This obituary for Mike Levine mainly concentrates on the development of his political ideas and activities, rather than his personal life and career.
Michael (Mike) Robin Levine was born in August 1938 in London, the son of Dorian and Sadie, who were the children of Jews who had migrated from Eastern Europe to Glasgow at the turn of the century. Mike was born a month before the ‘Munich Agreement’, which promised to avert the start of war in Europe, but subsequently led to the Holocaust. Dorian joined the British army as a doctor. Subsequently, Sadie and Mike moved to Palestine to be closer to Dorian, who was on duty there.
Sadie and Mike were then evacuated to South Africa and lived around Durban and Johannesburg until moving back to London with Dorian in 1946. After a short period, the family returned to South Africa, settling in Cape Town, where Sadie worked as a journalist and Dorian had a dental practice. During this period, Mike became opposed to the apartheid regime.
Zionism
The family moved back to London permanently when Mike was 15. He went to Hackney Downs school, where he first met his lifelong school friend Ezra. Mike entered the Jewish intellectual and political milieux in the East End of London with its long radical tradition.[1] Throughout their teens, at school and in Hackney Library, Mike and Ezra met up with others to discuss Communism, Marxism and Zionism.
At this time, Mike became drawn to the left-wing tradition of Zionism associated with Poale Zion, a movement of Marxist–Zionist Jewish workers founded in various cities of Poland, Europe, and the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century.[2] Subsequently, he made plans to move to Israel to work on a Kibbutz and spent a year working on a farm in Sussex in preparation for doing agricultural work. Before he left for Israel, he was warned about the dangers of Zionism by Yigael Glückstein, who had joined their discussions in the basement of Hackney Library.
Glückstein was born in Palestine to Zionist parents in 1917. During the 1930s, he played a leading role in the attempt to forge a movement uniting Arab and Jewish workers. In 1947, seeing that the victory of the Zionists was inevitable, Glückstein moved to Britain, where he adopted the pseudonym Tony Cliff.[3] In 1948, the state of Israel came into being on the back of the expulsion of about half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population.[4]
As soon as Mike arrived in Israel, he was confronted with the sight of young macho Israeli men brandishing guns and talking proudly of shooting Arabs and soon realised Glückstein was correct. This transformational experience meant that Mike returned to London and began a lifelong journey in opposition to Zionism, racism, militarism, nationalism, religion and capitalism.
Radical Science Movement
Mike took a degree in physics in London and then completed a PhD at York University. He then started a long, successful career in scientific research and teaching, first in crystallography and later in physiology. He worked in London, York, St. Louis, USA and then back to York. The family finally settled in Bristol in 1974, where Mike gained work as a research scientist, although he later had to commute to London for work.
During his career, Mike developed some excellent working relationships, and some of these turned into lasting friendships, but he also had to overcome the arrogance of, and bullying by, some senior members of staff, and this radicalised him further. He joined the “radical science” movement, which sought to highlight the social and political implications of science and technology and wrote a paper on the proletarianisation of scientific workers.
The Movement for Colonial Freedom
As a young man, Mike was involved in a variety of campaigns and causes which reflected his belief in the possibility of socialism. He joined the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF) in the late 1950s. The MCF was founded in the UK in 1954, and its main role was to campaign for independence for those countries still under colonial rule. It had a lot of support among rank-and-file Labour Party members and within the trade union movement. The MCF waged high-profile campaigns against the foreign policies of both Labour and Conservative governments. In September 1959, Mike received a bloody nose when using a chair to fight off an attack by fascists while attending a public meeting of the MCF in London. The footnote provides a report of the event in the Daily Herald.[5]
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
In the early 1960s, Mike joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)[6] and the Direct Action Committee (DAC).[7] He was arrested with 81 others on 2 January 1960 while attending a demonstration at the Rocket Site at Harrington, Northants. Mike and the others were charged with obstructing the Police in the execution of their duty and they spent four nights in prison. They were subsequently brought before the magistrates, where their defence solicitor argued that their actions had been guided by conscience rather than criminal intent. The bench did not impose any fine nor exact any undertaking from the defendants to be of good behaviour.
