In my two articles addressing the myths surrounding the 1932 ‘Mass Trespass at Kinder Scout’ by ‘The British Workers’ Sports Federation’ which had been set up for the purpose by a jewish communist named Benny Rothman; (1) I noted how the myth of the ‘Mass Trespass at Kinder Scout’ was largely a myth created by Rothman himself in the 1960s/1970s when credulous BBC producers let him basically spout unchecked nonsense that served as the basis for the 1970 BBC 2 television film ‘The Battle of Kinder Scout’. (2)
This was reinforced by Rothman’s 1982 autographical book ‘The 1932 Kinder Trespass’ (3) which then formed the basis of desperate - and false - modern communist attempts to claim ‘they were responsible’ for opening up Britain’s countryside to ramblers and the British public. (4)
However, to quote Philip Daley - later a leading figure in the Ramblers’ Association - regarding the alleged ‘importance’ of Rothman’s ‘Mass Trespass’ of 1932:
‘Such access as we have gained howes nothing whatsoever to the mass trespass organised by the British Workers’ Federation, and I can say quite categorically and without fear of contradiction, that the “mass trespass” was a positive hinderance and deterrent to the discussion and negotiation to secure the freedom of the hills.’ (5)
One fact that wasn’t widely noted and which I brought up however was the fact that many of these ‘communist ramblers’ of ‘The British Workers’ Sports Federation’ – like Rothman himself – appear to have been jewish not British; as to quote myself:
‘Six attendees (including Benny Rothman) were arrested by the police.
Taft complains – uncritically citing Rothman – that:
‘That all five were ‘Jewish or Jewish looking people’, and he certainly believed that this was deliberately racist behaviour by police.’
Rothman and Taft would you believe that the six (it was six not five) arrested were merely styled as ‘jewish’ because the local police were ‘racist’ towards jews (read: anti-Semitic) but the problem for Rothman and Taft is that we know the names of those who were arrested.
They were:
John Anderson
Jud Clynes
Tony Gillett
Harry Mendel
David Nassbaum
Benny Rothman
Now clearly based on surname alone we know that Harry Mendel, David Nassbaum and Benny Rothman were jewish. This is supported by the fact that the judge in their case noted as much as an aside.
Based on the fact that half of those arrested at the ‘Mass Trespass’ of 1932 were jewish we may reasonably suppose that half of the 100-200 attendees were jewish or at least a quarter of said attendees (to be generous) unless we are to suppose that the police just happened to arrest ‘jewish looking’ attendees which we have no basis for suggesting whatsoever other than Rothman’s later attempt to claim the police were ‘racist’ (and thus ‘anti-Semitic’) against jews during the ‘Mass Trespass’.
This can also be said to further illustrate the significantly jewish nature of communism in Great Britain and the world in the 1920s and 1930s and be further evidence for the ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’ thesis.’ (6)
Fair enough you might say, but who was Benny Rothman outside of ‘The British Workers’ Sports Federation’ and the 1932 ‘Mass Trespass at Kinder Scout’?
Well helpfully we know a fair amount about Rothman’s life before and after this short period in his life largely thanks to his friend and fellow communist Bernard Barry.
We, for example, know that Benjamin ‘Benny’ Rothman was born to a jewish immigrants from Romania in Cheetham Hill in Manchester on 1st June 1911 (7) and by the age of eighteen was a member of the ‘Young Communist League’ (YCL). (8) Rothman was promptly sacked sometime in 1929 or 1930 after he began chalking communist slogans on the pavement to promote the sales of the Communist Party of Great Britain’s (hereafter CPGB) newspaper ‘The Daily Worker’ rather than working as a trainee mechanic. (9)
During 1931 Rothman – still predictably unemployed but somehow living relatively well – started cycling to North Wales and the Peak District as something to do and then set up the famous and very short-lived ‘British Workers’ Sports Federation’ branch – which was an adjunct of the CPGB) in Manchester later that year. (10)
As Stephenson opines this was likely done with the intention of pulling the attempted pro-communist political stunt that was the ‘Mass Trespass at Kinder Scout’ when he writes:
‘The demonstration was organised by an ephemeral body, the British Workers’ Sports Federation (BWSF), an appendage of the Communist Party; by men not known to have evinced any previous interest in the access problem, and who did not, in fact, play any part in the subsequent campaign.’ (11)
And David Hey agrees when he writes how:
‘By his own admission, Benny Rothman knew nothing about the history of the access movement, and he acknowledged later that it had been a mistake to antagonize the main body of ramblers, who should have been useful allies rather than opponents. In his own words, “We were newcomers to rambling.”’ (12)
It is also worth noting that Rothman appears to have gotten the idea from the (non-jewish) members of the ‘Clarion Cycling Club’ – associated with the ‘Sheffield Clarion Ramblers’ - and then claimed it as his own without crediting them or their own. (13)
But what was Rothman’s life like after the 1932 ‘Mass Trespass at Kinder Scout’?
