Neighbours: Inside the tight-knit Caledonian Cousinhood of Scottish Zionism

By David Miller

The Caledonian Cousinhood of Scottish Zionism is extremely tightly networked and very heavily interlocked. It has been so for more than a century.

Time and time again in my research, I have looked at prominent Zionist families of today, only to discover that their parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents were involved in the Zionist movement right back to the beginning, at the turn of the twentieth century.

What’s more, those families that are in touch or intermarried with each other today have been close for many decades, reaching back several generations in many cases.

These interlocking relationships in business, the politics of Zionism, and social and communal life are, perhaps unsurprisingly, reflected in the fact that many of these key actors are very close neighbours.

In the case of Glasgow, Scotland, they live mainly in the strongly Zionist neighbourhoods of Giffnock (the G46 postcode) and Newton Mearns (G77).

This investigation uses the cases of three streets—all within the G46 postcode and each no more than a 5-minute drive from the others—to show just how close together leading Zionists are. In this case, the total distance between the three streets is 1.1 miles.

Isaac Wolfson and Zionist networking

This close networking is not a new phenomenon, as I have shown in two previous articles on the Caledonian Cousinhood and on how it expanded over the last 75 years.

In order to illustrate just how close Zionists are to each other, and indeed to other British citizens, here is an illustration from Glasgow in the early twentieth century concerning Isaac Wolfson, the patriarch of the Wolfson family, which now runs Next, Fatface, and Reiss, and continues to bankroll the genocide in the Levant to this day.

Back before Isaac made the fateful move to London in 1920, he lived in Glasgow just beside Queen's Park in a four-storey terraced house at the bottom of Camphill Avenue—No. 16.

Here is a short passage from a book by Stephen Aris, published in 1970, titled The Jews in Business, which captures the closely networked Zionist scene back then.

The Wolfsons lived in Camphill Avenue, Langside, in the middle of the Jewish district. Like the East End, it was what the sociologists call a face-to-face society. In other words, everybody knew everybody else. And as they were all in the same economic boat, it stood to reason that everybody also knew everybody else's business… "It was," says a man who was also in the furniture business and had many dealings with the Wolfsons, "a poor community. Nobody had any money and everybody needed everybody else's help." It was into this tight community that the fourteen-year-old Wolfson plunged after leaving Queen's Park School.

This was in 1912. The suggestion by Aris that the Wolfsons lived in a poor community where “nobody had any money” appears not to be borne out by data from the census and valuation records of the period.

Census data from the previous year — 1911 — records that, along with his parents, Solomon (41) and Nechi (given as Nellie in the data) (36), young Isaac lived with seven siblings: his brothers Samuel (15) and Charlie (12), and sisters Jeanie (10), Ada (8), Rosie (6), Eva (3), and Ester (1).

If one consults the digitised copy of the original census data, one also learns that there was a further resident in the twelve-room house — a young English-born woman of 18 years named Nellie Dudleston, who is listed as a “general servant.”

During this period (based on 1905 valuation records), Solomon was the “tenant/occupier” of a shop, two workshops, and a store in Stockwell Street, as well as a property in the Bridgegate — all in Glasgow city centre.

Between 1915 and 1920, he transferred ownership of the family home into the name of his wife, Nechi, making himself a “tenant.” By 1930, he was listed as “proprietor” of a house and store in College Street, a shop in High Street, a factory in Surrey Street, and two shops and a warehouse at three separate addresses in Stockwell Street.

Not bad for someone living in a “poor community.” Isaac would, of course, go on to accumulate even greater wealth.

 

Aris continues with a description of the close networking of the Wolfsons:

And it was during this time that [Isaac] formed links and friendships that were to last him all his life. Many of his closest associates, both in the business and outside it, are not only Jews but also Scotsmen: the clannishness of the one group reinforcing exactly the same trait in the other. Wolfson still goes on holiday with the boys with whom he grew up next door in Camphill Avenue, and many of his deals have been arranged and supervised by a man he has known since he was a child and who lived only a couple of blocks away. The almost claustrophobic closeness of the links that bind the Wolfson organization is one reason why it is so impenetrable.

