ANDREW WHITEHEAD
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      • FOOC: Village Bangladesh 1994
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Political Voices:
Leah Feldman

Political Voices: Leah Feldman
​


Leah Feldman (1898-1993) was born in Odessa. Her family moved to Warsaw, and Leah came to London in 1913 and became involved in the anarchist movement. In 1917, encouraged by the February revolution, she moved to Russia, where she attended Kropotkin's funeral. She returned to London in 1928 and resumed activism in the anarchist movement, which she found much diminished. She spent four years in Palestine in the 1930s. She remained active in the anarchist movement in London into her old age.

​I first interviewed Leah in October 1985 while making a radio documentary on Rudolf Rocker. The interview was about ninety minutes - the first half of it is posted on YouTube (above) and audio of the full interview is also posted as an MP3/audio file. A full transcript of this interview is posted at the bottom of this page. The interview covered particularly Leah's memories of the Jewish anarchist movement in the East End of London when she first became involved, the attraction of the Russian Revolution and her time in Soviet Russia, and her disappointment with the decay in the anarchist movement in London when she returned (I remember her attending the centenary event of Freedom in Covent Garden in 1986).

I visited Leah the following year to play her the radio programme I had made - and I interviewed her again on that visit. The audio is posted below - this interview has not been transcribed. It focuses mainly on her memories of the Freedom Group in London and anarchist activity in the UK.

