| 1911 South Wales anti-Jewish riots | |
|---|---|
| Date | August 19, 1911 |
| Location | South Wales 51°46′39.40″N3°14′26.48″W / 51.7776111°N 3.2406889°W |
| Casualties | |
| Charged | 46 |
  Location within Wales | |
The 1911 South Wales anti-Jewish riots were a series of antisemitic riots that occurred in South Wales in the summer of 1911. [1] [2] [3]
In the first years of the 1910s, before the beginning of World War I, Wales saw a significant period of unrest, known as the Great Unrest and centered around labour disputes, including the Miners Strike of 1910-11.
On the evening of 19 August 1911, a group of miners in the town of Tredegar that had been drinking at a local pub decided to attack a local shop owned by a Jewish family, accusing the shopkeeper of overcharging miners. [4] [5] The attack quickly grew into a riot, involving more than 200 rioters and ransacking 20 Jewish-owned businesses. 15 people were recorded injured, however, none with serious injuries. [6] The riots would spread to neighbouring villages in South Wales in the following days, including Caerphilly, Ebbw Vale and Bargoed. After several days, the chief constable in Monmouthshire called on the Home Office for help dealing with the riots. [7] On 29 August, Home Secretary Winston Churchill ordered the deployment of the Worcestershire Regiment from Cardiff to put an end to the riots, describing it as a "pogrom," and the riots came to an end. [8]
In early September 1911, 46 people were charged by the authorities over their roles in the riots, with the lawyer in charge of the prosecutions noting that they "were people who were generally considered respectable, the majority being colliers in regular employment and the wives of colliers." [9] [10] At trial, 38 of those accused were convicted, receiving prison sentences ranging from 28 days to three months. [11] Public opinion was sympathetic to the rioters and complained that the sentences were too harsh and had not taken into consideration their respectable backgrounds. [12]
The South Wales Baptist Association, which was influential in the region, refused to condemn the riots. [13]
Despite the fact that the riots particularly targeted Jewish-run businesses, the relative role of antisemitism and general unrest over poverty has been debated by some historians. [14] [15] Historian William Rubinstein has argued that the role of antisemitism has been overemphasised to be used as an anti-devolution argument, saying that "rioters had issues with Jewish businesses, but that's not the same as being anti-Semitic." However, historian Geoffrey Alderman argued that the role of general economic unrest had been overemphasised in accounts of the riots, stating that there was evidence of "clearly anti-Semitic behaviour amongst the rioters." [16] The Monmouthshire chief constable's report on the riots at the time stated that there was "a determination expressed by the inhabitants to get rid of [the Jewish population]," while the chief magistrate of the trials stated that "the first disturbances were no doubt anti-Jewish." [9] Some reports have indicated that the riots may have been pre-arranged, including one read out by Liberal Party MP Arthur Markham on 22 August 1911, which stated that "there can be no doubt that this had been pre-arranged, although the police had no knowledge that such an attack was likely to take place. There were only eight constables available, and they were quite inadequate to deal with the disturbance, and could do little more than look on at the wrecking and looting or eighteen shops owned by Jews or persons of Jewish extraction." [9] [17]
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against, Jews. This sentiment is a form of racism, and a person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Primarily, antisemitic tendencies may be motivated by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or by negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually presented as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by the concept of anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.
A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire. Retrospectively, similar attacks against Jews which occurred in other times and places also became known as pogroms. Sometimes the word is used to describe publicly sanctioned purgative attacks against non-Jewish groups. The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely, depending on the specific incident, at times leading to, or culminating in, massacres.
Blaenau Gwent is a county borough in the south-east of Wales. It borders the unitary authority areas of Monmouthshire and Torfaen to the east, Caerphilly to the west and Powys to the north. Its main towns are Abertillery, Brynmawr, Ebbw Vale and Tredegar. Its highest point is Coity Mountain at 1,896 feet (578 m).
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Tredegar is a town and community situated on the banks of the Sirhowy River in the county borough of Blaenau Gwent, in the southeast of Wales. Within the historic boundaries of Monmouthshire, it became an early centre of the Industrial Revolution in Wales. The relevant wards collectively listed the town's population as 15,103 in the UK 2011 census.
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Ebbw Vale was a constituency in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was created for the 1918 general election and returned one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system until it was abolished for the 1983 general election.
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Antisemitism in Ukraine has been a historical issue in the country, particularly in the twentieth century. The history of the Jewish community of the region dates back to the era when ancient Greek colonies existed in it. A third of the Jews of Europe previously lived in Ukraine between 1791 and 1917, within the Pale of Settlement. The large concentration of Jews in this region historically made them an easy target for anti-Jewish actions and pogroms.
Pogroms in the Russian Empire were large-scale, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting that began in the 19th century. Pogroms began to occur after Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire from 1772 to 1815. These territories were designated "the Pale of Settlement" by the Imperial Russian government, within which Jews were reluctantly permitted to live. The Pale of Settlement primarily included the territories of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Bessarabia, Lithuania and Crimea. Jews were forbidden from moving to other parts of European Russia, unless they converted from Judaism or obtained a university diploma or first guild merchant status. Migration to the Caucasus, Siberia, the Far East or Central Asia was not restricted.
The Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company was a canal and railway company that operated a canal and a network of railways in the Western Valley and Eastern Valley of Newport, Monmouthshire. It started as the Monmouthshire Canal Navigation and opened canals from Newport to Pontypool and to Crumlin from 1796. Numerous tramroads connected nearby pits and ironworks with the canal.
Antisemitism, the prejudice or discrimination against Jews, has had a long history since the ancient times. While antisemitism had already been prevalent in ancient Greece and Roman Empire, its institutionalization in European Christianity after the destruction of the ancient Jewish cultural center in Jerusalem caused two millennia of segregation, expulsions, persecutions, pogroms, genocides of Jews, which culminated in the 20th-century Holocaust in Nazi German-occupied European states, where 67% European Jews were murdered.
The Kunmadaras pogrom was an anti-Semitic pogrom that took place shortly after the Second World War in Kunmadaras, Hungary. The pogrom took place on 22 May 1946. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, three Jews were killed and up to 20 were injured.
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