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World

Thatcher and the Jews

Margaret Thatcher was a staunch defender of Jewish causes and a supporter of Israel in her political career, unlike most Tory politicians before her

By Charles C. Johnson|December 28, 2011 7:00 AM|47comments
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Margaret Thatcher, October 1986. (Keystone/Getty Images)

Once she became prime minister, Thatcher appointed a government of outsiders. “The thing about Margaret’s Cabinet,” Macmillan would later say, “is that it includes more Old Estonians than it does Old Etonians.” (Eton, the famous prep school, required that its students’ fathers be British by birth, so as to keep out the Jews.) British politics had always been a club for genteel gentiles; Thatcher wanted to make it a meritocracy.

Thatcher appointed whomever she liked to positions in her government, whatever their religious or family background. Chaim Bermant, the Anglo-Jewish writer, probably went too far when he said Thatcher has “an almost mystical faith in Jewish abilities,” but he wasn’t completely off the mark. In addition to Nigel Lawson, she appointed Victor Rothschild as her security adviser, Malcolm Rifkind to be secretary of state for Scotland, David Young as minister without portfolio, and Leon Brittan to be trade and industry secretary. David Wolfson, nephew of Sir Isaac Wolfson, president of Great Universal Stores, Europe’s biggest mail-order company, served as Thatcher’s chief of staff. Her policies were powered by two men—Keith Joseph, a member of Parliament many thought would one day be the first prime minister who was a practicing Jew, and Alfred Sherman, a former communist turned free-market thinker.

With Thatcher, Joseph and Sherman formed the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974 to inject classical liberal ideas into Britain’s Conservative Party. Joseph, son of one of the wealthiest families in Britain, wanted to “fundamentally affect a political generation’s way of thinking.” It wasn’t enough to win elections, he believed; there had to be a change in how people thought of politics. He took his cue from his ideological nemesis, the Fabian Socialists, a group of British intellectuals who wanted to make Britain a socialist country through gradual change. Joseph would copy the Fabians’ style by writing policy papers, giving speeches, and writing to famous Brits to try to change public opinion. One of those forays became a co-written book, Equality, published in 1979, which argued that equality of opportunity “requires that no external barrier shall prevent an individual from exploiting his talents. No laws shall permit some men to do what is forbidden by others.” It was Thatcherite to the core.

***

Thatcher’s philo-Semitism went beyond the people she appointed to her government; it had clear political implications as well. She made Jewish causes her own, including by easing the restrictions on prosecuting Nazi war criminals living in Britain and pleading the cause of the Soviet Union’s refuseniks. She boasted that she once made Soviet officials “nervous” by repeatedly bringing up the refuseniks’ plight during a single nine-hour meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, “The Soviets had to know that every time we met their treatment of the refuseniks would be thrown back at them,” she explained in her book The Downing Street Years. Thatcher also worked to end the British government’s support for the Arab boycott of Israel. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Thatcher criticized Tory Prime Minister Ted Heath’s refusal to supply Israel with military parts or even allow American planes to supply Israel from British airfields. In 1986, Thatcher became the first British prime minister to visit Israel, having previously visited twice as a member of parliament.

Yet despite her support for Israel, and though she rejected the stridently pro-PLO stance of some members of her government, she believed Israel needed to trade land for peace, wishing in her memoirs that the “Israeli emphasis on the human rights of the Russian refuseniks was matched by proper appreciation of the plight of the landless and stateless Palestinians.” She also condemned Israel’s bombing of Osirak, Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor, in 1981. “[The Osirak attack] represents a grave breach of international law,” she said in an interview with London’s Jewish Chronicle in 1981. Israel’s bombing of another country could lead to “international anarchy.”

In fairness, Thatcher wasn’t alone in this position. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to United Nations at the time, compared Israel’s bombing of the nuclear reactor to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned the raid. “Just because a country is trying to manufacture energy from nuclear sources, it must not be believe that she is doing something totally wrong,” Thatcher said in the House of Commons. Iraq’s facility, she noted, had just been inspected and so it was particularly unhelpful for Israel to have attacked. Reagan agreed—at least, officially. “Technically,” Reagan wrote years later, “Israel had violated an agreement not to use U.S.-made weapons for offensive purposes, and some cabinet members wanted me to lean hard on Israel because it had broken this pledge … but I sympathized with [Israeli Prime Minister Menachem] Begin’s motivations and privately believed we should give him the benefit of the doubt.”