The Wolfsons, it would appear, were not the only ones.

As it happens, for part of the time I was a Glasgow resident, I lived in a house just around the corner in Blairhall Avenue (between 1994 and 2012), which is a one-minute walk (according to Google Maps) from No. 16 Camphill Avenue, where Isaac lived.

In fact, one could see the back windows of the Wolfson residence from the back window of my then house, some half-century after the Wolfsons moved. Of course, most Zionists in Glasgow have moved up in the world since then and travelled south from Langside and Shawlands to the more leafy environs of the streets I am about to report on.

But it is a salutary reminder that Zionists are well networked, deeply embedded, and present in every major town and city in this country.

Neighbours, everybody needs genocidal neighbours

G46 and G77 are the two postcodes in Glasgow that have the highest concentration of Jewish people in Scotland. They form two of six postcodes (others are G44, G47, G76, and G78) in the East Renfrewshire Council area—which is technically outside the boundaries of Glasgow City Council but still part of Greater Glasgow.

In total, according to the most recent census, there are some 1,511 Jews living in East Renfrewshire, the highest of any council area in Scotland. In the neighbouring Glasgow City Council area, there are an additional 973 Jews, many in the postcodes abutting G46 and G77.

In total, these make up some 42% of the total Jewish population in Scotland, which, as I noted in a previous article, has been declining since the high point of the 1950s and early ’60s, when there were perhaps 20,000 Jews in Scotland. Now there are around 5,500, making up some 0.1% of the Scottish population.

In this article, I explore how some key members of what I call the Caledonian Cousinhood of the Scottish Zionist movement live very closely together in three particular streets in Giffnock, in the G46 postal code.

As in my previous articles, I have not published the names of these streets or any identifying features of the addresses—a courtesy which, I am sorry to report, the Zionist trolls do not extend to supporters of the Palestinians.

In the case of living people, I have also only mentioned the names of those who are involved in public business and Zionist activities, such as being directors of a firm or having a named role in a Zionist group. I have cropped or redacted the faces of children in any of the photos used. Obviously, this will not stop howls of alleged pain from supporters of genocide.

Genocide Gardens

Thus, there is one small street in Giffnock (G46) — let us call it Genocide Gardens — with 12 houses, in which, not necessarily all at the same time, members of the Walton (property), Berkley (property), Links (rag trade, then sport and leisure), and Grabiner (corporate executive) families live or have lived.

The Waltons

The Walton family has been on the street the longest. The house is registered to Carole Schuster-Davis or Walton and is set in grounds of 1,884 square yards. It was purchased on 8 June 1972 for £23,500.

At that time, the average house price in Scotland (Glasgow price averages don’t go back that far) was £4,114. Carole lives there with her husband, David, the son of the property developer Isidore Walton. Isidore was the director of the Scottish Metropolitan Property Company, which was first registered in the late 19th century and was eventually dissolved in September 2019.

Both David and Carole are long-term beneficiaries of the fortune amassed by Isidore.

The Waltons are also benefactors of the Zionist movement, supporting, for example, the genocidal Chabad cult for many years, as can be seen in the report from the Jewish Chronicle of 30 July 1971 (below).

This name-checks Rabbi Chaim Jacobs, at that point in his second or third year in Glasgow. See also the image from the Facebook page of Sholom Jacobs on 20 November 2019.

This shows David and Carole Walton as guests of honour at the 50th-anniversary party for the arrival of the Chabad emissary in Scotland, Sholom’s father — the very same Chaim Jacobs, the “Scottish Regional Director” of Chabad in Scotland.

 

David and Carole, it was reported in November 2024 at the 55th anniversary celebration, were:
“Guests of honour were Glasgow’s leading charitable benefactors, David and Carole Walton, who were presented with a menorah and floral arrangement. Tribute was paid to their generosity in supporting Lubavitch and numerous other charitable organisations within the community.”

