‘There is no discrimination here, but the Committee never elects Jews’: antisemitism in British golf, 1894–1970
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 47; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0031322x.2012.760838
ISSN1461-7331
Autores Tópico(s)Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
ResumoABSTRACT Between the 1890s and the 1960s, Jews faced significant levels of racial discrimination within British golf. Antisemitism originating from individuals, private clubs, the golfing press and golfing authorities was prevalent across this period and was geographically widespread (affecting every sizeable Jewish community in Great Britain). Mirroring wider majority community discrimination towards the growing middle-class Jewish population, Jewish golfers faced racial hostility and exclusion: a racism driven by crude stereotypes, snobbery, ignorance and a basic irrational fear of the Other. Golfing racism was powerful and extensive in Britain, yet Jews did not simply accept the hostility they faced and cease playing the sport. While Dee's article illustrates and analyses antisemitism in British golf, it also highlights the response to discrimination by Jewish communities—large and small—across the country. Unwilling to allow antisemitism to prevent their participation in the sport, Jewish golfers strove to create their own clubs and courses. Symbolically, these ‘Jewish’ organizations remained open to all, regardless of race or creed. Jews not only protected their own sporting interests in the face of racism, but also provided a retort to golfing bigotry and racism. Keywords: antisemitismdiscriminationgolfJewsleisuremiddle classracismsport Acknowledgments The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of this article in its previous form for their insightful and interesting comments. Notes 1‘Golf clubs and Jews’, Jewish Chronicle, 18 March, 25 March, 1 April and 8 April 1960. 2While sport has not been completely overlooked in histories of British antisemitism by scholars such as Tony Kushner, Colin Holmes, Gisela Lebzelter and Anthony Julius, it is fair to say that the main emphasis of research into hostility towards Jews has focused on British politics, culture and society, rather than the world of British sport and leisure. See Colin Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876–1939 (London: Edward Arnold 1979); Gisela Lebzelter, Political Anti-Semitism in England, 1918–1939 (London: Macmillan 1978); Tony Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society during the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1989); and Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010). 3See, for instance, Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England, 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000), 56, 360; John Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1993), 22–3; and Richard Holt, Sport and the British (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989), 351. 4For instance, the career of the famous Regency-era pugilist, Daniel Mendoza, was apparently blighted by the antisemitic attitude of a significant section of the British boxing ‘fancy’; Randy Roberts, ‘Eighteenth century boxing’, Journal of Sport History, vol. 4, no. 3, 1977, 246–59 (254–5). 5Vivian Lipman, Social History of the Jews in England, 1850–1950 (London: Watts 1954), 88–9, 102–3. 6See David Dee, Sport and British Jewry: Integration, Ethnicity and Anti-Semitism, 1890–1970 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2013), ch. 3, ‘Anti-Semitism’, 158–223. 7Holt, Sport and the British, 351. 8Jeffrey Hill, Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth-century Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2002), 144; Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 22–3. 9Buxton was frequently turned down for club membership and encountered problems in competition due to antisemitism; see Bruce Schoenfeld, The Match: Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton: How Two Outsiders—One Black, the Other Jewish—Forged a Friendship and Made Sports History (New York: Amistad 2004). 10See, for example, the Sunderland Jewish Badminton Club, which was founded in 1954 due to antisemitism in local clubs; Minutes of the Sunderland Jewish Badminton Club, 1954: Tyne and Wear Archives Service, Newcastle upon Tyne, SX113/1. Similarly, Jews in Birmingham playing squash in the 1950s were forced to create their own club, The Wingate Club, because they could not gain entry to local clubs because of their Jewishness (correspondence between author and Michael Leek, 8 August 2009). 11Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 130. 12McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 360. 13Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 2, 125. 14McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 95, 292. 15It was at this time that a number of suburban golf courses were opened, courses much more easily accessible to Jews then living in mainly urban areas; Geoffrey Cousins, Golf in Britain: A Social History from the Beginnings to the Present Day (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1975), 139. Edward Sassoon (1856–1912) was a renowned businessmen, politician and, subsequently, Captain of Folkestone Golf Club (Golf Illustrated, 10 July 1908). Albert Goldsmid (1846–1904) was a British Army officer, founder of the Jewish Lads' Brigade and a committed Zionist; see Sharman Kadish, ‘A Good Jew and a Good Englishman’: The Jewish Lads' and Girls' Brigade, 1895–1995 (London: Vallentine Mitchell 1995), 4–6. Goldsmid was apparently ‘addicted to golf’ later in life (‘Retirement of Colonel Goldsmid’, Jewish Chronicle, 9 October 1903). 16See Golf Illustrated, 12 June 1908, 19 June 1908; The Times, 30 May 1908; and Bradford Daily Argus, 29 May 1908 and 3 June 1908. 17Geoffrey Cousins noted in 1975 that the Royal and Ancient, the traditional governing body of the sport, ‘has several Jewish members’, while both the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society also had several members throughout their history; Cousins, Golf in Britain, 142. 18Levine has shown that many Jewish immigrants found their entry into American golf clubs blocked due to their religious background; Peter Levine, ‘“Our crowd” at play: the elite Jewish country club in the 1920s’, in Steven A. Riess (ed.), Sports and the American Jew (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press 1998), 16–28. Likewise, Tatz has demonstrated that antisemitism was prevalent among Australian golf clubs in the period from the early twentieth century through to the 1950s; Colin Tatz, A Course of History: Monash Country Club, 1931–2001 (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin 2002), 28. 19Kushner differentiates between ‘social’ and ‘organized’ forms of antisemitism. The former deals with everyday hostility towards Jews and the so-called ‘antisemitism of exclusion’, which saw Jews discriminated against in employment, housing, work and in their attempts to join various private leisure and social clubs. The latter refers to political forms of racism propagated by groups hostile to the Jewish community, such as the British Union of Fascists or the Britons; Tony Kushner, ‘The impact of British anti-Semitism, 1918–1945’, in David Cesarani (ed.), The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell 1990), 191–208 (201). 20‘Golf clubs and Jews–4’, 8 April 1960. 21‘The exclusion of Jews from golf clubs’, Golf, 11 May 1894. 22 Golf Illustrated, 17 February 1911. 23Tony Collins, ‘Jews, antisemitism and sports in Britain, 1900–1939’, in Michael Brenner and Gideon Reuveni (eds), Emancipation through Muscles: Jews and Sports in Europe (London: University of Nebraska Press 2006), 142–55 (147). 24For other antisemitic cartoons, see Golf Illustrated, 11 February 1910, 15 April 1910 and 6 May 1910. 25Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 19–21. 26‘A keen match’, Golf Illustrated, 2 September 1910. Similar ideas were also evident a week later in a small piece about a golfer called ‘Isaacstein’ who regularly cheated against non-Jewish opponents; Golf Illustrated, 9 September 1910. 27This isn't to say that antisemitism of this nature disappeared from the press entirely. In 1924 the Daily Mirror ran an article describing a fictional match between two golfers named ‘Abrahams’ and ‘Cohen’ that the latter had won by tricking his opponent into forfeiting the match; ‘The winning hazard’, Daily Mirror, 9 July 1924. 28Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain 1656–2000 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 2002), 198–201. 29Ernest Krausz, ‘The economic and social structure of Anglo-Jewry’, in Julius Gould and Shaul Esh (eds), Jewish Life in Modern Britain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1964), 27–34 (31). 30Kushner, ‘The impact of British anti-Semitism’, 200–1. 31Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice, 96. For working-class antisemitism, see Todd M. Endelman, Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1990), 193. 32McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 292. 33Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 199. 34Kushner, ‘The impact of British anti-Semitism’, 200–1; Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 204; Lebzelter, Political Anti-Semitism in England, 32–3. 35Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 199. 36See Margaret Stacey, Tradition and Change: A Study of Banbury (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1960); and Ronald Frankenburg, Communities in Britain: Social Life in Town and Country (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1969). 37Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 1. McKibbin has also noted that sports clubs were central to a social process in which the middle-classes were re-formed into a more homogeneous, though certainly not monolithic, grouping from the 1920s to the 1950s; see McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 350–62. 38Hill, Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth-century Britain, 137; Holt, Sport and the British, 350. 39McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 55; Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 21. 40See, for instance, Richard Holt, ‘Golf and the English suburb: class and gender in a London club, c1890–c1960’, The Sports Historian, vol. 18, no. 1, 1998, 82. 41‘Golf clubs and Jews–4’, 8 April 1960. 42‘Golf clubs and Jews–1’, 18 March 1960. 45Author's interview with Michael Leek, 28 July 2009. 43Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 22. 44Geoff Swift, ‘Are You Made Up?’ The Story of a Golf Club: Lee Park Golf Club, 1954–2004 (Liverpool: Lee Park Golf Club 2004), 4. 46 Hendon Times, 1 April 1960. It was noted in the Jewish Chronicle that Hendon had a 5 per cent cap on Jewish members; ‘Golf clubs ban on Jews’, Jewish Chronicle, 4 March 1960. 47‘Golf clubs ban on Jews’. 48‘Golf clubs and Jews–1’, 18 March 1960; Cousins, Golf in Britain, 140. 49 Hendon Times, 1 April 1960. 50Interview with Sydney Lea, n.d.: Manchester Jewish Museum (MJM), Manchester, Oral History Collection, J309. 51Correspondence between Council of Christians and Jews and the English Golf Union, 23 June 1954, 27 July 1954 and 23 September 1954: University of Southampton, Special Collections, Anglo-Jewish Archives, Archives of the Council of Christians and Jews, MS65. 52‘Golf clubs and Jews–3’, 1 April 1960. 53Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 200. 54Lebzelter, Political Anti-Semitism in England. 55Cousins, Golf in Britain, 140. The same view of Jews as being socially, racially, culturally and physically ‘alien’ characterized the sporting antisemitism of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) during the 1930s. The party used sport to promote notions of Jewish ‘foreignness’ in its two newspapers, Action and The Blackshirt, during the mid- to late 1930s; see Dee, Sport and British Jewry, 160–73. Significantly, the BUF also outwardly supported antisemitism and discrimination in golf, seeing Jewish ‘difference’ as a threat to the moral and social fabric of the sport; see, for instance, Action, 6 February 1937. 56Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 191. Lowerson uses this term to describe the middle-class sports club attitude towards these two groups. Both artisan and women golfers had also been subjected to hostility from clubs with regard to membership from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The difference for these groups compared to Jewish golfers is that clubs often contained the ‘threat’ that they supposedly posed by creating separate sections and forcing them to play and socialize separately from ‘full’ members; see Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 191–224. 58Quoted in Ted Hyman, A History of Moor Allerton Golf Club 1923–2001, 2nd edn (Leeds: Moor Allerton Golf Club 2001), 7. 57For the article on antisemitism in golf clubs in Leeds, see M. J. Landa, ‘A Jewish golf course’, Jewish Chronicle, 13 April 1923. 59Quoted in Swift, ‘Are You Made Up?’, 4. 60Interview with Philip Jacobson, 11 May 1989: Scottish Jewish Archives, Glasgow. 61Additionally, he claimed that because ‘the Jew is deeply interested in administration and finance’ he would not be able to resist the urge to interfere in the business side of the club; Cousins, Golf in Britain, 140. 62‘Golf clubs and Jews–2’, 25 March 1960. 63 Hendon Times, 31 May 1957. 