The Thor missile programme was the USA’s first generation of ballistic missiles. Because of their limited range (around 2000 miles), they had to be stationed in Western Europe so that it would be possible to use them against the Soviet Union. With the enthusiastic agreement of the British government, 60 Thor missiles were deployed in the UK, three each at 20 different sites. RAF Harrington was one of those sites. The Thor missiles were quickly superseded and were withdrawn in 1963.
The experience of prison made a deep impression on Mike’s thinking about the penal system, and he often spoke of the plight of the prisoners in Horfield Jail who were locked in their cells 23 hours a day.
The Vietnam War
Mike married Angela Hammond in 1967, and their first daughter, Joanna, was born soon after. When Mike got a job at Washington University, St Louis, later in 1967, the young family moved to the USA. Mike joined student-led protests against the Vietnam War, which often escalated to the destruction of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) buildings on college campuses. At least 30 TOTC buildings were burned or bombed nationwide in 1970 alone. These actions were fuelled by opposition to the draft and the war itself, leading to violent clashes with authorities and the mobilisation of National Guard units on many campuses.[8]
One such incident was the burning of the WASHU’s Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) buildings on 23 February 1970 and 5 May 1970. Authorities categorised the fire as arson and believed it was set on fire by activists opposed to the ROTC presence on campus.[9]
Unfortunately, on 5 May 1970, the St Louis Post-Dispatch printed a picture of Mike standing in front of a burning ROTC building. Consequently, the family quickly returned to England. Mike got a job at York University, and Angela gave birth to their second daughter, Rebecca, soon after their return.
Bristol
In 1974, Mike got a new job at the University of Bristol and so he moved to the city with his family. As well as caring for his daughters, he sustained lifelong friendships. He was very loyal and often said he learnt a lot from his friends and all the conversations he had with them. In particular, he met up regularly with a small circle of friends to discuss politics, science, and history, where he met Meg Davies, with whom he later developed a very close relationship.
Politically in Bristol, Mike became involved in the Full Marx Bookshop, which was a radical, alternative bookstore located in Stokes Croft from approximately 1976 to 1990. His interest in history found expression in his involvement with the Bristol Radical History Group. In later life, Mike devoted his energies to campaigning against the privatisation of the health service as a member of Bristol Protect Our NHS.[10] Mike was reluctant to join a political party but, like hundreds of thousands of others, joined the Labour Party when it was under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Mike was an early member of the Stop the War Coalition in Bristol, and until ill-health prevented him, he was centrally involved in their activities. He remained keenly interested in the anti-war movement until his death.
Zionism and History
Mike’s opposition to Zionism culminated in 2019 in the publication, by Bristol Radical History Group, of ‘Zionism and History: Reading the wrong lessons from the persecution of the European Jews’. The book challenged the psycho-pathological explanation of anti-Semitism by tracing its historical roots and manifestations from the Crusades to Nazism. Mike’s conclusion was that the Zionist state of Israel, far from providing a safe haven from persecution, has been making Jewish people less secure through its oppression of Palestinians (of which the destruction of Gaza and the massacre of citizens is but the latest example). Mike argued that:
The original Zionist idea was that the Jewish state should be a state like other states. However, the concept of the state has changed in the meantime. Modern technologically advanced states tend to be secular and multi-ethnic, with equal rights for all. However, the present Zionist desire seems to be for a predominantly Jewish state with the Palestinians as a permanent second-class group. What good is that? As for religions, the history recounted here suggests that the sooner they cease to be a political force, the better. We should learn from history and try not to repeat ourselves.[11]
Mike did not support the leadership of Starmer and the drift of the Labour Party to the right, particularly over his failure to prevent UK arms sales to Israel and to speak out against the destruction of Gaza and the massacre of its people.