That Thatcher did not give Israel the benefit of the doubt is disconcerting, though she made good by later calling for the liberation of Kuwait and eventually the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But in this Thatcher ought not to have let the mandarins in the Foreign Office get the better of her judgment: She should have trusted her philo-Semitic instincts.

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Charles C. Johnson is author of the forthcoming Coolidge: Then and Now.
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  • Bill Pearlman

    I saw her speak at a JNF dinner in Chicago. Wonderful woman and a great historical figure. Shorter than I would have thought though.

  • David B.

    Maggie loved freedom, and she was not afraid to pick up a gun in defense of it.

  • David B.

    Malcolm Rifkind would go on to become Foreign Secretary.

  • Bob Schwalbaum

    Just getting into Claire Berlinski’s “why Margaret Thatcher Matters”.
    Since Berlinski is apparnetly Jewish I’m looking for a Jewish angle to the book.. none so far.
    But there is no doubt that in the long reach of history.. “Maggie” Thatcher WILL matter.

  • Herb

    It is good that a topic so long ignored is finally being written about. Thatcher was quite an extraordinary woman and leader who has been demonized by the left. Historians of the future will see through that.

  • HannaH

    I had no idea what her opinion was on Jews are Israel. Till in a interview she gave. Where she stated. That the Europeans got the idea of individual freedoms from the Jews. If all equal under G-d laws. You had to be equal under man’s laws

  • Linda Hepner

    A sad problem with entrepreneurship is that inevitably some parts of the less bright and eager population are left out in the cold. I witnessed that when suddenly there were Dickensian scenes of children sleeping under bridges during her time as PM or just after. This pitiful state of affairs leads to cries for economic equality which is either doomed by autocracy or messed up by over-wellmeaning democracy. However, on the whole she stands out as a great leader and this story shows also her steadfast drive towards what she believed in. Thank you for this illuminating article and hats off to Maggie and her principles.

  • Izzy

    A Hebrewfile she may have been but she was a little hard on the working man.

  • Jules

    She was in a few short words to the working man the iron cow…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_4UnFfTlL0

    Guess not many of you guys were in London in ’82.

  • jacob arnon

    What is a “Hebrewfile?” Did you mean Hebrewphile, Izzy.

    Yes, she wasn’t good for the workers, but noe one is perfect.

    However, in her day she did free the economy and created many opportunities for lower and middle class people that weren’t there before.

    She wasn’t a snub or pro the upper classes either which is why they hated her.

  • jacob arnon

    Well, well the Iranian agent Jules is still here.

    Jules thinks that Iran is a working class haven.

  • lothianscot

    ERROR: In paragraph 5, the English politician referred to
    as Hore-Belish actually carried the name Hore-Belisha!

  • Roy

    On the basis of reading his diaries, I don’t think Alan Clark’s remark was an indication of antisemitism so much as an opinion about how the appointment would play domestically and internationally. For all his manifold foibles and penchant for outrageous remarks, he did have seem to have a number of Jewish friends.

    Did I miss Macmillan’s line about replacing old Etonians with old Estonians? Nasty fellow.

  • henry gottlieb

    start a useless war
    reduce social programs

    JEWISH VALUES
    ????????????????????????????

  • Roy

    Actually, come to think of it, it was Saatchi & Saatchi, Jews from a family of Iraqi origin I think, who did Thatcher’s famous poster, featuring a photo of an unemployment line and the tag, ‘Labour is not Working.’

  • Jack Weiss

    Talk about political myopia or shades of Phillip Roth ["but is it good for the Jews?"]? All I can say Mr. Johnson, is that Margaret Thatcher –like Ronald Reagan– was a terrible leader. Under Ms. Thatcher child poverty TRIPLED in 10 years, from one in nine to one in three. Was it good for the Jews? No – it was lousy for the Jews and everyone else. You seem to be in love with autocratic right-wingers while ignoring the vile things they do. That she was personally clean of anti-Semitism is commendable, but her disdain for democratic processes and contempt for the plight of the working people lead to race riots, high unemployment, and the rise of street gangs. Was it good for the Jews when she decided to aid the Khmer Rouge? Or was it good for the Jews when she fought the stupid Falkland Islands War? Was the high price of massive social unrest caused by her policies good for the Jews?

