‘Somehow Getting Their Own Back on Hitler’: British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1960–1967

Abstract

This article considers the extent to which the Holocaust galvanized British antifascism in the 1960s. It explores whether the genocide surfaced in Jewish antifascists’ motivations and rhetoric but goes beyond this to assess the Holocaust’s political capital in wider antifascism and anti-racism. The article considers whether political coalitions were negotiated around Holocaust memory, for example, by analysing whether Jewish antifascism intersected with the black and Asian communities of Smethwick and Southall respectively who were targeted by the far right in 1964. Using archival materials and newly-collected oral histories, the article surveys organisations including the Jewish Board of Deputies, the 62 Group, Yellow Star Movement and Searchlight newspaper. It will argue that the Holocaust played a more important role in 1960s’antifascism than has been recognised. Jewish groups fragmented around the lessons of the genocide for their antifascism. The Holocaust influenced race relations legislation and became a metonym for extreme racist violence.