‘The role of the Anglo Jewish Community in British political
life.’ The first chapter will assess the ‘Jewish Vote’ of the
past and today, and will look at voting turnouts in constituencies with
large Jewish numbers. Further this chapter will search for any trends
in voting behaviour and party allegiances, and will develop an
understanding of particular issues that are of Jewish interest. The
second chapter deals with the question of influence the Anglo Jewish
community has in British politics. This chapter will closely assess how
much influence certain Jewish organisations and individuals possess,
and how they use their respective influence. The third chapter of this
project deals with influence Anglo Jewry has over British foreign
policy to the Middle East with specific consideration to Israel. This
chapter looks at the debate of how much influence the community has in
this area, and seeks information from the two largest British
organisations involved in this, namely the Conservative Friends of
Israel and the Labour Friends of Israel. The methodology
adopted in this research project is largely the use of primary data
collected from a survey and various interviews carried out with
politicians and Anglo Jewish leaders. This was necessary as minimal
academic work has been produced on this since the 1980s. However many
academic sources have also been used throughout the project, primarily
to define more general political behaviours and theories. This
project reached several conclusions concerning the role of Anglo Jewry
in British politics. In particular, Anglo Jewry is politically engaged
in British politics, although today, the ‘Jewish Vote’ is rather
diverse. Anglo Jewry enjoys rather substantial influence in British
politics through much networking and certain individuals with many
contacts, as well as the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Further to
this, Anglo Jewry can have a limited impact in shaping and influencing
British foreign policy to Israel. Since minimal literature on
this subject has been produced since the 1980s, it was thought that it
was appropriate to complete a research on this. Anglo Jewry in 2006 is
celebrating its 350th anniversary of residency in Britain. With such a
long history, and recognising the contribution that Anglo Jewry has
made generally and politically to Britain, it was thought that a more
in depth research should be carried out assessing the role of the Anglo
Jewish Community in British political life.Today, the Anglo
Jewish community on the whole feels both strongly British and Jewish, a
survey distributed to 2, 194 British Jews in 1995 discovered that,
‘eighteen percent replied that they ‘felt more British than Jewish,’
fifty four percent that they felt ‘equally British and Jewish,’ and
twenty six percent that they felt ‘more Jewish than British.’ (Kosmin,
Lerman and Goldberg, 1997: 1)During different time periods of
Anglo Jewry’s 350 years in Britain, the community has seen support for
all major political parties, a proportionally large amount of Jewish
MPs and Lords, and generally the desire by the community to play a part
in British politics. Indeed in the 2005 general elections, Michael
Howard, a Jewish MP led the Conservative Party.But what is this
role, and how much influence does the community really have, if any at
all? This Project proposes to be divided into three chapters, all
researching into questions surrounding the title of this project, to
eventually reach relevant conclusions.