During the autumn of 1888, as London’s East End erupted in panic following the Whitechapel murders, blame was soon cast on a convenient target: the area’s large number of recently arrived Russian Jews. Initially the killings and mutilations were linked to a Jewish suspect called ‘Leather Apron’, real name John Pizer, a bootmaker known to have used and abused prostitutes. But even after he cleared his name the stories persisted.

The new arrivals had heard this all before; back home these sorts of rumours were usually the trigger for the pogroms which had forced them to leave. Expecting the police to round them up and frame one of their number, many within the community went to ground, closing their doors and waiting for the inevitable. It didn’t come, and instead they re-emerged into city life to a new realisation: that wasn’t how things worked in England. The police were not in the business of mob justice; there would be no pogroms, no scapegoating. The process of law and order worked – although, as it happened, they didn’t catch the killer, so not all that well.

Life in Tsarist Russia was different, characterised by a system of policing that ruled by fear rather than by consent, a society of low trust, an intense suspicion of out-groups, a zero-sum approach to prosperity and so a particular hatred of anyone whose wealth was seen to be earned on the back of other people’s labour. There was also deep-seated religious prejudice, manifested in, and fuelled by, a range of beliefs about such things as the ritual murder of children, which spread easily among an illiterate population credulous to outlandish stories.

This misreading of history may be due to our overriding civilisational memory being that of the Third Reich

This misreading of history may be due to our overriding civilisational memory being that of the Third Reich

Although the blood libel had originated in mediaeval England, such thinking had long been suppressed there. There were still people who believed in such things – I’m sure if you polled East Enders in 1888 many probably did think the Ripper was engaged in some wacky Talmudic ritual murder – but politicians ignored them and the police made sure to crush them.

Most of Britain’s 300,000 or so Jews today descend from those Russian refugees who settled in the East End; as they became more established and less impoverished, they migrated in an anti-clockwise direction, the most religious settling in Stamford Hill in north-east London and Golders Green to the north-west, with the more secularised thinly populated in the areas in between. These suburbs were always noted for their tranquillity: cosy, safe and peaceful.

Golders Green today still has the highest concentration of Jews in Britain, accounting for half the local population, but is not so tranquil. On Tuesday, a local memorial wall to the victims of Iranian oppression was firebombed, and on Wednesday two men were stabbed in........

© The Spectator