Only a Bookseller

2009, 55 minutes Beta SP/DVD
Jack Firestein was a bookseller with bookstalls outside the Camden Labour Centre, in Unity Theatre foyer and shops in the East End, Willesden and Soho. He was also a driver to Clive Jenkins, General Secretary of the trade union, the Association of Scientific, Technical and managerial Staffs from the 1970s to 2000. He was a strong Jewish anti-fascist who took part in the Cable Street opposition to Moseley. He fought, was wounded and captured at Anzio and won a Military Medal in WW2.
But Jack will be best remembered as a fearless labour movement activist spanning more than seventy years. He was in the Communist Party and then the Camden Labour Party. He was one of the first members of Unity Theatre and ran the Unity Folk Club that is still going today. He was on every Aldermaston March with his singers. He was a founder member of the London Socialist Film Co-op. He stuck his neck out for many local causes.
The film has interviews with Jack, friends, colleagues and family and amateur and archive film footage. The music is an assortment of folk and protest songs loved by Jack.