Maurice Ludmer

Maurice Ludmer (1926–1981) was a British anti-fascist activist and journalist. His father was a Salford hairdresser and mother a teacher of Hebrew. His family moved to Birmingham in 1939. As a young man he was interested in sport and joined the Young Communist League. During the Second World War he served in the British Army. It was the shock of a visit to Belsen concentration camp which influenced his life.

He became a sports journalist by trade. In the 1950s he became active in local politics in the Midlands, particularly tenants' associations and the peace movement. But following the Notting Hill riots 1958, the controversial Smethwick election and the anti-immigration Immigration Control Associations, he became an active anti-racist.

In 1961 (when the first Commonwealth Immigration Bill was being discussed in parliament), Ludmer, with Birmingham activists of the Indian Workers Association such as Jagmohan Joshi, set up the Co-ordinating Committee Against Racial Discrimination (CCARD) which opposed both state racism and far right activism. CCARD also organised demonstrations over international issues such as the Vietnam war and against British colonial rule in Africa. It helped launch the more broad-based national organisation Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD). In the late 1960s he resigned from the Communist Party which he felt was not fighting hard enough against racism.

Ludmer continued to oppose organised fascism and was attacked by fascists on several occasions.

In February 1975, he launched Searchlight, with the aim of 'turning the searchlight on the extremists'. It reprinted on its cover the famous 1930s anti-fascist slogan 'They shall not pass'.

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