{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreiho7j73t2w7rdziqq3iuxqo4ojbbquw3hkqilpo46girgscjpsizq",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:sl2hrcwo6voaorzsr26d3bo2/app.bsky.feed.post/3ml5kha4n4nb2"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreifhgsjodwuhpdo4chqkdpfoos3r7yk6calupq2yzq3o2yffxdkqbm"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/jpeg",
    "size": 60910
  },
  "description": "This is the text of a speech I made opposite Downing Street last Thursday at a protest organised by the Campaign Against Antisemitism.",
  "path": "/we-need-to-protect-this-minority/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-06T01:30:01.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "Toby Young",
    "Free Speech Union",
    "the Daily Sceptic"
  ],
  "textContent": "Toby Young\n_Toby Young is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Sceptic, the general secretary of the_ Free Speech Union_and an associate editor of the_ Spectator _._\n\nThere’s a small liberal arts college in Washington state called Evergreen State College that has an annual tradition known as a Day of Absence, in which all the African-American students absent themselves from campus for 24 hours so people realise just how vital a contribution they make to college life.\n\nI want you to imagine what Britain would look like without British Jews.\n\nWhat kind of country would we be if Jews had not been tolerated in Britain since the mid-17th century and fully emancipated since the mid-19th century?\n\nThe reason for conducting this thought experiment is in the hope of persuading the prime minister to do more to protect British Jews.\n\nApparently, common decency – the state’s duty to keep all of its people safe – isn’t enough.\n\nSo what would Britain look like if Jews had never found sanctuary here?\n\nWell, for one thing, there probably wouldn’t be a Labour Party.\n\nJewish trade union organisers in London, Leeds and Manchester played a pivotal role in the creation of the party – the _Jewish Encyclopedia_ of 1906 lists 39 Jewish unions set up between 1882 and 1902 – and left-wing Jewish intellectuals like Harold Laski and Ralph Milliband provided the party with its conscience.\n\nWithout Benjamin Disraeli, that great radical prime minister who passed the 1867 Reform Act, we might not have a Conservative Party either.\n\nThink of the contribution Jews have made to Britain’s academic life, from philosophers like Isiah Berlin, Karl Popper and AJ Ayer, to historians like Lewis Namier, Eric Hobsbawm and Simon Schama.\n\nWhat about their contribution to science and medicine – and I’m not just thinking of the dozen or so Nobel Prize winners.\n\nWithout Rosalind Franklyn’s work, would Watson and Crick have discovered the secret of life?\n\nIn music, we wouldn’t have had Yehudi Menuhin, George Solti, Daniel Barenboim, Mark Bolan and Amy Winehouse.\n\nIn the arts and architecture, no Richard Rogers, no Jacob Epstein – and if you take the tube home tonight from St James’ Park, look at the wonderful figures Epstein carved above the entrance.\n\nNo Lucien Freud, the greatest British figurative painter of the 20th Century.\n\nIn film and television, no Alexander Korda, no Lew Grade, no Sid James, no Peter Sellers, no Sacha Baron-Cohen, no Michael Grade.\n\nAnd what about our Jewish playwrights? How impoverished would the history of London’s West End be without the plays of Peter Shaffer, Arnold Wesker, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard?\n\nAnd to think, all of this and yet the Jewish population of Britain is and always has been tiny – 450,000 at its peak, 270,000 today.\n\nPrime minister, has there ever been a religious or racial minority in the history of these islands who’ve contributed so much to our national life, who’ve been so public spirited, so eager to contribute, so happy to serve?\n\nAnd, incidentally, please don’t question their loyalty to this country.\n\nI don’t recall a British Jew ever winning a parliamentary seat and proclaiming themselves to be the MP for Israel.\n\nThis is no idle thought experiment, prime minister.\n\nIf you don’t do more to protect British Jews, they won’t just absent themselves for a day – they’ll leave and they won’t come back.\n\nWe only have to imagine how much poorer our country would have been without the contributions of British Jews over the last 200 years to realise just how much poorer we will be without them in the future.\n\nPrime minister, we need to protect this precious, vital, patriotic minority.\n\nFor over 200 years they have shown us in so many ways how much they love our country.\n\nIf we want them to stay, it’s time for us to show how much we love them.\n\nThis article was originally published by the Daily Sceptic.",
  "title": "We Need To Protect This Minority",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-06T01:30:00.386Z"
}