One Week With John Gulliver - Museum offers a model example for migrants

IT all seemed a bit surreal, mused a smiling Alan Yentob on Tues­day evening, that the new Jewish Museum should stand on the site of a former artificial limb workshop and a piano factory .
Yentob, one of the more prominent creative minds at the BBC, was addressing a large gathering at the opening night of a newly enlarged Jewish Museum in Camden Town that I hope schools will flock to.
Its amazing mix of exhibits map the culture and philosophy that  have bonded Jews together as a people for nearly 4,000 years.
But, much more importantly in some ways, it illustrates how Jews who settled here mainly as refugees have made rich contributions to Britain’s culture and economy.
And in every field: as traders, door-to-door peddlers in the early days, consummate craftsmen, writers, painters, entertainers – and even boxers.
They also brought with them, mainly from Russia, notions of brotherhood that blossomed into some of our earliest trade unions.
With other East Enders they threw up barricades and blocked a march by Mosley’s fascists in 1936. Later many were killed in the Spanish Civil War, fighting for the cause of freedom.
It’s all here in filmed interviews with the heroes of the 1930s.
The part Jews played – and still play – in our political life is something the new immigrants to these shores have also taken up, a sign of being part of the fabric of society.
I met a beaming Flick Rea – a veteran Lib-Dem councillor near the exhibits about Mosley – and soon realised why.
It turned out that as soon as she saw the plan for the new-look museum her enthusiasm was so great it helped to sweep aside rumblings from the more dour planning officials at the Town Hall. To Flick the museum was one of those public buildings that spreads the reputation of the borough. 
“It plays such an important part in our public life, it just had to have the council’s blessing,” she said.
A little later I met Andrew Marshall, the council’s Tory leader, and he too was clearly struck by the revealing exhibits.
Just before I left, I spotted the academic and writer David Cesarani, whose biography of Arthur Koestler several years ago has been contrasted with a new one by Michael Scammell. I asked Cesarani, who lives in West Hampstead, whether publicity over the two books had boosted his sales.  
“No, not a bit, I’m afraid,” he said. “But it has helped sales of my latest book on Palestine – it’s name recognition, you know.”