As he grew older, he devoted more of his energy to his loving family and close friends, particularly his three grandchildren, Sapphire, Alice, and Erica. He made two memorable trips to visit Sapphire and his great-grandchildren, Summer and Kaia, in New Zealand.
Mike was a lovely man, a true friend. I will always remember and value the many evenings we spent together talking politics and sharing stories and jokes.
Thanks to Rebecca Levine, Joanna Levine, Andy Mathers and Jeremy Clarke for their help in writing this obituary.
Notes
[1] William J. Fishman. East End Jewish radicals, 1875-1914.
[2] Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klingberg, Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism
[3] In 1945, Gluckstein married Chani Rosenberg, who was born to a Lithuanian Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1922. Initially drawn to leftwing Zionism, she studied Hebrew at Cape Town University, and in 1944 moved to Palestine to live on a kibbutz, where she witnessed anti-Arab racism. Both Gluckstein and Rosenberg became Trotskyists and their political legacy is embodied in the SWP (British Socialist Workers Party) and its sister organisations in the International Socialist Tendency
[4] The independent state of Israel was established in 1948 at the end of the British Mandate. During this period, about half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, around 750,000 people, were expelled from their homes or made to flee through various violent means, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of the State of Israel, by its military. Dozens of massacres targeted Palestinian Arabs, and over 500 Arab-majority towns, villages, and urban neighbourhoods were depopulated. Many of the settlements were either destroyed or repopulated by Jews and given new Hebrew names. By the end of the conflict, Israel controlled 78% of the land area of the former Mandatory Palestine.
[5] Daily Herald, 29 September 1959. Chanting” Keep Britain White-Vote Bill Webster,” a mob of race-rioters charged into a town hall meeting last night, sweeping aside stewards who tried to keep them out. Six of the stewards were taken to hospital. And nearly 150 police officers were rushed to the hall. A number of people were arrested, including Mr Bill Webster, National Labour candidate for St. Pancras North, and his 17-year-old son Peter. The tickets-only meeting was being held in St. Pancras Town Hall by the Movement for Colonial Freedom. Among the speakers was Mr Fenner Brockway. It had been in progress for 15 minutes when a mob of yelling youths drove up in cars and launched their invasion. They hurled refuse, bags of flour and broken glasses. The stewards, fighting desperately, pinned them in the foyer while, inside the hall, Mr Kenneth Robinson, Labour candidate for St. Pancras North, kept on speaking. A barricade of chairs kept the mob back, but in the ten-minute battle, stewards were punched and kicked. Several got black eyes. The meeting went on. A 16-year-old Pakistani girl called Rashida said: “I was standing outside the hall when the gang arrived. They shouted: Grab her. We will have her as a hostage. They closed in on me, but I managed to get inside.” Police cleared the streets and escorted about 200 people from the meeting to safety. But afterwards, youths drove round the hall in a lorry, chanting: “Keep Britain White, Vote Bill Webster.” Mr Webster, aged 50, was arrested after the trouble died down. His son was already at the police station. Eight people were charged with using insulting words and behaviour and will appear at Clerkenwell today.
[6] https://cnduk.org/who/the-history-of-cnd/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Action_Committee
[8] https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fifty-years-ago-this-spring-millions-of-students-struck-to-end-the-war-in-vietnam/
[9] Only one person, Howard Mechanic, was caught and sentenced to five years in prison. He was allowed to finish his degree, but went on the run and became a fugitive. He was discovered in 2000, arrested again, and imprisoned, but later pardoned by the President, Jimmy Carter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vBIfYU4Jvc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl0ndZZJBVc
https://www.newspapers.com/article/st-louis-post-dispatch-may-5-1970-pro/19797859/
https://depts.washington.edu/antiwar/may1970strike.shtml
[10] https://www.protect-our-nhs.org.uk/
[11] Mike Levine, Zionism and History, pp 132-133.
