Fermin Rocker
Back in January, East End Life looked at the extraordinary life of Rudolf Rocker, the German anarchist who settled in Stepney Green.
He dedicated himself to the organisation of Jewish immigrant workers – his leadership of the 1912 garment workers strike swept away much of the Victorian culture of poor sweated labour.
Now a new translation by his surviving son, Fermin, tells a story every bit as remarkable.
It charts how the young Fermin grew up as the cockney son of East End immigrants, moved to New York with his parents as a boy and finally, as an elderly man, came back to settle in London in 1972.
The East End Years: A Stepney Childhood first appeared in German translation a few years ago.
It is a fascinating memoir for the thousands of Eastern European and German Jews whose families made the exodus to England to escape the pogrums and Nazi persecution.
Now, appearing for the first time in English to coincide with Fermin’s 90th birthday exhibition of paintings, the book is fascinating both for the descendants of those early refugees and anyone intrigued by the way Jewish immigrants shaped the rich culture of the East End.
And The East End Years doesn’t offer a dusty and impersonal image of Rudolf Rocker, the political activist, academic and hero. We see a German immigrant family at home, with all the fun, parties, arguments and racial frictions that were part of normal life.
The Rockers, though Christians themselves, were immersed in the Jewish community, and this gave the young Fermin a unique insight into the tensions between the two communities.
“The Cockneys of the district had little love for their Jewish neighbours, who in addition to being Jews, had the misfortune to be foreigners as well,” he wrote.
But the tradition of rubbing along with different incoming cultures was already established. “Open clashes between the adult communities must have been rare, for I never heard of any,” Fermin observed.
There were scraps between gangs of youths though.
“The Jewish youngsters of Whitechapel and Stepney were a rather rough and scrappy breed who gave as good as they got in those skirmishes,” he said.
The Rocker home in Dunstan House, Stepney Green, was a constant stopping-off point for visitors from mainland Europe – friends of Rudolf driven to England by religious or political persecution abroad.
Squalor and misery
For them, the East End was a culture shock. “Nothing they had seen in other capitals equalled the squalor and misery that confronted them here,” wrote Fermin.
“Nor can I recall ever seeing such numbers of beggars, drunks and derelicts as roamed the streets in those days. The sight of the poor sot lying sprawled in the gutter, drunk to the point of insensibility, was so common as to elicit hardly more than a shrug.”
Yet the main tone of the book is how much the young Rocker soon finds he has in common with his new compatriots, their humour and their strength during the Zeppelin raids of the First World War – a time of particular pain for Fermin, as it leads to his father’s internment and eventual expulsion from Britain.
When Fermin returned to London in the early 1970s, he saw how many of the buildings he remembered were still standing, though the worst of the squalor was thankfully gone.
And, most fascinating of all, Fermin’s writings bring history to life.
As one review had it: “This little book will come as a relief to all those who have had enough of the dryness and soullessness of much professional history.
“It is full of life and atmosphere. Not simply history to be digested, it brings to life a political movement in its day-to-day activities.”
The East End Years: A Stepney Childhood, Fermin Rocker, Freedom Press, ISBN 0 900384 92 1, Price £7.95.