As a lad I would often hear people blame the Jews for many things, being young I did not question this. At the age of fifteen I left school and began a two year City & Guilds gents hairdressing course at my local technical college, where, once again I began to hear negative comments and not very clever jokes about Jews. Again I never really questioned this. Although these negative comments were made about Jewish people, they were not constant and came up just occasionally which meant over my formative years I had got used to hearing them from time to time.

In the summer of 1965 I left college with a brand new City & Guilds certificate to qualify me as a gents hairdresser and began work as a junior in the gents hairdressing department of a large Birmingham store. This store, which today is sadly a dying shadow of those earlier glory days when I was there all those years ago, as part of the Harrods group of stores, was then considered the top store in the city centre at the time. Sadly, in June 2026 its doors will close forever.

Suddenly when starting work I was spending my days in the company of older men, these were a combination of my new work colleagues and our customers. Some of our regular costumers were rather aloof and did not really want to converse when having their haircuts while others were quite chatty and treated us as friends. I soon discovered that some of our friendliest customers were those of the Jewish faith. They were always interested in what we had been up to in our lives and, dare I say it, always told the funniest and best Jewish jokes, many that these days would get people cancelled quicker than you can say "woke". I quickly came to the conclusion all the snide and unpleasant remarks I had been subjected to from time to time during my earlier years were far from the truth and I developed a liking and respect for the Jewish people who, as far as I was concerned, considered if they could make jokes about themselves and were not so far up the dark recesses of their nether regions, Jewish people could not be all that bad, unlike those from some other religions who threaten to kill those who question certain aspects of their faith.

When working in that store where I spent five years of my young life, I made many friends in the store who worked on the other departments, some of them Jewish and often wonder how they are all these years later. During my final working years when involved with UKIP and serving as one of its Regional Organisers, I made many friends in the various branches which came under my care. Once again some of my best campaigners and who became good friends were members of the Jewish faith, some who I still meet up with today and keep in touch with.

Jews, all through history have had a bad press and have been the victims of hatred based on false statements. Now Islam globally wants to see the end of their faith and the eradication of Israel. The problem these days of intolerant Jew hatred is now not so much the far right, which has always illogically blamed wealthy Jews for the worlds problems and controlling global wealth, the big threat is from Islamic extremism which is now out of control yet many of the worlds leaders are ignoring this and pretending it is not happening, as this Article from the Conservative Woman points out. The mad irony is in the fact, despite Jewish people living in fear in this country and being randomly attacked on our streets and their places of worship being targeted by Islamic fanatics, this totally useless Labour Government have decided it is Islam that needs protecting and is bringing in laws to protect its followers, which by doing so, in effect, brings about a return to medieval blasphemy laws which means anyone who says the slightest thing about Islam in criticism about many aspects of that faith, such as the way they treat women, threats to kill none believers or questions many of the violent texts in their holy book, will be the ones hauled before the courts and given a criminal conviction. The people and religion who are in most need of protecting is not the members of an increasingly aggressive Islamic faith, but those who are Jewish and Israeli, but no laws are being made to protect them. These people who are generally a warm, friendly, enterprising and often self depreciating are the ones who are in urgent need of protecting. If we lose them we lose something very special, it is time to be anti to anti-Semitism.