ADOLESCENCE
A
popular pastime was dancing and there was a dance hall not far from
where we lived. Located in Devonshire St, between Bury New Road and
Leicester Road, it was only a short walk from home and as I grew up
and started to take an interest in the opposite sex, the dance hall
was the obvious place to go.
That part of Higher Broughton did
not have many Jews living there, so the dance hall was patronised by
both Jews and gentiles. It was accepted that Jewish and gentile
patrons did not mix. In fact, inside the hall, Jews would line one
side of the dance floor and gentiles the other, and never the twain
shall meet.
That was a period when the very idea of a Jew
having social intercourse with someone who was not Jewish, was
frowned upon, and to even think of a liaison of a more personal
nature would attract the utmost disgrace on the family concerned from
the rest of the community. Some fathers of the errant son or daughter
would go as far as to say prayers for the dead over the disgraced
member of the family.
The
rise of fascism in Europe,
with the advent in particular of Hitler
to power in Germany, led to an
increase in attacks on the Jews. Epitomised by the famous Battle
of Cable Street in
the East End of London in 1936 when the British
Union of Fascists tried
to march through the Jewish quarter. The people of the East End
rallied round their Jewish friends and neighbours and blocked the way
so that Moseley
and his thugs could not get
through despite the massive police presence. The Jewish establishment
along with the government and the official Labour
opposition, called on the
people to "ignore" the fascists, stay away was the advice
given to the people of the East End. So they were advised to allow
Moseley
and his thugs to march through
the densely populated Jewish area. Fortunately the people did not
listen to this policy of submission to fascist provocation. Instead,
under the leadership of the Communist
Party, the whole of
the community in the East End came out in support of their Jewish
friends and neighbours and fought back. The 4th of October 1936 was a
day when the slogan "The fascists shall not pass", with its
link to the Spanish
Civil War slogan
"Non Passaran", was acted upon by the people and was
successful. For a full account of the Battle
of Cable Street read Our
Flag Stays Red by
Phil
Piratin.
The
economic
crisis that broke
out in the United States of America at the end of 1929 and spread
throughout the capitalist world, grew steadily more serious with all
the main industrialised countries, such as Great Britain, the USA,
Germany, France and Japan suffering a crisis of 'overproduction'.
This led to mass unemployment as the capitalists tried to solve their
problem at the expense of the working class. In an effort to find
more markets for their industrial output, the Japanese looked towards
China as a potential area for expansion and in 1932 they marched into
Manchuria.
This was the opening of the Second
World War. The
commitment of the Communist
Party and the Young
Communist League to
the cause of anti-fascism naturally attracted people who saw the
fight against racism as the most important aspect of the political
struggle at that time. So, many young Jews, both from the working
class and the middle class, or petite bourgeoisie, joined the
Communist
Party or the Young
Communist League.
The Party, in its attempt to build a mass party of the working class,
welcomed all and sundry into its ranks as long as they wanted to take
part in the fight against fascism. I think a quotation from Harry
Pollitt, the then
General Secretary of the Communist
Party of Great
Britain with regard to the influence of the Left
Book Club is
appropriate here. "It rallied against fascism masses of people
whom it would not have been possible to organise otherwise... It
brought into activity thousands who had not previously been to a
political meeting or belonged to a political party". The Left
Book Club, as its
name implies, was an attempt to produce books for the left in
politics. The books, published by Victor
Gollancz Ltd. were
only available to members of the Club at very reasonable prices. As
well as the publication side of the Club's activities there were
discussion groups organised and a monthly news bulletin called Left
News was distributed with each book. This influx of members
without any knowledge or understanding of Marxism,
and who had no other aim in view other than the defeat of fascism,
led in the end to the resignation of masses of people when the
Imperialist powers, Britain and the USA, unleashed what came to be
known as the "Cold
War". Winston
Churchill, in his
speech
at Fulton USA,
began the "Cold
War" using the
slogan first used by the Nazi
Joseph
Goebbels, "An
Iron Curtain is coming down over Europe."; from then on the
attack on the Soviet
Union intensified.
