Sam Semoff – a Fighter, a Socialist and a Jewish Anti-Zionist - an Adopted Son of Liverpool Departs This World

It is still difficult to believe that Sam, who was 75, will no longer be with us.  That unique blend of Liverpudlian humour and an American accent. Sam was raised on a poultry farm in New Jersey, having been born in Philadelphia, but only because his mother went into labour there.  Sam's doctorate was in Molecular Cell Biology, and that was why he came to Britain in 1979.  I met him shortly after he came here.

Sam was a community activist in Liverpool whose speciality was health campaigns.  In particular he was the scourge of the PFI takeover of Liverpool’s new hospital, the cutbacks and all the other attacks.  Sam was also a class fighter.  He rejected Zionism for the same reasons that he rejected all forms of racism. 

He was a medical researcher and worked for years at Liverpool University.  He lost a battle in the Employment Tribunal and then the Employment Appeal Tribunal under the right-wing judge Simon Brown, who was hostile to all equalities legislation.  He was fighting against the endemic racism of one of the old style colonial outposts, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.  The School had been founded, like its London counterpart, as part of the attempt to colonise Africa which was then known as the Dark Continent on account of the impenetrability for White people of its interior.  Because of malaria and other diseases, White men were unable to conquer the savage interior of Africa and that was the reason the tropical medicine schools were founded.  They were the medical spear of British colonialism.

Sam threw himself into a variety of grassroots community campaigns in Liverpool and was highly respected amongst the Black and Somali communities.

It was Sam’s hatred of racism that meant that he could be no other than an anti-Zionist.  I first met Sam in around 1980 and we worked together at first in the British Anti-Zionist Organisation.  We also resigned from BAZO together when we had accumulated enough proof that it was controlled by Iraqi Baathists.  Sam went on to be a committed activist in Liverpool Friends of Palestine.

I left Liverpool in 1974 but I used to come back quite often to see my parents.  Whenever I returned I would make a point of going for a drink with Sam and a meal, often with his former wife Lil.  When my children came up to Liverpool they stayed with his daughter Shelah and Karlaya Mae.  Sam took very easily to being a grandfather and baby sitting.

Sam was a dedicated Jewish anti-Zionist and proud of that fact.  He could always be counted on to sign a Jewish anti-Zionist petition or letter.  Sam really was the unsung hero of our movement.  Whereas people like me have risen to prominence (and infamy!) Sam was someone who preferred to stay in the background.

The last time I saw Sam was in June 2016 when I came to speak at a Liverpool Friends of Palestine meeting in the wake of my suspension from the Labour Party over the fake anti-Semitism campaign.  It was a packed meeting that the Zionists had, as usual, tried to have cancelled.  Afterwards the speakers and Liverpool activists went for a Chinese meal in the centre of Liverpool where we discussed the latest attacks inside the Labour Party.  Sam had, like so many of us, left the Labour Party in the Blair years and had come back with the election of Jeremy Corbyn.

I stayed with Sam in his flat in Ullet Road and I was shocked then at the deterioration in Sam’s health.  He had to walk around with oxygen canisters.  I wondered how long Sam could continue to survive.  However he hadn’t lost his sense of humour and he thoroughly enjoyed the meeting.  Sam had previously enjoyed smoking cannabis but he was now no longer able to smoke anything. Many was the time when we smoked dope  together!

I can remember over 30 years ago Sam was busy helping to produce an issue of the short-lived Liverpool Labour Briefing, which included an article by me.  When I got married in 1989 Sam came down and stayed with us in Brighton as he did three years ago when I was extremely ill and thought I was going to die. 

Sam was one of those who was to the forefront in trying to remove the racist Zionist MP for Liverpool Riverside and the supporter of Israel’s abuse of Palestinian children, Louise Ellman.

The short video clip I am including here for the first time was when I was visiting Liverpool on the way to Scotland with my daughter Ellie.  It was in 2003 and I still had my Renault 5!  In the clip I had taken my late mother and Ellie to meet Sam, I think in Lodge Lane, Liverpool 8, which was near where he lived.

Sam was the best of comrades and never had an ill-word to say about anyone.  It is really hard to imagine that Sam is no longer with us.  My heart goes out to Sam’s daughter and his grandchild, Karlaya Mae.  He will be sorely missed.

There are a lot of tributes at the Save Liverpool Womens Hospitals Facebook Page, please have a look at them and post your own tribute if you knew Sam or at his Facebook page.  Here are also some of the tributes that have been paid on his own Facebook page.

Tony Greenstein