Manny Robinson – the wonderful Editor of this newspaper for more than 40 years – had a saying when somebody died in old age.
He’d tell his sons: “When it’s a life well lived, of course, you are going to be sad, but these things should also be more about celebrating a life than mourning someone lost.”
When we remember Manny – who died in May aged 93 – we remember his wonderful career in the media, his love for our Essex Jewish community and his amazing EJN columns that continued right up until his final days. It truly was a life well lived.
Emanuel Rabinovitch was born on April 11, 1933, the first child of Ray and Sidney. He was close throughout his life with his brother Jeffrey and sister Gilda, whose passing in January of this year, which left him ‘last man standing’, affected him profoundly.
They grew up in Whitechapel in a block of flats called Chelsea Buildings in Princelet Street. His father was a Hoffman presser, his mother a seamstress.
On the night of 19 April 1941, the Luftwaffe launched one of its heaviest attacks on London, dropping a bomb on St Peter’s Hospital in Stepney, where Manny was being treated for dysentery.
His mother wouldn’t know for four days whether he had survived the bombing or not, only then finding out that he, together with the other survivors, had been evacuated to the village of South Mimms. He retained a vivid memory of tulips in the fields outside where he was staying. He was evacuated to Tylorstown in the Welsh valleys for the rest of the war, even attending chapel every Sunday.
Back in the East End, as youngsters, they had nowhere really to go, other than to the local dance hall, the Lyceum or the Royal, or to the local cinema, though sometimes a lack of money meant he often couldn’t afford to go to either.
And so, he joined a new club for Jewish boys, Brady. The purpose of the club, he once said, was to instil some sort of character. To him, Brady was his university. It was a place where they learned how to speak, how to respect their elders, and how to develop loyalties. It was also where he learned to dance – a skill to be shown off at simchas for years to come.
He became the first boy to edit the club’s magazine, once writing about the visit of Princess Margaret to the Brady Girls’ Club. He also used to go to watch Brady teams at football matches and started to write reports about their games.
And then on a Sunday afternoon after the match, he would write a report and take it down to the local newspaper, the East London Advertiser, and was chuffed when they used his report in the paper without changing a word.
That planted the seed in his mind that maybe he could become a journalist. Committing to this, he would spend his weekends in Fleet Street delivering photographs from picture agencies to national newspapers. It was his way of finding his way round, and from five o’clock in the afternoon until nine o’clock at night, he would be paid 10 shillings, but it gave him an ‘in’.
After National Service, he applied for work on the Stratford Express. The paper served the supporters of two professional football teams, West Ham United and Leyton Orient, and so he was given a job, on the heady salary of £4 a week.
Having told the Editor he liked football, he subsequently found out that none of the other journalists wanted to cover football because it meant working weekends. So he was appointed Sports Editor at the age of 21 and started sending snippets of news from the two clubs to the Evening Standard.
Journalism, at that time, wasn’t really a go-to career for a young Jewish guy from the East End of London. In fact, he became Manny Robinson when it was explained to him that his name needed to change if he wanted a by-line as Emanuel Rabinovitch was just too long to fit across a single column of type.
Eventually he was approached by the Evening Standard and offered a job there. And at 23, he became the youngest journalist at that point ever to get into Fleet Street, combining that work with reporting for the Sunday Express under the alias of Harold Swan. He stayed at the Evening Standard for 35 years, leaving as its longest-serving journalist.
It was a career that afforded him the chance to travel, to New York, to Israel and, memorably, to Birmingham on a wet FA Cup night, when the delayed trains meant he arrived after the final whistle, leaving him to report on a match he hadn’t seen and didn’t even know the score.
When a paper for the local Jewish community in Redbridge, then called The Bridge, launched in 1980, Manny became an essential part of the founding team, which included Israeli Itu Aviram, Frank Cass, Bernard Joseph, Philip Finlay and Geoffrey Phillips.
Manny soon became the Editor, changing the name to the Essex Jewish News, switching the format and pioneering the newspaper that so many still know and love today.
Under his editorship, the Essex Jewish News twice won the Community Newspaper of the Year Award, saw its circulation rise to 20,000, gave a start to numerous young journalists and provided a home for the writing of a number of older ones.
After retiring as Editor, Manny stayed on as Editorial Director and columnist – with his View from the Sidelines pieces always the most popular part of any edition.
The real love of Manny’s life was his family. He met Helen at an East End club and they were wed on 10 June 1956, a marriage that lasted until her passing almost 53 years later. In 1960, they were blessed with the arrival of twins, Paul and Stuart, and then five years later, with Howard.
Any visitor to Manny’s bungalow would find it rammed full of pictures of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He loved nothing better than getting down on the floor and playing with each new arrival, although in recent years getting back up again proved harder!
After Helen’s passing in 2009, Manny found new companionship with Betty, spookily enough called Betty Robinson, and they continued to enjoy travelling until ill health for both made that no longer possible.
In April, the family gathered to mark Manny’s 93rd birthday, enabling him to spend time with all of them together for the last time.
• This tribute is based on the eulogy written by Manny’s son Howard and Manny’s own work documenting the history of the EJN. We are delighted that Howard has taken over the hugely popular View from the Sidelines column.
Tributes from the team
Simon Rothstein: It’s impossible to put into words what Manny meant to me. After taking over as the Editor of the Essex Jewish News, he became not just my guide and mentor, but a true friend. My favourite memories of Manny are sitting in his bungalow, going through articles – which we used to literally have to print out and glue onto pages – and swapping war stories about our careers, the world of journalism and, his favourite of all, the hilarious typos that had somehow made it into print. Manny may be gone but his legacy will live on through this newspaper.
Micaela Blitz: I first joined the paper as the youth reporter, when I was still at school, and was the youngest one at our editorial meetings by a few decades, but Manny always made me feel included and listened to. He was such a kind, good humoured and interesting man full of amazing tales. I will miss his stories and I will miss him.
Linda Newman: Long before I started writing for the EJN, I had been an admirer of Manny Robinson. I was a regular reader – nay fan – of his wise, entertaining and original columns and in fact it was Manny’s work that inspired me, a retired journalist, to volunteer and become a writer for EJN myself. Because I am ‘a newbie’ to the paper, I met Manny only once, but I will always treasure that time and be thankful that he and his brilliant work ‘introduced’ me to the paper.
Pat Lidiker: Manny Robinson was a Fleet Street legend who kept his writing skills, infallible ear for a story and sheer joy of writing almost to the end. Success never went to his head, he stayed the same gentle person he always was – liked and respected by all who knew him. Few of us reached Manny’s heights and skills in giving decades of readers just what they wanted. We were so lucky to have him on our team.
Manny’s incredible family
Children:
Paul and Rona
Stuart
Howard
and Melanie
Grandchildren:
Michele and Joe
Sophie and Aryel
Sarah and Josh
Ella and Darren
David
Noah and Kaylin
Great
Grandchildren:
Reuben
Lottie
Rafi
Rosie
Cole
Nomi