The Links Family

The Links family is one of the oldest established Zionist families in Glasgow. Abraham Links ran a firm called A. Links and Co. from 1907 in Glasgow, and he was responsible for setting up the first office of the Jewish National Fund in Dixon Street, Glasgow, in 1935.

David Links (Abraham’s grandson) moved into the same short street in 2002 and, in February 2010, sold their house there for £683,777 at a time when the average price of houses in Glasgow was £107,849. The Links set up the Links Charitable Trust in January 1992, and it ceased to function in 2012.

Today, Links is a key Zionist activist, being a director of the Scottish branch of the JNF: the KKL (Scotland) Charitable Trust. Links and his brother, Brian Israel Links (born 1950), remain directors of A. Links and Co., but its Standard Industrial Classification is now “Activities of sports clubs,” and they own and run two snooker and pool halls in Glasgow — one in the city centre and the other above the Co-op in Shawlands.

They are also directors of Reardon’s New City, which runs those clubs. Also involved with those firms were their wives: Adalaine Corinne Links (born September 1953) and Melanie Sara Links (born April 1953 – died 2023).

Melanie Sara Links had previously been Melanie Sara Maitles — a connection with the Maitles family, which I discussed in a previous article.

Grabiner Family

The Grabiners are odd ones out, as Ian Grabiner has connections down south and maintains a house in London as well as in Glasgow. He and his wife, Tracy, are patrons of the London-based United Jewish Israel Appeal, the largest fundraising charity for the Zionist occupation.

In business, too, Grabiner has been intimately connected to leading Zionist millionaires, including work for the Lewis family (River Island) and the Wolfsons (GUS), as well as for the lesser-known Zionist Weisfeld family (What Everyone Wants), and becoming Sir Philip Green’s “right-hand man” at Arcadia.

In the 2009 Sunday Times Rich List, his net worth was estimated at £48 million, down £5 million from 2008. Grabiner bought a luxury pad on the street in August 2016 for a cool £2 million. At the time, the average price of a house in Glasgow was £118,867.

The Berkley Family

Also in the street is Adam Nathan Berkley of the Berkley property-developing family. When the house was last on the market in May 2023, the five-bedroomed house was described by the estate agent as “one of Whitecraigs’ most admired, signature unique homes and is set within wonderful, landscaped garden grounds of approximately half an acre or thereby.”

It was valued by the surveyor at £1.35 million at a time when the average price of houses in Glasgow was £165,389. It had previously sold for over £1 million in 2018.

Adam and Anita are a little camera-shy, and this is one of the few images of them on the web. It shows them at the Giffnock Newton Mearns Shul with Rabbi Moshe Rubin, who is a Gerrer Hasid. Ger is a part of the extremist faction of pro-settlement parties, which is currently part of the genocidal regime.

Adam Berkley is active in the Zionist movement through being a trustee of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust and having been active with the Scottish branch of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, the UK branch of one of the four “national institutions” which make up the Zionist movement, headquartered in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.

In 2007, he was chair of the Scottish branch of UJIA Renewal, and in 2016 was a member of the Scottish programmes committee of the UJIA. Adam and Anita are also supporters of the genocidal Chabad cult and have been “for many years,” as can be seen in the picture above from one of the Chabad websites in 2012.

Nakba Avenue

Around the corner was another Berkley (Delia), and there were two other supporters of the genocide in Gaza in the street, which we will call Nakba Avenue.

One made their fortune from being a landlord and the other from debt collection.

Delia Berkley

Delia’s house, just around the corner, is named after a type of tree. She was registered there on the electoral roll between 2002 and 2016. It’s a one-minute drive from Adam and Anita’s house, according to Google Maps. It was bought for £253,000 in 1989, when the average price of houses in Scotland was £35,000.

There are virtually no photographs of Delia or Adam in the public domain, and their business and Zionist activities have barely attracted a handful of column inches in the Scottish press over the years.