The propaganda machine had learned from Goebbels
that if a lie is big enough,
proclaimed loudly enough and often enough, not only will it become
accepted as the truth, but the perpetrator himself will believe it in
the end. It is interesting to note that in 1938,the Cheetham branch
of the Young
Communist League had
190 members 95% of whom were Jewish.
On the 10th October 1951,
Harry
S. Truman,
President of the USA, signed "The
Mutual Security Act"
which provided $100 million, (a very large sum in those days),"to
finance any selected persons resident in the Soviet
Union, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania...or persons who
fled from these countries to bring them into units of the armed
forces supporting the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation or
for other purposes". The American senator who introduced part of
the act made it perfectly clear that "The Act is to render aid
to underground liberation movements in Communist countries",
(The Times 22nd December 1951).
The thousands who had
supported the Communist
Party in its fight
against fascism,
had supported the Soviet
Union in its war
against Nazism,
and had poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into Mrs Churchill's
Funds for Russia campaign, were turned round and became supporters of
the anti-Soviet crusade whipped up by those well-known lovers of
freedom and democracy, Radio
Free Europe and Radio Liberty,
both of whom it was revealed in 1967, were funded by the CIA.
The
lack of Marxist
education and the narrow base
on which their membership was founded, proved to be one of the causes
of the eventual destruction of the Communist
Party of Great Britain.
My
elder brother Leon had won a scholarship to what was called a High
School at that time. This was around 1928-30,when unemployment was
high and Dad would not have much work. So it proved to be very hard
to make ends meet and it was decided that Leon should come out of
school and try to find work in order to contribute to the family
income. He started work in the clothing industry as an apprentice
cutter. Cheetham Hill and Strangeways had many small clothing
factories producing, raincoats, suits etc., and it was in one of
these that Leon started work. He never liked it and often went off in
search of employment more suited to his temperament. He had been
taught to play the violin
by Dad and was keen to use his
music to earn a living. There was one memorable incident when he must
have had an argument with Dad. This often happened, Leon was not one
who took kindly to authority and would often have a bust up over some
breach of Dad's code of conduct. On this particular occasion he
slammed out of the house taking his violin with him. I can't remember
how long he was missing but he was eventually found on Blackpool
beach playing for his
supper.
For a short period he got a job as a salesman working
for one of the national newspapers. Today this job is done on
television, advertising the paper and offering all kinds of
incentives to get new readers. Before the advent of TV salesmen went
out knocking on doors to introduce the paper and offering prizes if
the paper was taken on a regular basis for a certain length of time.
The job suited Leon as he was always good with words. He travelled
all over the north-west of the country and came home with tales of
the people he had met, which he told in the dialect of the area he
had been in. He had an aptitude for language and a talent for
storytelling. Whenever the opportunity arose he took centre stage and
could hold the attention of his audience for hours with his tales
always embellished with the appropriate dialect.
My second
brother Conrad was born in the front bedroom of the house in Dudley
Street, November 25th 1928. Mother was attended during the birth by a
midwife known as Old Mother Black, well known in the Jewish community
for her skills in midwifery. Con, as he came to be known, attended
Waterloo Road school and soon came to the attention of his teachers
as he was quite bright and when he won a scholarship to North
Manchester Grammar School, his teacher, Miss Vitofsky, came to the
house to convince my parents that he should be allowed to go to the
Grammar School as she was of the opinion that he was university
material. It was a very hard decision for them to make as Dad was by
then not working. His health had got much worse, the asthma and
bronchitis weakened him to such an extent that he lost the strength
to work. There was an incident that will remain with me always, the
one and only time I saw my Father weep. He was making a frame for a
photograph, carving it out of a piece of wood. The effort took so
much out of him that he had to stop every few minutes to take breath
and he broke down and cried. To see a man like him, who had worked
hard all his life, in his time he had been as "strong as an ox",
break down and cry over such a small matter made a deep impression on
me. I still have that frame.
