Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Finchley Progressive Synagogue

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Finchley
Source: Finchley Times, 25 May 1978
Editorial comments: 1445.
Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 701
Themes: Conservatism, Foreign policy (Middle East), Religion & morality

Jubilee synagogue warned against complacency

The temperature was 83 degrees when Finchley Progressive Synagogue was founded.

England was getting ready for the coronation and Sir Edmund Hillary was conquering Everest. The East Finchley Rex was showing Forever Amber and you could travel by rail from Hendon to Brighton for 8s. 9d. Not to mention buy a three-bedroomed house in Finchley for between £2,500 and £4,000.

But there have been changes since 1953, as Rabbi Frank Hellner reminded his congregation at a 25th anniversary service in the Hutton Grove Synagogue, on Sunday.

“A modern Rip Van Winkle waking up today after 25 years would find a world so changed he would not think himself in the same world,” he said. “This is an age when a gold standard rather than a God standard fixes morality.”

Evil

Change was inevitable, but was not necessarily good. Latent antisemitism was still riding high, as witnessed by the Zionism vote in the United Nations. Even in Finchley there had been no immunity, with local synagogues daubed with Swastikas and arson attemps.

“Perhaps this has jolted us out of a suburban complacency and we should take heed lest we sit back self-satisfied,” he said. “We must not minimise the degree of evil of which such hate groups as the National Front are capable.

“Why the National Front was ever allowed political status was one of the greatest diabolical errors of our age and it is one of the ways in which terrorists' groups get into the front by the back door. Only ten years ago one-third of our people were being silenced for existing.”

Rabbi Hellner's theme of change was taken up by Opposition Leader Mrs Margaret Thatcher, MP for Finchley and Friern Barnet, who proposed the toast of the congregation after the service.

“We have constantly to adapt to change,” she said. “We only do that in a progressive way by building upon things that must endure for ever. It is the best of these which one uses to adapt to the changing world.”

Mrs Thatcher said that when the synagogue was being founded she was producing twins, but a little while later as Finchley's MP, she was present for the service of dedication.

She impressed the congregation by remembering much of the sermon preached then—that religion was part and parcel of man's daily life and not something kept for the Sabbath.

“I was also present when Rabbi Hellner came 12 years ago and I remember some of his first sermons, too.” Mrs Thatcher said. “He said man was not just a chemical formula of DNA molecules and I was rather impressed because I did not know Rabbis knew about DNA. I am a chemist and I had to know about it.”

Mrs Thatcher said the United Nations decision which equated racialism with Zionism should never have gone through.

Bouquets

“Majorities are not right because they are majorities. They are only right if they observe certain underlying very important principles.

“What we see today is a tribute not only to the congregation but to the leadership which you have steadily exercised every day of your lives. This country would not be what it is were it not for that spirit.”

Mr Dick Levy, the synagogue's president, welcomed the guests, who included Barnet's new Mayor and Mayoress, Councillor Jimmy Sapsted and his wife, Renee, representatives of local churches, and founder members of the congregation.

He had special thanks for Rabbi Leslie Edgar, first chairman of the Finchley and district Liberal Jewish Group, as it was then called, who consecrated the synagogue, and to Rabbi Bernard Hooker, who had offered to come to Finchley from his Birmingham congregation to help in the early days.

He presented a copy of the synagogue's regular prayer book to Councillor Sapsted, and Mrs Sapsted and Mrs Thatcher received bouquets from Laura Bernard and Debbie Levin.

Councillor Sapsted said he had been Mayor of Finchley when he attended the opening of the synagogue, and he was thrilled to be Mayor of Barnet at its 25th anniversary.