Until just a few decades ago, if you were a minority in the UK--national, ethnic, religious, whatever--then the only way you had a remote chance that your concerns and agendas might make it into the public arena was through some kind of official representative. If you didn't have such a sanctioned "voice," you had no voice.

Multiculturalism as it developed in the UK in the 1960s, ‘70s and beyond changed things to the extent that minority voices came to be heard increasingly loudly in the public sphere, speaking for themselves rather than being spoken for. But multiculturalism also silenced some minority voices since, as the diversity of British society grew, so government, media and public bodies came to rely on official representatives to navigate Britain's complex minority landscape.

In the British Jewish community, official representative bodies such as the Chief Rabbinate and the Board of Deputies have long provided an influential and respected voice for British Jewry. However, these bodies have at times defined the boundaries of British Jewry in narrow ways, with the result that their voices have, at different points in history drowned out those of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Reform Jews, pre-1948 Zionists and those critical of the politics of the State of Israel. Feeling themselves to be excluded from the structures of communal representation, a group of British Jewish critics of Israel have now produced the collection, A Time To Speak Out.

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