Miss Vitofsky was proved correct
in her assessment of Con's academic abilities. He went on to gain a
BA Cantab. at Cambridge
University in
Biochemistry, then went on to Manchester
University to get
his MA and eventually his Doctorate. When he took his degree at
Cambridge he applied for a job at the Lister
Institute in London
where he hoped to carry on his work in Biochemistry. He was turned
down for the position despite having all the necessary
qualifications. He was convinced that the reason for not getting the
appointment was racial prejudice. With a name like Kaiserman it was
obvious that he was not a WASP, as the Americans would put it. (White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant).
Life in that small terraced house in
Dudley Street made a lasting impression on me. Thinking back I am
reminded of the many pros and cons of such a way of life. The
close-knit family, including at one time my Mother's parents who
occupied that front room downstairs that was put to so many
uses.
The memory plays strange tricks. I don't remember how
long my Mother's parents lived with us but two things remain with me.
My Grandfather, or, to use the vernacular, Zaida, in order to help
bring in a little extra money, sold fresh fish to the local
housewives. He had a strange little wooden cart with three iron
wheels, which he called his 'fish vagel'.
My memory of my
Grandmother, or Bubba as of a slightly built little woman, hair
pulled back in a bun, very quiet, she hardly spoke and when she did
it was in Yiddish.
She could speak a little English but would normally converse with my
parents in Yiddish.
She had a liking for sweets and often sent me to the sweet shop up
the street to buy her a bag of her favourites, which, if my memory
serves me right, were "pear
drops". One
day she sent me on this errand, I would be about ten years old at the
time, and like most youngsters, full of mischief. So, instead of
buying my Bubba's favourite pear
drops, I bought
some that I liked and on the way home I ate one. When I got home and
gave her the sweets she told me off for not getting her favourites
and I had to go back to the shop to change them for the ones she
wanted. Off I went back to the shop and to my horror the shopkeeper
put the bag on the scales, he had obviously had this happen before.
Of course the bag was light as I had eaten a sweet. The shopkeeper
accused me of stealing a sweet, which of course I denied but he took
no notice and on weighing out the desired pear
drops reduced the
contents to make up for the one I had pinched.
Mother came
from Austria
and always said she was born
in Vienna, but we had no proof of that. She was very young when she
came and went to school here so her English had no trace of an
accent. Dad came from Russia when he was six months old so he as well
went to school here and spoke English like my Mother with no trace of
an accent.
Of course my Grandparents had no English when they
arrived and the immigration officers had difficulty in understanding
what was said in reply to the questions they put. The result of this
inability to understand each other was that many of the names that
some of the immigrants families have to-day bear little resemblance
to the original, or if they do it is quite accidental. For instance,
our name is spelt in the Germanic style KAISERMAN, but the family
originated in Russia
and so the spelling was
KASZERMAN. This resulted during the First
World War in
attacks on my paternal Grandfather's shop where he carried on the
business of a Cabinet Maker. The shop window had the name KAISERMAN
CABINET MAKER emblazoned on it. This naturally attracted the
attention of those who saw all foreigners as a threat and in
particular anyone with a German sounding name and what could be more
German than the name of the KAISER. That window was smashed more than
once during that period.
It is obvious that the immigration
officer spelt the name as he heard it, little did he know, or care
for that matter, what trouble lay in store for the family being
tagged with the name of the future enemy.
I had very little
contact with my Father's parents despite the fact that they lived
quite close by, yet I am often reminded of them in a rather curious
way. Clare my wife, and I love that part of the north-west known as
the Lake
District between
Cumbria and Scotland where as the name suggests, the lakes and
mountains create a wonderland of scenery unparalleled anywhere. We
have spent many happy hours in the Lake
District and one
particular place we love is Grasmere
where the poet William
Wordsworth lived.
The house he lived in from 1815 till he died in 1850 is in the
village of Grasmere
and is called Rydal
Mount. Now for some
reason that I know not, the synagogue that my Grandfather went to was
called "Rydal Mount Synagogue" and was next door to the
shop in Elizabeth Street where he lived and worked. So whenever we
visit Grasmere
I am reminded of that tall
figure with the flowing white beard who was my Grandfather.