  • David B.

    Maggie brought the UK into the 20th Century and out of the claws of the horrific 70s which were dominated by the Trade Unions. They had black outs in the UK because the left was so incompetent.
    Thatcher literally saved her country from becoming a 3rd world basket case. I grew up in the 80s in Londre. It was filthy, the streets were strewn with rubbish, there was paralyses of the political system and she came with a sledge hammer and knocked some good old fashioned sense in to the system which was broken. There was huge prosperity for many in the UK. Not for the “working classes” but that had it coming anyway. Arthur Scargill and and all that. Please stop romanticizing the broken proletariat. She set the tracks to modernize the UK.
    A brief history of the UK during the 70s says it all.
    And Jules, you dig her?
    You are the typical far left anti-Zionist. Sickening. Like fucking Pol Pot.

  • David B.

    BBC link about what the 70s were like
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6729683.stm
    Thatcher came “out” of this.

    Quote: ” Then I lived in the North East near Newcastle and I vividly remember my grandmother and I walking from one shop to another in search of candles to buy. All were sold out. Innovatively butchers placed string down cartons of dripping which we bought eventually. These worked although the smell and risk of fire made them less practical than candles. I loved the bread strike as my grandmother could make proper bread in her oven and it was better than anything you could buy in the shops. I remember the smell which lingered in the house was beautiful (the smell of the dripping candles in contrast was not). As a child it was exciting to sit with the family around candles and with no TV we had no choice but to indulge in the art of conversation.
    David Stoker, Guildford “

  • greeneyeshade

    Shame the old Liberal Party of, e.g., Macaulay and Gladstone wasn’t around in its old form in Thatcher’s time. With her middle-class, Methodist background and entrepreneurial outlook she’d have been a natural fit. How this squares with the fact that it was the Tory Benjamin Disraeli who argued for Jewish civil rights, I leave to those more learned than I.

  • Jules

    Jacob, stop jacking off and get a life.

  • Jules

    This fawning fanboy praise of Maggie Thatcher is the funniest thing I’ve ever read not because its boyish ballyhoo but because it has that fawning element of fantastic science fiction in it.

    G’day mate.

  • Richard D.

    The left in the UK clearly hates Thatcher for the reasons we like her. The government of Gordon Brown handed over a murderer to the former government of Libya in exchange for oil concessions. Did Alan Rickman write a play condemn this contemptible act? Did the Guardian condemn it? Looking back at British Prime Ministers, unfortunately she seems to be the last with moral courage.

  • philip mann

    She faced off against the union, closed mines and positions that were just make-work projects,and gave control of the country back to the people who vote , and not just to Tony Scargill. It worked, even in a class -ridden society such as England , and even if it got some folks cheesed off,it was worth it.

  • BP

    Baroness Thatcher was not really a Tory at all. Her father was an old Gladstonian Liberal. He never joined the Tories. Airey Neave could not find a candidate to settle his score with Sir Edward Heath and so Great Britain was lucky enough to find its greatest Prime Minister. Airey Neave was pretty well the first and last Tory Establishment politician who figured in her rise to power, as opposed to seeking to block it.

    The last PM like her was Lord Palmerston. But it needs to be realized that once she got the Tories out of the woods, they got rid of her.

    Sir Denis Thatcher had gone to Mill Hill – a cradle of Non-Conformity. Even Sir Gordon Reece was the son of a car salesman and went to a Roman Catholic school.

    Baroness Thatcher’s governments were the last 19th Century Liberal Party governments that Great Britain is ever likely to have. The historical anomaly saved Great Britain from its destruction.

  • David B.

    Jules,
    a great English word comes to mind when thinking of you, and that is cunt .

  • shushan

    talk about re writing history! the tablet has just lost all credibility, thatcher is an enemy of israel and of jews

  • Yehuda kaplan

    Wow I never kne all this about thatcher

  • David Samuels

    She was a domestic disaster in many ways. Labor was running short on the fumes, but the answer was a tripling of child povery in a mere decade.

    It’s easy for some old, fat Jews here to say ‘it was worth it’.
    It wasn’t. There’s nothing ‘Jewish’ about glorifying and seeking suffering, Tikkun Olam is the opposite of that.

    As for the foreign policy; sure she was pro-Israel and the rest. But you can’t only judge a political leader on that.

