‘Tensions are really high. It’s frightening’
As three Jewish children are attacked on a bus, Joe Shute hears from those whose lives have been blighted by horrific abuse
‘People have this idea that something like this doesn’t happen in a middle-class place like Tavistock,” says 33-year-old Thomas Godwin, who until recently lived in the affluent Devon town. “People think they don’t have this kind of thing around here.” But they do. He is talking about anti-semitism. Two years ago Godwin, the head of marketing and communications for a charity, moved from London to Tavistock to be closer to his mother. Soon afterwards, he and his family became embroiled in a concerted campaign of anti-semitic harassment sparked by a decorative mezuzah they placed outside their home. Earlier this year the abuse escalated to the point where they fled in the middle of the night and moved to another town.
He cannot publicly go into too much detail, due to recent arrests, but admits the impact has been profound – not least being compelled to install a panic alarm and his mother having been forced from the home she hoped to retire in. Two weeks ago Godwin, who has been supported by the organisation Campaign Against Anti-semitism, was invited to the Jewish Film Festival in London to describe his experiences.
Bristol-born and a student in London, prior to moving to Devon Godwin had never experienced anti-semitic abuse. He believes his horrifying experience to be part of a deeper societal malaise. “The language and discourse in public life and in the wider community means that people feel emboldened and, somehow, as if you’re fair game they can go after,” he says.
In a week in which the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refused to apologise to Britain’s Jews for his failure to wipe out anti-semitism in his party following criticism by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, Godwin argues a wider point that politicians on all sides are failing to grasp: “If somebody is telling you as a minority group they feel diminished, hated, marginalised and in fear, you should take note, sit up and don’t look at them as the problem.”
From Tavistock to the Tube, where a man has been arrested following a video showing a passenger directing “horrific” abuse to two Jewish children wearing skullcaps on the Northern Line, to the streets of east London where footage this week showed a man attacking three Jewish children on the 253 bus and hurling their hats to the floor – anti-semitism is undeniably rearing its head all over the country. According to the Jewish charity, The Community Security Trust, antisemitic hate incidents across Britain rose by 16 per cent in 2018 to more than 1,650, the highest total since it began collecting data in 1984. The charity said they reflected “deepening divides in our country and our politics”. “It’s heartbreaking and hard to face that kind of abuse knowing historically and in the narrative of Jewish life where things like that lead,” says Godwin. “That you have to change your way of life and take measures to protect yourself… it should be a source of national shame.” Jewish politicians, particularly (though by no means exclusively) those within the Labour party, have found themselves on the front line of this battle for decency in public discourse. Last month the former Labour MP Louise Ellman, who has stepped down after a 20-year career in Parliament, spoke of her failure to persuade Corbyn to stamp out anti-semitism in a party she believes is “no longer a safe place for Jews”.
This week the Jewish Labour candidate for Stoke-on-trent, Ruth Smeeth, another critic of Corbyn’s stance on anti-semitism, revealed she has been forced to carry a panic button due to death threats she has received from the far Left and Right.
Another Jewish Labour candidate, Holly Kal-weiss, who is standing in Hertsmere in Hertfordshire, says she has been receiving “hurtful” personal attacks online. Earlier this week she was accosted at a hustings by an interloper peddling personal attacks.
“Tensions are really high,” she admits, adding that she has started to experience niggling concerns about the impact on her family and friends.
However, Kal-weiss insists that she doesn’t believe her party leader is an anti-semite, nor does she feel the Labour Party to be “institutionally anti-semitic”. After all, she points out: “I’m Jewish and if I thought those things I wouldn’t be running for the Labour Party.”
Other religious leaders have been quick to follow the Chief Rabbi, pointing out that they, too, are fighting against a growing tide of intolerance. If and when Boris Johnson faces Andrew Neil on the BBC (the interviewer who tried – and failed – four times to elicit an apology from the Labour leader to the Jewish community), he will, no doubt, be similarly grilled on the disturbing recent cases of Islamophobia reported within the Conservative Party.
Many victims blame the internet for the rise in hate crimes, pointing out that people who grow accustomed to sharing racist conspiracy theories behind the safety of their computer screens increasingly feel emboldened to act out in public.
A fortnight ago on a Saturday night in a kebab shop in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, 40-year-old Marlon Solomon came face-to-face with two men who hurled antisemitic abuse at him. The men, he says, shouted at him that they had evidence that the Holocaust was a myth and one of them performed a Nazi salute. “It’s clear all forms of extremism and racism are on the rise and the rise of conspiracy theories about Jews is particularly pertinent right across society,” he says.
Solomon believes the political mud-slinging is failing to improve matters. “We’re all too keen to blame the other side and point the finger elsewhere when it’s difficult to look at our own house.” No arrests have yet been made. Solomon, meanwhile, describes himself as deeply “shaken-up”, though “thankful I didn’t end up in A&E”.
That an innocent victim counts their lucky stars they avoided a hospital ward should have us all aiming for higher goals.
Additional reporting by Helen Chandler-wilde