I have
no recollection of his wife who died in 1925 when I was only three
years old. For some reason we were not very close with that side of
the family. Dad was the only boy out of eight children. There was no
love lost between Dad and his sisters, they never seemed to get on
together and as most of them left Manchester to live in places as far
apart as Leeds, London, Hull and Blackpool, we saw little of them
except at weddings, funerals or barmitzvahs,
when a Jewish boy comes of age that 13 and is accepted into the
community as an adult who can then take part in the religious
services at the synagogue.
I spent some time with one of my
aunts who lived in Harrogate.
She had married a man from Leeds, Abe Morris. He was in business as a
clothing manufacturer and had a beautiful house in Harrogate
surrounded by a huge garden
which to me at that time, I was probably about 10 or 11 years old,
was something out of this world. Plus they had a large Airedale
dog, which was something I
never dreamed of having. It's strange how memory plays tricks, I can
remember that dog so well as though it was sitting beside me, but I
can't remember its name.
We moved out of the house in Dudley
Street early in 1939. My Father had seen some new houses being built
near Heaton
Park. Part of the
ribbon
development that
was taking place all over the country and the idea of a house with a
garden in an area of green open space, was very attractive. If my
memory serves me correctly the price was £325 with a deposit of
£25 to secure it. So the decision was taken to move. One very
important job that had to be done before we could move any of our
furniture was to have it all fumigated as the house in Dudley Street
was infested with bed
bugs. This was
common in working-class houses and I can still feel the horror of
living with that infestation.
The new house was what was called a
"Sunshine" house as it had one large room from front to
back, a small entrance hall and a small kitchen on the ground floor.
Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a bathroom. The big attraction
was the garden at the rear, approximately 100 feet long and about 30
feet wide. This was something we never thought we would have, all
that open space. Dad soon got down to the job of turning that empty
plot into a garden to be proud of. It was to prove a valuable asset
to us when war broke out and Dad answered the call to "Dig
for Victory".
He was still at work and fit enough to turn that plot of land into a
garden that gave us both beauty in the flowers he grew and food from
the kitchen garden.
The joy of eating vegetables straight from
the ground and in particular, fresh strawberries, was a wonderful
experience. He had no previous background of gardening and it was
remarkable how well he did. There are about 30 houses in Newington
Avenue, a small cul-de-sac just off the main road from Manchester to
Middleton, about 500 yards from Heaton
Park. Across the
street from us was a family whose name escapes me. The reason for
mentioning them was the way their vegetable garden was fed with
liquid manure. That manure was made from human waste mixed with
water. It was something that we had never heard of nor even
contemplated, but he grew some beautiful vegetables. The idea of
using human waste seems repulsive to us but there are many examples
of its use in history.
Heaton
Park is the biggest
municipal park in Europe and is completely surrounded by a wall,
making it the biggest walled park in Europe. One section of the wall
runs along Sheepfoot Lane, which is about 150 yards from our house in
Newington Avenue.
I had by this time left school and started work.
I had always wanted to follow in my Father's footsteps as he had
followed his father and go into the woodworking industry. The smell
of timber being worked was like a perfume to me and I still love the
aroma of sawn wood.
Dad tried to find me an apprenticeship in
some of the workshops where he had contacts but there were no
openings. As he was trying to find a job for me and I was leaving
school before long, he saw an advertisement in a barber's shop for an
apprentice to learn Gents' Hairdressing. It was important that I
start work as soon as I left school and so he took me along to the
shop and I was taken on and started work on the Monday morning having
left school the previous Friday. So I entered a new and somewhat
exciting world, the world of the male ego, where they let their hair
down in more ways than one.
As the term "lather boy"
suggests, my job was to prepare the customers who wanted a shave by
lathering their face ready for the barber to shave. I also had to
keep the salon clean, sweep up the cut hair, wash the basins and
slowly being taught how to handle the customers. For all this I was
paid the princely sum of two shillings (10p ) per week, plus any tip
the customer might give me.
We were still living in Dudley
Street when I started work and as it was only a short distance from
home I walked to work every day. I soon got used to the work and
having some money in my pocket. I gave my Mother the two shillings
wages and kept any money I made in tips, so I usually had a few
shillings to spend on myself. There was not a lot of money coming
into the house so the few shillings I got in tips from the customers
were very welcome.