64Brian Donoghue, ‘Finchley’, in David Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1964 (London: Macmillan 1965), 241–53; Geoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992), 336–7. 65‘Golf clubs and Jews–3’, 1 April 1960. 66As Eisen has noted, it was common for Jews in Central Europe, America and Australia from the late nineteenth century onwards to form ‘parallel institutions as a response to blatant discrimination and exclusionary policies’ within non-Jewish organizations; George Eisen, ‘Jews and sport: a century of retrospect’, Journal of Sport History, vol. 6, no. 2, 1999, 225–39 (236). 67Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 196–7, 241. 68Anecdotal evidence suggests that socially mobile African-Caribbean golfers also encountered hostility in the sport in the period after the Second World War; see the author's interview with Michael Leek, 28 July 2009. Groups such as the Irish and West Indians have historically been lower down the economic ladder than Jews for the majority of the twentieth century; Panikos Panayi, An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism since 1800 (Harlow: Pearson 2010), 109–10, 117. 69Hyman, A History of Moor Allerton Golf Club, 16. Contemporary reports suggested that the first ever ‘Jewish’ golf club was founded in 1916 in Quaker Ridge, New York. 70Hyman, A History of Moor Allerton Golf Club, 14. 71Hyman, A History of Moor Allerton Golf Club, 33, 47. 72Bill Williams, Jewish Manchester: An Illustrated History (Derby: Breedon Books 2008), 138; ‘The Whitefield Golf Club: its genesis and progress’, Jewish Chronicle, 17 January 1936. 73See Ernest Schlesinger, Creating Community and Accumulating Social Capital: Jews Associating with Other Jews in Manchester (London: Institute of Jewish Policy Research 2003). 74‘The Whitefield Golf Club’. By the end of its first year, Whitefield had a total of 406 members, growing to over 800 during the 1950s; Schlesinger, Creating Community and Accumulating Social Capital. 75Hyman, A History of Moor Allerton Golf Club, 112; Bonnyton Golf Club 1957–2007 (Glasgow: Bonnyton Moor Golf Club 2007), 3: Scottish Jewish Archives, Glasgow; Minutes of AGM of the North-Eastern Jewish Golfing Society, 11 December 1967: Tyne and Wear Archives Service, Newcastle upon Tyne, SX124/2/1. 76 Bonnyton Golf Club 1957–2007, 2–5. 77Swift, ‘Are You Made Up?’, 3–6; ‘Brochure announcing some details of the new Lee Park Golf Club’, 1954: Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool, Jewish Sports Clubs Archives, 296JSC/1/7/1. 78Author's interview with Michael Leek, 28 July 2009; Bill Hiscox, Shirley Golf Club: The First 40 Years, 1955–1995 (Birmingham: Shirley Golf Club 1995), 36–7. 79‘Potters Bar Golf Club: an inviting atmosphere’, Jewish Chronicle, 19 November 1937. 80‘Golf clubs and Jews–2’, 25 March 1960. 81Cousins, Golf in Britain, 142; ‘Golf clubs and Jews–4’, 8 April 1960. 82Hyman, A History of Moor Allerton Golf Club, 16. 83Interview with Philip Jacobson, 11 May 1989: Scottish Jewish Archives, Glasgow. 84Author's interview with William Hiscox, 28 July 2009; author's interview with Michael Leek, 28 July 2009. 85 Yorkshire Evening News, 21 February 1931. 86Swift, ‘Are You Made Up?’, 33. 87Author's interview with William Hiscox, 28 July 2009. 88‘Swastikas burned into golf links: outrage at Potters Bar’, Jewish Chronicle, 9 April 1937. 89Cousins, Golf in Britain, 141. 90See, for instance, ‘They like to play together’, Jewish Chronicle, 22 September 1978; Cousins, Golf in Britain, 140–1. 91Interview with Philip Jacobson, 11 May 1989: Scottish Jewish Archives, Glasgow. 92In an interview with one president of a Jewish golf club in 2009, it was noted that several current members had found it impossible to gain membership of several local non-Jewish clubs; author's interview with Michael Leek, 28 July 2009. Similarly, in 2010, the Jewish Chronicle reported the story of one non-Jewish golfer named Goldstein in Manchester who ‘went on endless waiting lists for golf clubs without ever securing membership’. It went on to record that concerns have been raised in recent years about the future of ‘Jewish’ golf in Britain. The shrinking of the Jewish community since the 1970s has led to an ever decreasing number of Jewish members of the various Jewish golf clubs across the country; Angela Epstein, ‘Why it's rough times for the Jewish golf club’, Jewish Chronicle, 13 August 2010. 93Holt, Sport and the British, 131. 94Holt, Sport and the British, 133.
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