After being kept classified for over 70 years, the contents of a file in the UK’s state archives labeled “Anti-Semitism in Great Britain” were made public last month. The documents in it, composed by the Ministry of Information—created at the outbreak of World War II to produce propaganda and maintain morale—record rising anti-Semitism throughout the country, some limited concern, a reluctance to take any action, and a general inclination on the part of officials to blame the Jews for encouraging prejudice against themselves. Robert Philpot writes:
During the course of the war, as the East End of London was subject to heavy German bombing and mothers and children were evacuated, many Jews were sent to live in areas without large Jewish populations. It has been estimated that half of those evacuated from the East End—the epicenter of the capital’s Jewish community at the time—were Jews.
[The ministry’s director general, Cyril] Radcliffe, suggested that resentment against Jewish evacuees was a factor in stoking tensions. Jews, he advised Minister of Information Brendan Bracken, had displayed “a lack of pleasant standards of conduct as evacuees.” A further source of complaints reported to him by the ministry’s regional civil servants was the allegation that Jews paid “inordinate attention to the possibilities of the ‘black market.’” . . . [Radcliffe] also appeared to fear that countering hatred of Jews might simply publicize anti-Semitic myths.
The Times of London, [which first publicized the documents], notes [that] “there was a price to pay for the British authorities’ tolerance of anti-Semitism” during the war. It cites the anti-Jewish rioting which occurred in 1947 in the UK after the Irgun hanged two British sergeants in Mandate-era Palestine in retaliation for the execution of three of its members.
Although nobody was killed, the violence . . . shocked many. . . . Moreover, while events in Palestine had been the immediate cause, the link between wartime anti-Semitism and its thankfully brief violent postwar manifestation was a clear one. Britain was already struggling under the weight of the cost of the war and reconstruction, with austerity imposed by the government and rationing and controls still largely in place. In 1947, these difficulties were compounded by a sharp economic downturn and rising unemployment.
In short, Philpot concludes, many Britons were happy to have someone to blame.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-holocaust-raged-uk-officials-blamed-jews-for-rising-wartime-anti-semitism/