Max Levitas

Max Samuel Levitas (1 June 1915 – 2 November 2018) was an Ireland-born British communist activist and councillor, prominent in the East End of London for many years. The brother of communist activist Maurice Levitas, Max Levitas was a member of the Young Communist League and later the Communist Party of Great Britain.

As part of his involvement in politics, in opposition to the British Union of Fascists, Levitas was involved in political violence as part of the Cable Street riot with the Metropolitan Police. As part of his involvement with the CPGB, he was a councillor on Stepney Borough Council and then Tower Hamlets London Borough Council during the 1940s. When division grew within the CPGB over Eurocommunism in the late 1980s, he joined the re-established Communist Party of Britain.

Biography Levitas was born in the Portobello area of Dublin, where he attended St Peter's School. His parents were Yiddish-speaking Jews fleeing pogroms in Imperial Russia: Lithuanian-born Harry and Latvian-born Leah. Harry was prominent in the Amalgamated Jewish Tailors', Machinists' and Pressers' Union, and this led to his blacklisting by employers. As a result, in 1927, the family moved to Glasgow, and Max left education.

In Glasgow, Levitas became interested in communism, and when he was 16, he joined the Young Communist League. In 1931, he moved with his family to the East End of London, and he joined his father in the clothing industry, becoming a tailors' presser. He became secretary of the Mile End branch of the YCL, which his younger brother Maurice also joined. In 1936, he was involved in the Battle of Cable Street, where Jewish people and socialists prevented a march of fascists through the East End. On his death, the Morning Star described him as the "last survivor of the Battle of Cable Street". He stood unsuccessfully for the Greater London Council in Tower Hamlets in 1970 and Stepney and Poplar in 1973, 1977 and 1981.

After standing down as a councillor, Levitas became a market trader, working in Dunstable, although he continued to live in the East End. He remained active in the CPGB, eventually joining its Communist Party of Britain (CPB) split, and also in local tenants' and pensioners' groups, and anti-racism campaigns.

Levitas died in November 2018, aged 103, with tributes paid by Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party,