The British anti-racism protest group that took on the world: inside Campaign Against Antisemitism

As a law student, Gideon Falter spent a year studying in the French city of Lille. It was there that he first came across frightened Jews, an experience that changed his life.

“I’d come from a world where you don’t hide as a Jew. But when I went to France, I had a very different experience,” he recalls. “I had my name on the doorbell and Jewish friends would come over and say, ‘Your name is Jewish, you shouldn’t have your name on there for people to see.’

“It took me some time to realise that the restaurant I lived above was owned by a Jewish family and they’d actually chiselled a hole in the door frame, put the mezuzah into the hole and then painted over it so people wouldn’t see. I remember sitting at the computer at university reading an Israeli news website and someone came up behind me and said, ‘I just want you to know, I like Jews but I am really worried about your safety doing this in public.’ The local rabbi had to have a police guard and every week I was reading about vandalism or arson attempts on synagogues.”

That experience, back in 2003, was the start of a journey that in 2014 led Falter to become the figurehead of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), an insurgent activist group that took Britain’s Jewish establishment by storm, showing the guts to get things done.

The organisation, which celebrates its tenth birthday this week, has chalked up numerous successes over the years, including persuading the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to investigate Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. But its pugnacious approach has made many enemies as well as friends along the way.

The CAA was born after Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s seven-week war against Hamas in July 2014. Falter was not the only one shocked to see people on pro-Palestine marches holding placards saying “Hitler was right”.

Amid rising tensions, the Tricycle Theatre, in Kilburn, London, which had been holding Jewish Film Festival screenings for eight years, threatened to pull the plug. The reason? Festival organisers had refused to hand back £1,400 of funding they had received from the Israeli embassy to fly over a director from Israel.

One evening, an activist called Rupert Nathan set up a campaign on his Facebook page to boycott the Tricycle. “When I woke up, I had 1,500 comments and things ballooned very quickly,” he recalls. “There was an appetite to do something.”

For the first time, Jews in Britain, unimpressed with the actions of the official bodies, were organising themselves online. Later that year, a protest outside the Tricycle was to mark the start of a new movement: the CAA. Falter got involved.

Also present was journalist Jonathan Sacerdoti (formerly the JC’s Special Correspondent). He had gone to report on the demonstration but also ended up joining the new group as a volunteer.

“This was an organisation that was clearly needed,” he recalls. “These were grassroots people who really cared and wanted to do something. I think the British Jewish community had depended on pressure from the top down, the people who would have a word with their MP friends. But this wasn’t working any more and Jews were beginning to feel very scared, like they are now. This was the beginning of it.”

The Tricycle demonstration had an impact. “They turned around and apologised,” Falter says. “But I felt our message had to be broader than just what had happened at the Tricycle. For me, this was seeing the spray painting of synagogues, kosher sections in supermarkets being ransacked and nothing being done about it. This was about law enforcement. That’s why our next demonstration was outside the Royal Courts of Justice, calling for zero tolerance and enforcement of the law.

“This was a pivotal moment in which we in Britain were either going to go the way of France and other communities in Europe or not. I felt that the lights were going off in one European country after another. The lights were starting to flicker here in Britain, and we had to fight to keep them on.”

There was some consternation from the Jewish establishment who wondered – and in some cases are still wondering – about the combative approach of these new upstarts. But eventually they joined the protest. More than 4,500 protesters filled the streets outside the Royal Courts of Justice, with speakers including Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. Within days, antisemitism was being discussed in the House of Commons.

For the first few years, the CAA worked as a volunteer organisation. After an almost inevitable power struggle left Falter as chairman and others out in the cold – many describe the CAA chief as a Marmite-like figure – the group rose to become the go-to voice on antisemitism in Britain. When Sacerdoti later left, Falter was its sole figurehead.

Not long later, British Jews found themselves fighting a new battle with Corbyn. The CAA, which by now had qualified for charitable status, was in the heart of the action. As the primary complainant to the EHRC, it was instrumental in triggering the explosive report detailing Labour’s woeful tolerance of antisemitism.

Along the way, the group became more professionalised. Five years ago, Falter finally gave up his job as a consultant to combat antisemitism full-time. While the CAA still relies on an army of volunteers – around 200 work regularly for the group and hundreds more can be called to action – it has 16 paid employees working on everything from legal cases to antisemitism in schools. The wage bill includes personal security for Falter, who has received multiple death threats.

The charity is funded by a wide group of regular donors. “We’ve never had one mega donor or small group of mega donors behind us, unlike lots of Jewish charities, which are synonymous with a particular backer,” says Falter. “That gives us an enormous ability to just do what we think is right. We can react quickly without having to wait for permission. As long as we think something is the right thing to do, and it complies with charity law, we can do it. We have always had a rule which is to never accept a donation that comes with strings attached. In many ways our volunteers are our biggest donors because the value of the time they donate to us is so enormous.”

Its successes speak for themselves. A five-year legal battle finally brought Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz to justice. The CAA even took the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to court to persuade it to charge an extreme right-winger called Jeremy Bedford-Turner, who had given a speech where he incited people to “free England from Jewish control”. He was eventually jailed.

There have been stunts, too. These can be controversial; in April, when Falter, wearing a kippah, was filmed being prevented from crossing the road by police during a pro-Palestine demonstration because he was “visibly Jewish”, it dominated headlines for days. Then came the backlash, as he was widely accused of staging the altercation in bad faith.

There was criticism, not least within the community, that the furore was unhelpful. “The point I was making was that the police had been telling us all along that these are peaceful protests but the reality is, if you are a Jew in the vicinity of these protests and are not part of the protest, the police are worried about your safety and try to get rid of you,” he insists.

“People can debate whether I was too openly Jewish. Was I being provocatively Jewish? Was I asking for it? But I think that kind of debate is unfortunately symptomatic of a disease that we sometimes have in the Jewish community. Any other community would have simply said, ‘What were the police thinking?’ The fact that the police were saying one thing and meaning something else is symptomatic of a deep rot in our society.”

Communal interfighting also meant that the Board of Deputies refused to endorse the CAA’s march against antisemitism last November until 24 hours before the event (the rally attracted more than 100,000 people). A few weeks ago, however, Falter held a joint event with the new Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg, showing that a page had been turned.

The CAA is planning a second demonstration against antisemitism on December 8, which it is hoping will be even bigger than the first. It is certainly true that Jews in this country have endured a year like no other.

“I think there is a real feeling that this is the moment where we have to fight for our future,” says Falter. “Jewish people feel like they are drowning. The future of both our community and our country’s tradition of tolerance and decency is not guaranteed unless we stand up to answer antisemitism. This affects all of us.”