John Mann calls for Jewish staff groups in workplaces to tackle antisemitism

The UK parliament’s antisemitism adviser John Mann has said workplaces need the equivalent of the “phenomenally successful” Jewish supporters groups that have been set up in football clubs. 

At Leeds, Chelsea, Arsenal and elsewhere, fans who had a problem with the club now had someone to talk to. Jewish groups in football worked brilliantly, Lord Mann told an audience in the City of London on Wednesday, and workplaces could benefit from similar groups.

He spoke of two senior City workers who had left their jobs in the past year and gone to rival organisations because of antisemitic attitudes in the workplaces. “They’re people in a position to say, ‘I’ll go somewhere else. They’re at the top of the profession. But I’m thinking: what if I’m a new, younger person, not at the top?”

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Employers should treat Judaism as an ethnicity rather than only as a religion, and have some engagement with Jewish groups, he added. “It’s important that employers have a feel for their Jewish employees, That is the normal employment approach for successful businesses, from my experience.” 

Mann was speaking alongside Lord (Danny) Finkelstein and Jonny Newton of CST, about the rise in antisemitism. In response to a question about what people in the room could do to combat it, Finkelstein said it was important to take an interest in social media consumption. “Remember that now, for young people, YouTube is what television was, and it’s very powerful,” Finkelstein said. “And you probably don’t know what they’re watching.” 

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The event was organised by Henrietta Gordon, a divisional director at the broker Howden, who told the audience she had sought to educate herself about the antisemitism taking place around her, and was still learning. “We cannot solve the problem of anti-Jewish racism overnight, but we can begin to create environments where our colleagues feel safe enough to share who they are and to make clear that antisemitism is not tolerated in any guise within the City or within the insurance industry.”