst other groups) and that historically, going back centuries, there has been a large amount of anti-semitism in the UK, I find this difference interesting and, yes, “fishy”. Fishy as in it appears to me that Jews are a lot less welcome in the UK than in places like the US.
For the record I’d say that the population of where I live now, Sweden, is generally even less welcoming of Jews. For example, the media here is unashamedly pro-Palestine and anti-Israel. And by my calculations (Wikipedia says 20,000 Jews, the population is around 9 million) only 0.22% of the population are Jewish.
And again with people trying to imply stuff that is clearly untrue. I am fed up with the insinuations.
Clearly I feel that the historical levels of anti-semitism in the UK have led to not only Jews leaving the UK but also making Jews think twice about moving to the UK. You may not agree with this, but it is what I feel. It really is quite simple, with no need for “Secret Jews” or extermination programmes.
Unfortunately it feels to me that those “several people” (maybe a massive 2 or 3 maximum - oh noes!) are trying desperately to goad me into making some kind of statement that will out me as some form of anti-Semite, which I find both insulting and tiring. So, to be honest, it is less about my communication skills and more about people trying desperately to read something into what I have written so as to satisfy their own prejudices.
And with that I am out of here.
Just before you go - you’re aware that the “historical anti-semitism in the UK”, of which you make so much, happened 400 years ago, right?
Absolutely correct. Clearly the UK has been free of any sort of Anti-Semitic feeling for the past 400 years.
Well done.
Nup not every tasmanian koorie was exterminated. This has been proven time and time again. It was pretty bad though!
The anti-semitism that was brought up in this thread was that of the expulsion of Jews which ended in the 1600s. No one has mentioned any cases of anti-semitism since then.
Obviously there has been anti-semitism in many countries since then, the UK included. But I don’t think there has been any more in the UK than anywhere else and much less than many places.
And I may or may not agree with you.
But as I said, I am out of here. I will not discuss this anymore. I have found the insinuations in this thread - and the increasingly desperate attempts to get me to out myself as some sort of anti-Semite - disgusting and profoundly disappointing.
I haven’t made any insinuations. That was other people.
But I don’t know how you managed to avoid all the Jewish people when you lived in UK - they’re everywhere, they’re all around. I know loads of Jewish people. I knew them at school, I’ve met them at work, socially I’ve got Jewish friends, my brother married one.
They’re everywhere. I’m amazed you managed to miss them all. But then I’ve generally only lived in big cities - Manchester and London. Maybe they are more concentrated there.
There’s very large Jewish populations in Manchester, Leeds, London and Glasgow (and presumably other cities). There’s whole “villages” in the more affluent areas of Manchester where you’ll be hardpressed to meet anybody but a Jew.
I don’t think this follows. The large numbers of Jews in the US are a result of WW2. Clearly, Jews fleeing the continent, and Hitler, would have preferred to get as far away as possible, not flee to Britain, which may or may not have held up against the Nazis.
The slave trade was vile and reprehensible, truly unforgivable - but the British didn’t go it alone.
Religious crusades against our own citizens were barbaric and self destructive.
Colonialism caused unthinkable suffering on a global scale, but that’s not it’s worst facet.
Surely, the most evil thing we ever did (and I say we - I actually wasn’t there) was to spawn nations like Austrailia and the USA.
Man, did those ideas backfire.
**amanset **- sorry you feel this way. I for one was not trying to bait you and certainly had no intention of implying you were anti-semitic. More that you were being unfairly anti-British!
I was suggesting reasons why you might not have knowingly met a Jew while in the UK. Mostly, unless they actually tell you they are - and why would a casual acquaintance do that - they will not stand out from the rest of the population. Others have pointed out that the Jewish population tends to be concentrated in a number of larger cities.
There has been a challenge to the assertion that there was something “fishy” about your not having met any Jews - the implication (as seen by several contributers) was that they had been removed or driven out. Which, in a thread about the greatest crime in British history, does not sound good. Some time ago I linked to an article that discussed why the Jewish population of the UK has fallen since WW2 - small families and marriage outside the community - but is now growing. You mentioned the percentage of Jews in the population being only a third of that in the States but that is to do with American exceptionalism not British anti-semitism - the UK is about in the middle for western Europe with the fifth largest Jewish population in the world.
Missed the edit window.
I should have added that I am not saying there was no anti-semitism in Britain over the last hundred years - clearly there was - but I do not feel it has been a major factor in how Jews in Britain have thrived. I would also suggest the anti-semitism has probably fallen significantly in the last fifty years as the natural bigots and racists have had a much more obvious target since the arrival of large Asian and Afro-Caribbean populations in the 50s and 60s.
Introducing and allowing **slavery in America. **
It was the absolute worst thing that Britain ever did. The consequences and effects of it are still being greatly suffered to this day.
.
On the topic of British anti-Semitism, check out Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England.
The New Republic did an extensive review in their September 23 issue, but it isn’t available online. Some quotes from that:
Actually, they were fleeing the Tsar, not Hitler. The Amereican Jewish community is largely descended from the massive wave of immigration, mainly from the Russain Empire, that took place at the turn of the 20th Century. Remember Fiddler on the Roof? Them.