  • Roy

    Ha-

    “England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and Roses….”

  • Mike Wood

    Good article but a little unfair on Harold Macmillan.

    Eton did not require students’ fathers to have been born in Britain. That was only a qualification for people to apply for the King’s Scholarship (currently about 70 out of more than 1,000 students at Eton). Macmillan had been a King’s Scholar himself and personally intervened to get the rules changed specifically because he beleived them to have anti-semitic undertones. Within literally weeks of Macmillan’s intervention, the rules were changed.

  • JamesPhiladelphia

    Yehuda Avner wrote the recent book The Prime Ministers. He was a speech writer for Menachem Begin. They had a state visit and dinner with Margaret Thatcher and her foreign secretary. They were quite antisemitic. So much so that Menachem Begin decided never again to come and visit England.

  • JamesPhiladelphia

    Yehuda Avner was a speech writer and confidant to five Israeli prime ministers. He has written the book titled The Prime Ministers. He describes on page 505 and on, the private dinner given by Margaret Thatcher England’s prime minister to Menachem Begin, Israel’s prime minister. Present also at the dinner were Lord Peter Carrington, England’s foreign minister, and Yehuda Avner. The dinner was kosher, and like a shabath style arrangement, bread covered and like prayers done by Avner. Margaret Thatcher pointed she had served as representative of an area with majority of British Jews. She pointed out the closeness of her Christian church and the neighboring synagogue.
    All these cozy environment of Jewish sympathy disappeared during facts on the ground. When Lord Carrington aggressively criticized the building of settlements in Judea and Samaria with full support of Thatcher. Begin emphatically said that it was legal, and necessary for the defense of Israel the settlements. And said that only Israel could defend itself alone to protect Jewish lives. And reminded how the allies, during WWII, refused to bomb the rail tracks carrying thousands of Jews
    to. Auschwitz. Thatcher at that point said she supported that policy, since the main point was to defeat Germany. Begin said that the war was practically won and diverting a few bombers would have saved several hundred thousands Jews.

    The scenario was visceral . Margaret Thatcher could be nice to Jews, church/synagogue, kosher cozy food. But when it came to vital protection only the Jews could protect themselves. With lord Carrington applying a big torch. Lord Carrington then said “somehow, your little country, evokes all sorts of high emotional fevers. Stirs up the blood so
    to speak”. Yehuda Avner says “when did genuine criticism end and bigotry begin?”
    Menachem Begin decided never again to visit England.

  • David B.
  • Jules

    David, a word would come to mind with regard to you, but perhaps more than just two. Those words would most likely be foul mouthed banal and blind, with a filthy mouth and a filthy mind.

    Charmed as always.

  • Jules

    BP, it’s a gladdening sight to see that somebody knows their British history. Cheers.

  • Rita Cohn

    Mount Horeb was NOT where the Ten Commandments were given to Moses ; that was Mount Sinai . Mount Horeb was were Moses is thought to have died , from where he saw the promised land but could not enter .

  • Gaby Charing

    Hore-Belisha, not Hore-Belish.

  • Bob Vance

    “but his relations with Jews were always frosty, the mark of a genuflecting anti-Semitism common among the Tory grandees.”

    Seriously, can you be labeled Anti-Semitic just because you don’t have perfect relations with Jewish people? That’s really stepping out of the line.

  • JamesPhiladelphia

    When Lord Carrington britain’s foreign minister to Margaret Thatcher, says to Menachem Begin, prime minister of Israel :” somehow ,your little country , evokes all sorts of high emotional fevers. Stirs up the blood so to speak”

    I wonder if Lord Carrington , and Margaret Thatcher, would speak to any Arab oil minister, or leader, that way.

    To Lord Carrington, and to the foreign ministry in Britain, oil was more important than the tiny country that had all sorts of emotional fevers.

    Menachem Begin was talking of survival of the Jewish people, which was no top priority for Lord Carrington or Margaret Thatcher. Even if Margaret Thatcher had sympathy for the British Jews.
    That Lord Carrington was no friend of Israel it was obvious. That Margaret Thatcher played the needs of Britain, was obvious. After all Israel is a tiny country. Full of emotional fevers. You can not drive your cars with emotional fevers. Stirs up the blood so to speak.
    Now that the British foreign ministry tried to block Jews from getting jobs in the ministry, and that brings us to prime minister McMillan and his cronies, yes you can call it unfriendly to Jews, maybe even Anti-Semitic, or all around..
    But Britain is kind of a funny country. When I visited France in the 60′s, I was surprised that the French disliked more the British than the Germans. In spite that the Germans occupied France for four years.
    And the British and Americans liberated France from the Germans.
    Go and figure.
    It is a new year 2012. The Mayas predicted it will be the end. They were good at calculating distances to the planets and stars.
    Fasten your seat belts, it is going to be a bumpy ride.
    New year. Year of change. To all Happy New Year 2012.

