FISHMAN, WILLIAM

FISHMAN, WILLIAM (1921– ), British historian. Born to Russian immigrant parents in London's East End, Fishman left school at 14 to become a clerk and was involved in the "Battle of Cable Street"\>\> in 1936. After World War II he received a degree from the London School of Economics and became probably the first British professionally trained historian of immigrant background to study the Jewish East End. From 1972 Fishman was Barnett Shine Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary College. His best-known work, East End Jewish Radicals, appeared in 1975, and he has also written several other pioneering studies of the East End working class. Fishman has been very influential in broadening the traditional "meliorist" focus of Anglo-Jewish history from its elites to the inclusion of post-1880 immigrants and of radical groups. A Festschrift for Fishman, Outsiders and Outcasts: Essays in Honour of William Fishman, edited by Geoffrey Alderman and Colin Holmes, appeared in 1993. (William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)