July 27, 2007
Levy’s off the hook, as are we all
Published in the Jewish Chronicle
The sense of relief, visible across Michael Levy’s beaming face, was also palpable across much of Britain’s Jewish community. When word came late last week that there were to be no prosecutions in the cash-for-honours affair, there was a long, collective exhalation of breath. At least one rabbi dedicated his Shabbat sermon to the decision to press no charges against the former chief fundraiser to Tony Blair. Elsewhere, a community bigwig told me that the atmosphere in his shul was such that he half expected the congregation to bensch gomel, reciting the prayer uttered when one has been delivered from danger.
This is not such a surprise. First, Michael Levy has been a fixture of Anglo-Jewry for so long that there are many people who know him personally and regard him as a friend: it’s only natural if they’re relieved that he no longer has a sword hovering over his head. Others, mindful of his charitable work with Jewish Care and elsewhere, might have been dreading a prosecution for more direct reasons — fearing the loss of one of the community’s most energetic figures.
But the source of the relief is much simpler. If Jews are glad that Lord Levy will not face criminal charges, it is partly because they sense that, had things gone the other way, they themselves would have been in the dock.
That’s not to say that the police investigation was motivated by antisemitism; I know very few people, including the most paranoid among us, who truly believe that. But it’s hard to deny that the pursuit of Michael Levy did at least give breathing space to some pretty nasty prejudices.
It was there in the media coverage, with its not-very-euphemistic references to Levy as a “flamboyant North London businessman”. You could detect it in the unflattering descriptions of his “white-carpeted” home and the references to his Hackney boyhood: newspaper code for arriviste. Readers of the quality press do not know the middle names of Ruth Turner or Jonathan Powell, the two Blair aides who were also in the police’s sights. Yet they know, because the newspapers told them, all about “Michael Abraham Levy”.
Perhaps none of this is more than unpleasant. But it went deeper because of the nature of the cash-for-honours affair, which ensured that Levy became the focus for some age-old anti-Jewish myths.
First among them was the association of Jews and money. Every time the subject of Labour and cash arose, up popped a picture of Michael Levy. That inevitably played into the hoariest of stereotypes: when Rory Bremner chose to impersonate Levy, he dressed up as Fagin, complete with prosthetic hooked nose, singing “You’ve got to pick a pocket or two”.
Levy’s closeness to the Prime Minister touched another antisemitic nerve — further aggravated by the fact that several key Labour benefactors were also Jewish. I’m referring to the aged notion of a Jewish cabal, a secretive grouping which somehow inveigles its way next to the seat of power. Witness the then Labour backbencher Tam Dalyell’s warning that a “cabal of Jewish advisers” was unduly influencing Tony Blair.
One way or another, cash-for-coronets brought to the surface a clutch of antisemitic myths, all of them centred on the person of Michael Levy. Think of an anti-Jewish trope — Jews are rich; Jews lack taste; Jews are dishonest; Jews buy influence — and the honours-for-sale story opened the door to it. If there is relief that this long, drawn-out saga is at an end, it’s partly because that door will now, we hope, be slammed shut.
There are some lessons we might learn from this episode — and some we should not. We might conclude that even the most ancient of slurs on our people live on, buried deep in the soil of the national culture, usually dormant, and yet all too easily stirred from their slumber. We should see that these are rarely motives for action but they can affect the way our own actions are seen.
But we might also decide that this episode teaches us to keep our heads down, to stay out of the public eye and out of trouble. I’m already hearing talk like that, the suggestion that Jews should now be wary of giving to a political party lest it trigger unwanted associations. I hope that that is not the conclusion we draw. For we are citizens of this country with as much right to take part as anyone else — no matter if others occasionally see us through lenses they should have discarded centuries ago.
Posted on July 27, 2007 08:25 PM