I wrote an obituary of Leah Feldman for the first issue of Anarchist Studies which I have pasted below, along with Donald Rooum's obituary in Freedom and Albert Meltzer's in the Guardian. There's also a good obituary  on the libcom.org site.
​
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  • Home
  • Blog
  • Enthusiasms
    • London Fictions >
      • Alexander Baron
      • A walk round Baron's manor
      • John Sommerfield >
        • John Sommerfield Archive
        • John Sommerfield's Spanish notebook
        • John Sommerfield, 'More Room for Us'
      • Lynne Reid Banks
      • "Against the Tyranny of Kings and Princes": radicalism in George Gissing's 'Workers in the Dawn'
      • 'Beyond Boundary Passage'
      • 'London' by Dorf Bonarjee
    • A Mission in Kashmir >
      • Full text: A Mission in Kashmir
      • 'The People's Militia: Communists and Kashmiri nationalism in the 1940s'
      • The Rise and Fall of New Kashmir
      • The Making of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto
      • 'For the Conversion of Kashmir'
      • 'I shall paint my nails with the blood of those that covet me'
      • Freda Bedi looking 'From a Woman's Window' on Kashmir
      • Kashmir 1947: Testimonies of a Contested History
      • Kashmir @ 70
      • Kashmir 47 Images
      • Kashmir 47 on film
      • Kashmir 47 in fiction
      • Father Shanks's Kashmir 'Diary'
      • Krishna Misri: 1947, a year of change
      • Shanti Ambardar: Kashmir 1947
    • The O'Brienites >
      • Martin Boon
      • Dan Chatterton
      • George E. Harris
      • John Radford and the Kansas colony
      • Edward Truelove
      • 'New World'
    • Clerkenwell >
      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • The Residents of Clerkenwell
        • The Occupational Structure of Clerkenwell
        • Clerkenwell and Reform
        • Fenians, Reformers and the Clerkenwell "Outrage"
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
      • Patriotic Club
    • NW5 and Around
  • Voices
    • Partition Voices >
      • Partition Voices: L.K. Advani
      • Partition Voices: Ram Advani
      • Partition Voices: Qazi Ghulam Ajmiri
      • Partition Voices: Angela Aranha
      • Partition Voices: Helen Baldwin
      • Partition Voices: Bali family
      • Partition Voices: Edward Behr
      • Partition Voices: Benazir Bhutto
      • Partition Voices: H.K. Burki
      • Partition Voices: Sailen Chatterjee
      • Partition Voices: Pran Chopra
      • Partition Voices: K.S. + Ayesha Duggal
      • Partition Voices: Alys Faiz
      • Partition Voices: Jugal Chandra Ghosh
      • Partition Voices: Ashoka Gupta
      • Partition Voices: I.K. Gujral
      • Partition Voices: Syed Najmuddin Hashim
      • Partition Voices: Khorshed Italia
      • Partition Voices: Pran Nath Jalali
      • Partition Voices: D.N. Kaul
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      • Partition Voices: Basant Kaur
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      • Partition Voices: Karan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Khushwant Singh
      • Partition Voices: Shingara Singh
      • Partition Voices: H.S. Surjeet
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      • Partition Voices: K.B. Vaid
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      • Communist Voices: Brian Bunting
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      • Communist Voices: Anima Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Sailen Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Denis Goldberg
      • Communist Voices: Grootvlie miners
      • Communist Voices: Indrajit Gupta
      • Communist Voices: Chris Hani
      • Communist Voices: Lionel Martin
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      • Communist Voices: Geeta Mukherjee
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      • Communist Voices: John Rettie
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      • Political Voices: Sally Alexander
      • Political Voices: Lou Appleton
      • Political Voices: Murray Bookchin
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      • Political Voices: Nellie Dick
      • Political Voices: Leah Feldman
      • Political Voices: Jeffrey Hamm
      • Political Voices: Denis Healey
      • Political Voices: Eric Hobsbawm
      • Political Voices: Ian Mikardo
      • Political Voices: Mick Mindel
      • Political Voices: Adrian Mitchell
      • Political Voices: Phil Piratin
      • Political Voices: Betty Reid
      • Political Voices: Fermin Rocker
      • Political Voices: Ralph Russell
      • Political Voices: John Saville
      • Political Voices: Alfred Sherman
      • Political Voices: Screaming Lord Sutch
      • Political Voices: Dorothy Thompson
      • Political Voices: E.P. Thompson
      • Political Voices: Tom Wilson
      • Political Voices: Harry Young
      • The Land Song
      • Harry Pollitt on disc
    • The British New Left >
      • New Left: T.J. Clark
      • New Left: Chuck Taylor
      • New Left: Headopoly
    • South Asia
    • Burma
  • Collecting
    • Political Pamphlets
    • Political Journals
    • Political Badges
    • Political Tokens
    • Political Ephemera
  • Radio Gems
    • 'What's Left of Communism?'
    • 'India: a people partitioned'
    • India's Minorities
    • Documentaries and Features
    • From Our Own Correspondent >
      • FOOC: Working at Westminster 1990
      • FOOC: Ulster's Talking Shop 1991
      • FOOC: House Rules at Westminster 1992
      • FOOC: India's Red Fort State
      • FOOC: Keeping Kosher in Cuba
      • FOOC: Italy's Gourmand Communists 1992
      • FOOC: Scoundrel Politicians - 1993
      • FOOC: Kashmir's New Puritans 1993
      • FOOC: The Rajah of Bihar 1993
      • FOOC: Bringing the Gospel to Mizoram 1993
      • FOOC: Netaji, India's Lost Leader 1994
      • FOOC: A Self-Respect Wedding 1994
      • FOOC: The Miseries of Manipur 1994
      • FOOC: Village Bangladesh 1994
      • FOOC: Calcutta's Communists Discover Capitalism 1995
      • FOOC: Localism in Ladakh 1995
      • FOOC: Bhutan, not quite Paradise
      • FOOC: Crime and Indian Politics 1995
      • FOOC: Sonia Gandhi 1995
      • FOOC: Sri Lanka's Missing Leaders 1995
      • FOOC: India Votes 1996
      • FOOC: Communism Revisited 1996
      • FOOC: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 1996
      • FOOC: Kerala's Jewish Community 1996
      • FOOC: India's Corruption Scandals 1996
      • FOOC: The Maldives Crowded Capital 1996
      • FOOC: India's Polluted Capital 1996
      • FOOC: Jinnah, Pakistan's Quaid 1997
      • FOOC: Mauritius, an Indian Ocean melting pot
      • FOOC: The Hijras Blessing 1998
      • FOOC: Massacre at Baramulla 2003
      • FOOC: An Old Photo from Kashmir 2007
      • FOOC: Prosperity Driven from Detroit 2008
      • FOOC: An Atheist in MLK's Atlanta2013
      • FOOC: San Francisco's City Lights 2014
      • FOOC: Kashmir Revisited 2014
      • FOOC: By Ferry in Burma 2014
      • FOOC: Toyah's Grave 2017
      • FOOC: The Tibetan Colony in Kashmir 2017
      • FOOC: Stars of Tamil Politics 2018
      • FOOC: Koreans in Chennai 2018
      • FOOC: Epitaph to Empire 2019
      • FOOC: Armenians in India 2019
      • FOOC: Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall 2020
    • What's your favourite political song?
    • London Snapshots
  • Writing
    • Bibliography
    • Tramping Artisans
    • Working Class Housing in Jericho, Oxford
    • New Statesman
    • The Freethinker
    • Outlook
    • Asian Age
    • Indian Express
    • miscellaneous writing
  • Gallery
  • Contact