Worker's Friend Group
Jewish anarchist group active in London's East End in the early 1900s
The Worker's Friend Group was an English Jewish anarchist group which was active in the East End of London in the early 1900s. It was associated with the weekly Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper Arbeter Fraint (Worker's Friend). It was centered around the German emigré anarchist Rudolf Rocker. And it ran a social center known as the Worker's Friend Club and Institute and Jubilee Street Club. The club became a fixture in London's Jewish social community and was influential on the area's artists and writers. Its cultural programming included concerts, performances, and lectures on political, scientific, and literary topics. Its newspaper began in 1885 as a Jewish socialist periodical and grew towards anarchism with the arrival of Saul Yanovsky, an American anarchist and journalist. By 1904 it was the most popular radical Yiddish-language newspaper in London, reaching a peak circulation at 5,000 weekly copies in the following year. The operations of the group declined following the British entry into World War I, as rising anti-German sentiment and Rocker's anti-war beliefs culminated in his detention, and it closed in 1910. The newspaper ceased publication in 1915.
“Worker's Friend Group” enters the record as jewish anarchist group active in London's East End in the early 1900s. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Worker's, Friend and Group can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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