The negotiations that led to the creation of the Representative Council had their beginnings during the First World War, when a number of Jewish leaders got together to secure the release of German, Romanian and Turkish Jews interned by the British government as enemy aliens.

Many immigrants of Eastern European origin nevertheless joined the army as volunteers, and two, of Manchester birth, won the Victoria Cross. The war was also a cultural watershed. Eastern European Jews were brought into closer contact with their native British neighbours, and this intensified the anglicization that was to continue throughout the inter-war years.

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