Sir Sidney Hamburger and Manchester Jewry: Religion, City and Community

This is a record of the achievements of Sir Sidney Hamburger in the Jewish community of Manchester, the City of Salford and the North-West region. As chairman of the Planning and Finance Committees of Salford City Council, leader of the Labour Group on the City Council and mayor of Salford during 1968-69, he played a leading role in the post-war reconstruction of the city. As chairman of the North Western Regional Health Authority between 1973 and 1982, he presided over the reorganization of the National Health Service in the region. As a communal activist and a leading Zionist, Sir Sidney steered the Jewish community of Manchester through the social and political upheavals of the post-war years. In all his achievements he derived his idealism from an Orthodox Judaism to which he was strictly committed. It is also a study of leadership in provincial Anglo-Jewry. The book argues that civic eminence was the essential ingredient of a communal leadership through which the community managed its power relations with the gentile city. It seeks in other ways to suggest the manner in which the Jewishness of a civit leader influenced the ways in which he saw and exercised his secular authority. Finally, it is an exploration of the collective identity of a Jewish generation born in Britain to parents of Eastern European origin. It suggests the way in which the legacy of the Jewish past was successfully integrated into the processes of assimilation and political eductioan which led a second generation into the mainstream of British politics.