And yet, they are major movers and shakers on the Scottish Zionist scene, responsible for directing millions of pounds into Zionist activities, including direct support for the genocidal Zionist entity.

This is a venture in which the whole family appears to partake, including Shirley, Delia’s mother in the picture below, through a complex web of companies, the profits from which are used to fund Zionist activities in Scotland and beyond. The financial arrangements will be examined in a future article.

Meet the Debt Collectors – The Lewis Family

Also in the same street, a few doors up on the opposite side of the road, is a family that made their millions from collecting debts from the poor, including pursuing Poll Tax and Council Tax arrears with poindings, the barbaric practice of seizing the personal belongings of Council Tax debtors. The Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan campaigned relentlessly against the practice, which was abolished in 2002 by the Abolition of Poindings and Warrant Sales Act 2001.

Meet the Lewis family. They have been in the debt collection business since 1924. According to The Herald, one of their companies, Stirling Park, was “founded in 1924 by the grandfather of Jonathan and Adam Lewis, two of the five partners in the business.”

As the judge said, Adam Lewis was guilty of “misconduct.” In Lewis's case, the judgment reads:

“I impose a fine of £1,000 and order that he be censured… I hold Mr Lewis’s culpability to be greater partly because the finding is in respect of four acts of misconduct, but more significantly because he was senior partner of Messrs Stirling Park at all material times and had overall responsibility for its activities.”

The judge also made an order of full costs to be paid jointly and severally by Lewis and his co-conspirators. This, the judge said, was a “significant penalty in itself.”

The costs — in total estimated at £60,000 — were about two-thirds of the average price of a house in Glasgow some seven years later, when the Lewis family moved into its palatial new home.

 

They bought their house, presumably in part with the profits derived from poindings of the poorest in society, for £1,675,000 on 23 January 2009. At the time, the average house price in Glasgow was £107,441.

Mr. Harold’s son - The genocidal Samuel Groundland

Delia is an important activist for the genocidal Zionist entity as she is a senior director of the Scottish branch of the land theft agency, the JNF.  On the same side of the street as Delia, some 6 or so doors up are the Groundland family. 

Samuel Groundland is a retired Glasgow-based Jeweller and is the director of Jewelry firm Edroyd Limited based at the Jeweller Mr Harold & Son, 33 Argyll Arcade, in Glasgow City centre, G2.  

The shop is named after his father, Harold Goundland.

Groundland was listed as a committee member of the Scottish branch of the land theft agency, the Jewish National Fund, in 2018. He is registered on the Electoral Roll at this address from 2014-6, and the property was purchased for £1,597,500 on 8 Mar 2011. 

In that month, the average price of a house in Glasgow was £103,698. The property was sold for £1,950,000 in March 2024. The average property in Glasgow in  December 2024 was worth £184,000.

Groundland can be seen below in an image of the JNF Scotland committee and helpers taken at the Jewish Community Centre in Giffnock, the main headquarters of the Scottish Zionist movement.

 

Racists’ Row

A few minutes away from the street with Delia Berkley, the Lewis family, and Samuel Groundland is Racists’ Row, home to family members from the Winocour and Strang families who help direct Zionist organisations.

The Strangs

As of 2024, Raymond Strang (born 1962) is the Vice Chair of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust. He has been listed on the electoral roll at his home address between 2002 and 2024. The house was last purchased for £160,000 in January 1990, when the average house price in Scotland was £33,864.

Strang comes from a Zionist family. His father, David (born 1930, originally Sragowitz), mother Vivian (born 1940), and brother, Ralph (born 1964), were all involved in the family business, Floor Coverings Distributors (Glasgow) Limited, in which Raymond had a controlling interest until August 2019, when it was taken over by Lindens Investments.