This entry into a world of grown-ups who
were not members of the family was both exciting and fascinating. I
began to learn a language that I had not heard at home, the language
of swear words. I don't remember my parents using "bad language"
and the subject of sex was never mentioned. I was never introduced to
the "facts of life" or the "birds and the bees",
so when I went to work in the barber's shop and both my boss and the
customers quite openly discussed their sex lives, and in fact boasted
about their various conquests with all the details, it opened my eyes
to a world I did not know existed. Condoms, or, as they were called
in those days, "French Letters", were sold in the shop and
I soon got used to asking the customers if they wanted "something
for the week-end", a euphemism for a packet of three.
After
a couple of weeks at this first job I felt that I was not being
taught the trade as I should have been. My employer seemed more
interested in the sexual exploits of his customers than in teaching
me. So I left and found work in another barber's shop with a man I
came to respect both as my employer and my teacher. He had two
brothers who also were barbers and had their own shops and I
eventually worked for each of them during my apprenticeship. This
gave me a much wider understanding of the art of Gents' Hairdressing
than I would otherwise have had.
It was whilst working for Sam
Chernick in his shop in Clarence Street off Cheetham Hill Road, that
I met another man who was to have a great influence on my future. His
name was Mr Hecht.
Mr Hecht was a Russian Jew. He used to come
into the barber's shop for attention and for some reason took a
liking to me. I believe he had been a member of the Communist Party
in Russia but have no proof of that, but a Bolshevik
he certainly was. He
introduced me to the world of Socialist politics. Whenever he came
into the shop he would talk to me about political issues.
The
one phrase that I always remember him using was "You will see
Socialism, I am too old but you, you will see it". Well, in a
way he was right, I saw the attempt to build a Socialist Society in
the Soviet Union when we went on a visit in 1980, and also when we
went to the German Democratic Republic, but more of that later.
I
had joined a boys club called the Jewish
Lads Brigade probably
when I was about 13 or 14 years old. The club had premises in
Elizabeth Street, Hightown,. The building was a very substantial one
with rooms for various activities. There was a billiard room, table
tennis a large hall used for gymnastics and basketball. Outside was a
football pitch, which was used both as a sports ground and,
importantly, for quasi-military drill. For as the name suggests, this
was a cadet brigade.
The club had been founded by the local
Jewish bourgeoisie with the express intention of getting the
youngsters off the streets and giving them some form of discipline.
It offered facilities that could only be had in private clubs at a
fairly high premium. The membership fee was nominal as the cost of
running the club was subsidised by the patrons. Such people as the
Henriques family and other wealthy Jewish businessmen.
Members
were expected to take part in military drill, dressed in a khaki
uniform and with rifles.
Every year a camp was organised,
usually at a seaside resort, and for a small sum the members went to
spend a week by the sea. We looked on it as a cheap holiday but in
fact there was a more sinister aspect to it. The week was spent under
canvas, organised in a similar way to the regular army. We were
controlled by Officers, these were older members given the various
army ranks. Sergeants and so on. The day started with a parade when
orders were issued for the various jobs to be done around the camp.
Boys were given tasks such as kitchen duty, keeping the camp clean
etc. The whole week was organised along military lines,
indoctrinating the boys with a militaristic attitude.
The
Manchester Battalion regularly joined with the Glasgow Brigade at the
annual camp and it has to be admitted, that when the Glasgow
contingent marched from the station to camp dressed in the full
Scottish regalia, with the pipe band at the head of the march, they
caused quite a stir.
The week away from the restrictions of
home meant that the lads ran a bit wild and the Officers had quite a
job to keep them in check. But I don't remember any serious
misdemeanours.
In 1936 the Spanish
Civil War broke out
and under the influence of my mentor, Mr Hecht, I began to become
disillusioned with the Jewish
Lads Brigade. I
began to see it in its true colours, as a recruiting ground for the
military. Instilling into the boys a militaristic attitude and an
acceptance of the society in which they lived. Uncritical obedience
to King and Country.
This was not for me, so I left the
Brigade and looked for a more suitable outlet for my energies.