Nathan Laski

Nathan Laski (born June 24, 1863 in Middlesbrough , † October 21, 1941 in Manchester ) was a British entrepreneur .

Life and activity

Laski was a son of Eastern European immigrants. His father Naphtali came to Great Britain from Poland in 1831 to avoid the anti-Jewish measures of the tsarist government then ruling the country .

1876, at thirteen, Laski began the no formal schooling had gone through as an office boy for the Cotton Company GP Gunnis and Co. to work. In 1885 he was sent to India to represent this company . He rose quickly in the Gunnis company, so that at a young age he became a partner in the company, which he eventually transferred to the company Laski and Laski founded by himself and his brother Noah Laski . With this company, headquartered in Manchester and which grew into one of the largest and best-known companies in the cotton exporting industry in Lancashire in the 1890s , Laski dedicated himself to importing cotton from the British Dominion of British India for more than 50 years Europe. As an entrepreneur, Laski made great fortune in the 1890s, so that he has been one of the leading figures in Manchester ever since.

For decades Laski was one of the most prominent Jews in British public life. In this context, he also took on numerous voluntary tasks in the Jewish community in his hometown and for supraregional Jewish organizations. He was for many years chairman of the Jewish Council for Manchester and Salford (Manchester and Salford Jewish Council), President of the United Synagogue of Manchester. The Zionist movement , he stood for a long time, however, very distant from because he saw in it an obstacle to the social integration of Jews. In Manchester, Laski was considered the "uncrowned king" of the Jewish community for more than 40 years. He held court at his Smedley House estate on Smedley Lane by receiving a seemingly indefinite chain of people seeking advice and petitioners for personal talks.

Politically, Laski was a supporter of the Liberal Party . His wife was a member of the City Council of Manchester from 1925 until her death. In the 1900s he promoted the young Winston Churchill after he had switched from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party in 1904 , and supported his efforts to secure the mandate of the representative of the constituency of North West Manchester in the House of Commons . Churchill gained Laski's sympathy after he voted as a Conservative MP against the Aliens' Act of the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour , which wanted to limit the immigration of persecuted people from Russia and Eastern Europe to Great Britain.

In 1933 Laski received an honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester .

In 1935, Laski largely withdrew from his business in order to devote himself to his public offices instead.

As one of the best-known Jews in Great Britain's public life, Laski was classified as an important target by the National Socialist police forces: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin therefore placed him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who would be killed in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles should be located and arrested by the Wehrmacht from the occupation troops following special commandos of the SS with special priority.

In 1941, Laski was hit by an automobile on Cheetham Hill Road on the way to a council meeting in Manchester. He died two days later as a result of his injuries in the Jewish Hospital in London, of which he was chairman from 1921 to 1941.

family

Laski was married to Sarah Frankenstein (1869-1945) since 1889. With her he had several children, including the son Harold Laski (1893-1950), who was known as a political scientist and leader of the Labor Party, and the son Neville Laski, who was a well-known lawyer.

literature

• The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. An Authoritative and Popular Presentation of Jews and Judaism since the Earliest Times , Vol. 6, p. 541.
• Isaac Kramnick / Barry Sheerman: Harold Laski: A Life on the Left , 1993.