If Covid had struck while Harold Wilson was prime minister, there would have been no kit shortages at NHS hospitals. Harold would have known what to do. He’d have picked up a phone to one of his Jews.
You see, in those days Jews were makers and shakers. I’m guessing Harold’s first call would have been to Joe Kagan in Leeds.
Kagan manufactured the shapeless Gannex raincoats that Wilson wore in all weathers. It would have taken no great effort to switch production from semi-waterproofs to surgical gowns.
If storage was needed while distribution awaited, there was an empty pitch at Elland Road, where Manny Cussins was chairman, and a team bus for transport. Frank Schon, another of Wilson’s Jewish peers, manufactured raw materials for detergents and was head of the National Research Development Corporation, so handwash supplies were assured.
Arnold Weinstock would have known where to source ventilators among his defence contractors. Film companies made masks by the gross; the Bernsteins had a warehouse full at Granada and the Grades at ATV. Charles Clore was good for shoes. Mrs Shilling would supply the hats. Solly Zukerman, the government’s chief scientific adviser, would have led the race for a vaccine.
In those sepia times when stuff was still made in England, the makers had access to power. True, Wilson was an exception among PMs in that he was the first — apart from Lord Roseberry, who married a Rothschild for her money — to feel at ease among Jews.
Wilson’s circle included industrialists, entertainers, philosophers and ex-lovers of his political secretary Marcia Williams. The prime minister’s doctor was Joseph Stone, his lawyer Arnold Goodman, his publisher George Weidenfeld, taking care, respectively, of his health, his reputation and his memoirs.
On the dodgier side of Marcia’s notorious Lavender List, there was Eric Miller, who shot himself on Yom Kippur, which might have been taking atonement too far, even for a property speculator. Kagan went on the lam and eventually to jail, and the obnoxious Gerald Kaufman missed out on a resignation honours gong.
The next prime minister, James Callaghan, had a Jewish grandmother (father’s side), which may explain why he had so little to do with Jews.
Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, could not get enough. Her Jews — Keith Joseph, Leon Brittan, David Young, Nigel Lawson, Shirley Porter — were more high street than factory floor. Joseph and Lawson came out of the Lyons Corner House dynasty. Young had worked for Isaac Wolfson at General Universal Stores. Porter was daughter of Tesco. “I just wanted a Cabinet of clever, energetic people,” said Thatcher, and so they were; but her Jews were not much use in a pandemic.
By this time, like the rest of the country, our community had abandoned manufacturing. Inventors became investors, exporters turned to import. Family businesses that hired British cobblers to shod the nation sent to Italy for shoes, then India, then China.
Marks and Spencer got its flowers from Israel and its underpants from the Turks. Our synagogues, which once had seating made of oak by British craftsmen, replaced them with matchwood from a kibbutz factory.
British Jews made their new fortunes in property. Buy a building, knock it down, put up a block of offices or flats. The formula still works. Walking home from Regent’s Park, I see a block of sheltered housing opposite Lords being torn down to make way for apartments that will be marketed to Gulf Arabs for summer occupancy. See how the world has turned? Jews of St John’s Wood maintain empty second homes in Jerusalem while building more of the same on their own patch for absentee burkas. Mabrouks all round.
The point is, we’ve lost the plot. There are no Jews in or around the Boris Johnson cabinet because we have nothing useful to contribute. Boris is partial to the odd Jew, such as media chums like me, but in a national emergency he has no chum to ring in northwest London, let alone the north riding of Yorkshire.
We are peripheral in this crisis as never before. I may have missed the name of a boffin or two who is doing valuable work on antibodies, but we have no Solly Zukerman, not even a Martin Gilbert who advised John Major and Gordon Brown on historical issues.
I just had a mask with Gustav Mahler’s face on it flown in from Berlin. I see that JC reader Alex Courts, 11, from Mill Hill, is printing visors for the NHS. Next step, Alex, is to go public. I’ll take a share. We can produce customised kippot for new JC subscribers. And one with a baby’s picture for Boris.
