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 The
passing of Sir Sidney Hamburger on Thursday, 7 June 2001 marked
more than the loss of a Jewish communal leader regarded with
universal affection and respect. It marked also the end of an
era in the history of Manchester Jewry that began in the 1890s
with the emergence of Nathan Laski as the acknowledged leader
and spokesman of the Jews of Manchester. Sir Sidney may be seen,
perhaps, as the last representative of a dynasty of leaders
who, by their diplomatic skills, personal charisma and wide
tolerance provided the community with internal solidarity, effective
agencies of welfare and education and, above all, a peaceful,
protective and mutually supportive relationship with the city.
Born in Salford in 1914, Sir Sidney belonged to a family of
Russian immigrants who, before their arrival in Manchester, had already become
entrepreneurs in a small way. In Manchester, they rapidly came to belong to a
lower middle class of aspiring immigrant entrepreneurs committed to communal
work, Zionism, the furtherance of strict religious Orthodoxy and Gladstonian
Liberalism. By the early 1930s, such families, including the Hamburgers, had
begun to move northwards from the older Jewish Quarter into the suburbs of
Crumpsall and Prestwich. It was from their ranks that between the 1890s and the
1960s, an elite of communal machers – men such as Laski and Abraham
Moss – was largely drawn.
Typically, such machers combined fierce loyalty to the
Jewish community with an equally intense commitment to the welfare of the city,
serving effectively as mediators between the two.
On leaving a local (non-Jewish) elementary school in the late
1920s, Sidney single-mindedly pursued clear commercial, communal and political
ambitions. Following his father into the trade in light-fittings, he rapidly
built up a thriving business on his own account. As a teenager, he became active
in the Zionism mission to the new Jewish suburbs of north Manchester. In the
city, his sympathy with the plight of the Salford poor drew him into the ranks
of the local Labour Party.
Following army service as an officer in the Pay Corps, all
three ambitions were brought to fruition. He used his demobilisation payment to
help finance the purchase of a small factory in Salford that in due course
developed into the multi-million Searchlight Electrics. In 1946, he was elected
in the Labour interest to Salford City Council. Within the community, he
supported Abraham Moss, who took the young man under his wing, in the creation
of the King David Schools.
Sir Sidney may be seen as the major architect of the post-war
city and community. As Chairman of the Planning Committee, Leader of the Labour
Group and, finally, Mayor, he was largely responsible for the creation of a
modern Salford on the ashes of a deprived, neglected and dilapidated city. In
the community, he pioneered the adoption of modern welfare ideals to the needs
of Jewish families, an achievement culminating in the creation in 1971 of
Heathlands Village, one of the finest homes for the elderly in the land.
Simultaneously, he used his position as President of the Zionist Central Council
to keep the community firmly anchored to the Zionist ideal, particularly during
the crises in Israel during 1967 and 1973.
Following a successful presidency of the Manchester and
District Jewish Representative Council, he became generally acknowledged as the
community’s ‘leader’, as its prime mediator with the local authorities and
the government, as its fund raiser in chief and as the personification of those
qualities – respectability, integrity and civic mindedness – that ensured
the community’s peaceful co-existence with society at large. Combing
traditional Orthodox belief and practice with a wide tolerance of every
religious segment of Manchester Jewry he was able to hold the community together
to the benefit of both its internal welfare and external relations.
On the reorganisation of the National Health Service in 1970,
he was appointed Chairman of the North Western Regional Health Authority, a
position he used to attract adequate government support to the neglected
services in the northwest. It was on his relinquishing of this post in 1981 that
he received a knighthood, which he always saw as symbolising the major
contribution of Manchester Jewry to the city.
Sir Sidney was a man of tireless energy in the pursuit of
ideals that he saw as rooted in his firm religious beliefs. For him Judaism was
a religion that commanded service to humanity. His own service was both unique
and many-sided. At the end of his life, he was still taking on new roles, not
least the presidency of a movement to establish a Shoah Centre in Manchester.
Nor did this public life ever overshadow his commitment to
family and friends, or to those many individuals who sought his advice and
support. He was at the heart of a wide social network that included the families
of his three well-beloved sons, and that was built around his long and happy
marriage to Gertrude, Lady Hamburger. His warmth and friendship were open to
all, as this obituarist is in a strong position to know. He will now be
remembered by all, with admiration, respect and, perhaps, also some nostalgia
for the community held together under his tutelage by mutual tolerance.
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