  • Alexander Stormont

    Charles C. Johnson is mistaken in his belief that Eton College deliberately kept out Jewish pupils after the ending of legal disabilities against Jewish Britons in the nineteenth century. I was a pupil there from 1970-1974 (before Mrs T’s “Estonian” cabinet) with several Jewish contemporaries, as well as many pupils born to “non-native” fathers. My own father says that the same was true when he was a pupil there in the 1940s.

    I cannot ever remember reading such a rule in the “School Rules”. The School’s Statutes contained bizarre anomalies (for example, while I was there, a Roman Catholic teacher told me he was ineligible for a particular post on religious grounds; it was only open to Episcopalians) but nothing specifically anti-Jewish.
    As the British Jewish community was founded over 350 years ago, a rule of only admitting sons of British-born fathers would have been an ineffective means of running an anti-Semitic entry policy.

    British politics indeed contained few Jewish politicians before Mrs T’s day, but please remember not only that the Jewish community numbers only some 300,000 out of a population of 60 million and but also that a political career is not compulsory! That said, the UK would be a happier country if Sir Malcolm Rifkind was in the Cabinet.

  • David B.
  • DF

    Mrs. Thatcher said on more than one occasion that her favorite religious figure was the late chief rabbi, Emanuel Jacobowitz.

    The best thing about her was that, despite being a woman and saying funny lines about it taking a woman to get things done, Mrs. Thatcher despised feminism. In fact she prefered the term “Mrs.”, rather than “Ms.” She never used her maiden name or hyphenated it. She hated, in her own words, “strident females”, and cooked dinner at home as in a regular family until her time no longer permitted it.

    I do not know how this new movie from left wing hollywood will attempt to portray it, but if its anything other than the above, its just another holywood fabrication.

  • David B.
  • ESTHER LIWAZER

    LONG BEFORE I WAS AWARE OF THE IRON LADY’S INVOLVEMENT WITH JEWS, I HELD A DEEP RESPECT AND ADMIRATION FOR HER PASSION IN U.K.POLITICS WHILE LIVING A CONVENTIAL HOME AND FAMILY

  • Sindhi

    A leader has got to be neutral, siding with one country to show affectionate or emotional belief should be considered part of corruption and influence. She has left no legacy other than going on war with Argentina, rather than seeking help of U.N. of which U.K. was one of founding members.

  • Sindhi

    Well Well Well Israeli agent Jacob is here, after getting excited to read views share by one of warmongering politicians like his own state.

  • BenChazan

    I can confirm  what you have written about Margaret Thatcher.   I was the first Jew to stand as a Conservative candidate  for the Middlesex County Council in Finchley.  Much to the delight of Mrs Thatcher I defeated the only Liberal Member on th one hundred and thirteen membership Council, thus overturning the Labour Party”s control of the Council and making it Tory held. This victory made a decisive difference to her constituencey which had a Liberal Mayor with a majority of Liberal Councillors and helped her to retain her seat in Parliament before became Prime Minister. It was my duty to visit her every month in the House of Commons and she came with me to the annual  service for politicians at the Hampstead Garden Synagogue. I was instrumental in advising Mrs Thatcher not only on the affairs of the Jewish Community but  persuaded her to send her son Mark to my alma mater Harrow School.    Margaret Thatcher made Malcom Rifkind .M.P. herForeign Secetary. His predecessors were The Marquess of Reading, Britains’s highesr ranking Jewish nobleman, (Liberal)  and Lord Shinwell  ( Labour).I do remember a  Jewish Head Boy Of Eton just after the SEcond World War.                                         Stephen Stout- Kerr, former County Cuncillor for East Finchley.

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Thatcher and the Jews

Margaret Thatcher was a staunch defender of Jewish causes and a supporter of Israel in her political career, unlike most Tory politicians before her