Well Barry writes that:
‘When Benny condemned Chamberlain for the Munich agreement in 1938 he was called a warmonger and ostracised by his Labour Party workmates although a year later there was some realisation that Munich had not brought "Peace in our time". Again when the Soviet-German non-aggression pact was signed Benny had a rough period at work, the pact being seen as a sell-out by the treacherous Russians. Benny was very strongly anti-Hitler and thought that the stand taken by Harry Pollitt as to the anti-fascist nature of war was correct. He joined the Home Guard.’ (14)
We can note two things here in that:
A) Rothman’s positions weren’t actually dictated by his Marxism or his support for the Soviet Union; instead, his Marxism and his support for the Soviet Union are entirely condition by their relation to his jewishness. Hence, he opposed the 30th September 1938 Munich agreement and wanted Britain to declare war on Hitler – agreeing with the CPGB line – but opposed the 23rd August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact – disagreeing with the CPGB line – and the pivotal factor was not Rothman’s understanding of - or commitment to - Marxism, but rather whether the actions led to non-jews going to war with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich or not.
B) Rothman predictably didn’t join the British army despite being 28 in 1939 – i.e., a good age for a frontline soldier (the average age was 26) – (15) instead he refused to join up, worked for Metro-Vickers in Manchester – seemingly mainly as a union official/shop steward for the Amalgamated Engineering Union which by 1942 he was leading in his workplace and not doing any actual work whatsoever – (16) and instead joined the Home Guard – meant for men to old or young to serve on the front or in a reserved occupation none of which applied to Rothman – to actively avoid serving on the front in the ‘fight against fascism’ which apparently he was so committed to that he wanted non-jews to fight for the jews while the jews skulked at home!
Indeed, Rothman seems to have spent the entire of the Second World War as a full-time paid communist political activist since to quote Barry:
‘By 1944 Benny was selling daily 70/80 copies of the 'Daily Worker' in the factory. This was emulated by one of his stewards in another department. Some of his stewards joined the CPGB branch there.’ (17)
Some ‘committed anti-Fascist’ Rothman was!
He spent the entire ‘struggle against fascism’ hiding from actual struggle while encouraging non-jews to volunteer to personally fight it!
After the Second World War Rothman sunk to obscurity and all we know is that he was still a prominent local CPGB member in Manchester till at least 1970 – which means that he was following the party line after the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968 – since he stood as a CPGB candidate in local council elections for 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969 and 1970 and unsurprisingly got a negligible amount of votes. (18)
Rothman then sinks into near total obscurity other than in his attempts from 1970 to 1982 to promote the false idea of the 1932 ‘Mass Trespass at Kinder Scout’ was some kind epoch-making event in the history of the British public’s right to ramble and access the countryside before his death in 2002. (19)
Thus died a jewish communist, coward and liar.
References
(1) See my articles: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/benny-rothman-and-the-jewish-myth and https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-reality-of-the-mass-trespass
(2) Tom Stephenson, 1989, ‘Forbidden Land: The Struggle for Access to Mountain and Moorland’, 1st Edition, Manchester University Press: Manchester, pp. 154; 160
(3) Ibid., p. 153, n. 2
(4) For example: Mike Squires, 2012, 'The Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout', Socialist History Society Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 1 (New Series), pp. 1-3 and https://web.archive.org/web/20171206151708/http://www.redpepper.org.uk/occupy-kinder-scout-remembering-the-mass-trespass/
(5) Stephenson, Op. Cit., p. 163
(6) From: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/benny-rothman-and-the-jewish-myth
(7) https://www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/learning-about/news/70-years-of-the-peak-district-national-park/70-people-70-years/70people70years-benny-rothman
(8) https://wcml.org.uk/contents/activists/benny-rothman/
(9) Ibid.
(10) Ibid.; also https://web.archive.org/web/20041020002459/http://www.wcml.org.uk/people/benny_r_intro.htm and David Hey, 2011, ‘Kinder Scout and the Legend of the Mass Trespass’, Agricultural History Review, Vol. 59, No. 2, p. 209
(11) Stephenson, Op. cit., p. 154
(12) Hey, Op. Cit., p. 209
(13) https://web.archive.org/web/20041020002459/http://www.wcml.org.uk/people/benny_r_intro.htm
(14) Ibid.
(15) https://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/average-age-of-ww2-infantry-killed-in-action.31351/
(16) https://web.archive.org/web/20041020002459/http://www.wcml.org.uk/people/benny_r_intro.htm
(17) Ibid.
(18) https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/jan/25/guardianobituaries
(19) Ibid.