Jenny Manson

Redcliffe's parents, Sarah Solomon (1844–1931) and Myer Salaman (1836–1896), were merchants who traded in ostrich feathers during the height of the plume trade.

Manson's paternal grandfather was botanist and potato breeder Dr Redcliffe Nathan Salaman FRS (1874–1955) who wrote The History and Social Influence of the Potato.

Her paternal grandmother Nina Ruth Davis (1877–1925) was a Hebrew Hebraist and poet.

Her paternal grandmother's parents were Arthur Davis and Louisa Jonas.

Her father, Raphael Arthur Salaman (1906–1993) was an engineer and lexicographer of craftsmen's hand-tools who got news from Amnesty and CND delivered, and would read parts of the Bible to Manson.

Her mother, Miriam Polianowsky (1914–2013), escaped a pogrom in 1917 and left Ukraine for Palestine where she lived in Haifa for 10 years before coming to England at the age of 15 and lived in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

Jenny Rachel Manson (née Salaman; born November 1948) is a British Jewish activist, author, former civil servant, former Labour Party councillor for Colindale on Barnet London Borough Council, and co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour.

Manson was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire where, according to Manson, her family was the only Jewish family "and the only family that voted Labour".

Her parents were Labour Party supporters and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) activists.

In 1966, she visited Israel during her gap year where she stayed with her cousins on a kibbutz.

She said about the visit, "I was shocked then by the way Arabs were talked about in Israel. I was most happy on the kibbutz because they had dialogue with Palestinians. I remember them coming in for secret conversations in the night" and that she felt "desperately frightened" for Israel during the Six-Day War.

She said, "I don't think as a family we discussed or questioned Zionism. It had sort of just happened."

In 1969, at the age of 20, Manson graduated with a degree in history from the University of Oxford where she studied at Somerville College.

Manson's family celebrated Passover and observed Yom Kippur, and her father's family were members of Bevis Marks Synagogue.

At the age of 16, Manson joined the Young Socialists and has been a member of the Labour Party since 1969.

In the May 1986 Barnet London Borough Council election, she was elected as a councillor for the Colindale ward, serving until 1990.

In June 1987, she unsuccessfully stood as a parliamentary candidate in Hendon North at the UK general election.

In 2001, she joined Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and in 2016, she visited Israel with Yachad and "met with groups like Breaking the Silence and got a worrying impression from them that they were fearing for their security from other Jews for speaking up against the current situation."

After leaving university, she wrote a book of essays about consciousness, What It Feels Like to Be Me, which was published in 2010.

This led to Manson being invited by the Association of Jewish Refugees to talk to Holocaust survivors.

At the age of 21, Manson joined the Inland Revenue where she worked as a tax inspector, retiring from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in November 2011.

She edited the 2012 book Public Service on the Brink about the dangers of managerialism from her period of being employed by HMRC.

She then worked in her husband's publishing company for two years, before retiring completely in 2014.

Manson is now a trustee of two local charities and chairs Barnet Carers Centre.

She was a governor of the Garden Suburb School and chair in North London of the Save the Children charity.

She was inspired to become politically active again after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015.

Manson is a General Committee member of Finchley and Golders Green Constituency Labour Party.

In July 2017, Manson was elected chair of Jewish Voice for Labour.

She has said JVL was founded to advocate for Palestinian rights and "to tackle allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party."

She has stated that the organisation's mission is to "contribute to making the Labour party an open, democratic and inclusive party, encouraging all ethnic groups and cultures to join and participate freely.

In August 2017, Manson said that Jewish Voice for Labour would "provide a much-needed forum for Jews who want to celebrate and debate the long and proud history of Jewish involvement in socialist and trade-union activism."

She added that they "invite everyone of Jewish heritage in the Labour Party to join us in continuing these great traditions."

In September, she clarified that the organisation is "not anti-Zionist" but stated that it was "an alternative voice for Jewish members of Labour" who do not support the Jewish Labour Movement's "profoundly Zionist orientation".

In October of that year, she added that the organisation was set up because "Jewish members of the Labour Party have been unrepresented in recent years" so it could "become the voice of Jewish Labour Party members and we will be able to say what we think about issues like racism, free speech and Israel-Palestine."

Manson identifies as anti-racist.

The Salaman family are Ashkenazi Jews, who according to Manson's paternal grandfather, migrated to Britain from Holland or the Rhineland in the early 18th century.

Manson's maternal aunt is writer Esther Salaman (née Polianowski) and her paternal aunt is singer Esther Salaman.

In June 2018, she told The Jewish Chronicle "my views on Israel and Palestine have moved quite a lot in the last 20 or 30 years, like many people I suppose."

In April 2018, The Jewish Chronicle quoted Manson as saying she "began to identify as a Jew in order to argue against the state of Israel and its conduct..."

Arthur Davis' family were precision instrument makers who had lived in England since the early 19th century.