The Worker's Friend Group was a Jewish anarchist group active in London's East End in the early 1900s. Associated with the Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper Arbeter Fraint ("Worker's Friend") and centered around the German emigre anarchist Rudolf Rocker, the group ran a social center known as the Worker's Friend Club and Institute and Jubilee Street Club from 1906 to 1915. The club became a fixture in London's Jewish social community and was influential on the area's artists and writers. Its cultural programming included concerts, performances, and lectures on political, scientific, and literary topics. The newspaper, begun as a Jewish socialist periodical, grew towards anarchism with the arrival of Saul Yanovsky. It was the most popular radical Yiddish-language newspaper in London by 1904 and reached a peak circulation at 5,000 weekly copies the next year. The Arbeter Fraint ran from 1885 to 1915. The group's operations declined following the British entry into World War I, as rising anti-German sentiment and Rocker's anti-war beliefs culminated in his detention, never to return to the town.
Group
The Workers' Friend Group, or the Arbeter Frainters, consisted of two or three dozen members from the early 1900s through 1914. The group was small and elitist in the face of a predominantly religious immigrant culture. As a group of close-knit friends, who lived in close proximity as a "quasi-Libertarian commune", they regularly raised funds for their club. The editorial group would meet in a member's handbag workshop as an editorial group, discuss the newspaper's next issue, and pool funds, often a significant part of their wages.
The group would fundraise through socials and balls, which brought together both those politically aligned and not. Their two or three masked balls would raise up to 30 in an evening (), with vocal performances and a lecture from Rudolf Rocker. Some workshops nailed a cigar box to their walls to collect pennies for the paper. Other sweatshop workers contributed pennies from their meager incomes. Proceeds from literature and personal subsidies also funded the group.
Those associated with the group lived in unspoken agreement that all ages and sexes were to be treated as free equals, without patronization. The group's main opponents were the Freiheit group from London's West End, who had previously broke with Rocker ideologically.
Club
Confrontations in the community reinforced the group's need for a permanent clubhouse. Having saved enough, per treasurer Lazar Sabelinsky, the group began to rent a two-storey building in 1906 at 165 Jubilee Street, a former Methodist church and Salvation Army depot that was often rented for social events. The building's owner liked the group's restrained mode of operating and Rocker's transparency. Sabelinsky, Prusky, Freeman, and Schatz together leased the building but its operations were self-managed. After several weeks of preparations and interior design from anarchists and non-anarchist artisans alike, the group built a stage and bar in the great hall. Contributors donated tables and chairs in the lower hall, which could fit 800. Workers built shelves in the second storey, which became a library. The adjacent 163 Jubilee Street became the Arbeter Fraint headquarters.
The Worker's Friend Club and Institute, also known as the Jubilee Street Club, opened on February 3, 1906. Opening festivities filled the building to its capacity despite the opening being on a Sabbath Saturday. Rocker inaugurated the opening with a speech on events predating the group's purchase of the lease and the drive of federated Yiddish-speaking anarchists. Rocker read statements in support from Jewish labor unions, Errico Malatesta, and Fernando Tarrida del Mármol, but was cut short when Peter Kropotkin appeared at the event to applause. Kropotkin, who had been ill, congratulated the crowd and spoke about their cause. John Turner compared the club to its Berner Street Club predecessor, and called the Jubilee Street Club more sophisticated. The Cockney carman Ted Leggatt also spoke before the festivities turned to a recital and then a band.