Vivian was a director of Jewish Care Scotland (15 August 2006 – 26 August 2014), as was David (2 December 1997 – 28 August 2007). Both supported UJIA, attending events in Scotland—for example, in 2007 (JC, 08-06-2007). David was also a guest speaker at Central WIZO in 1996 (JC, 17-05-1996) and Chair of the Jewish Blind Society from 2004 to 2007 (Jewish Chronicle, 24-08-2007).

In fact, the Zionist connections of the extended Sragowitz/Strang family go back many decades. Raymond’s father David was the son of Isaac Jack Sragowitz, though he appears to have shortened it to Sragow (1904–1964).

David's grandfather, Max Sragowitz, was a successful businessman who immigrated to Glasgow from Kovno, in what is today Lithuania, but was then part of Russia. By age 34, in 1911, he was an upholsterer and “employer,” according to census data.

By 1925, valuation records show he owned seven properties in Norfolk Court, Glasgow, serving as offices, workshops, stores, and sites for “machinery.” He lived in Queen Mary Avenue near Queen’s Park in Glasgow’s Southside, although the house itself was registered in the name of his wife, Rebecca.

Samuel Sragowitz (1850–1932), a grocer, had preceded Max in coming to Glasgow. He appears in the valuation records in 1895 as the owner of a house and shop at 9 Rutherglen Road.

Samuel had nine children, and by 1921, the Sragowitz clan had expanded to five families in Glasgow. Their involvement with the Zionist movement has been long-term and multifaceted.   

In 1908, H. Sragowitz was elected Hon. Secretary of the Hebrew Benevolent Loan Society. This was Herman Sragowitz (1878–1923), the son of Samuel and father of Joseph.

  • Alexander, another of Samuel’s sons, had six children, at least five of whom were active in the Glasgow Jewish Workers’ Circle in the late 1930s and through World War II: Barnet/Barney, Teddy, Lazarus/Larry, and daughter Ray. Their brother Morris served as secretary of the Circle from 1930 to 1942 and later as treasurer until at least 1950.

  • In 1937, Israel Sragowitz, son of Morris (b. 1890) and Jenny (née Backon), won two tennis matches at the Maccabi inter-city games in Glasgow against Newcastle. Morris was also a half-brother of Max.

  • In 1938, Max Sragowitz was treasurer of the Langside Synagogue (a Zionist shul), located a nine-minute walk from his home on Queen Mary Avenue.

  • In 1939, Sergeant T. Strang participated in a sack race with the Glasgow Jewish Lads’ Brigade—a Zionist youth organisation. This was Teddy Sragowitz, who had adopted the name Strang, the son of Alexander and grandson of Samuel.

  • In 1948, Joseph Strang (born 1911 as Judah Sragowitz, grandson of Samuel) was Hon. Treasurer of the Glasgow Maccabi Association through the 1950s.

  • At the 1950 Maccabi AGM, Joseph Strang was appointed delegate to the Hebrew Board of Education and to the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council.

  • Jacob Sragowitz (1879–1960), son of Samuel, was Parnas (President) at Langside Hebrew Congregation through the 1940s and 1950s.

  • In 1953, Joseph became Vice Chair of Langside Shul (JC, 20 March 1953).

  • In 1955, L. Sragowitz was elected as the Queen’s Park Hebrew Congregation representative at the Board of Deputies of British Jews. This was most likely Leon (Louis), since the only other “L.” in Glasgow was Lazarus (Larry), who died in 1957.

  • In 1958, J. Sragowitz—likely Jacob—was elected a Life Vice President of the Glasgow Board of Schechita, along with industrialist and Revisionist Zionist Sir Maurice Bloch.

  • That same year, P. Sragowitz (likely Philip Strang) was elected joint secretary of the Pollokshields Hebrew Congregation.

  • In 1959, Leon (a.k.a. Louis, 1917–1983) Sragow (formerly Sragowitz), son of Max and Rebecca, became Chairman of Newton Mearns Hebrew Congregation, a Zionist shul later merged into today’s Giffnock Newton Mearns Synagogue.

We can note here the connections to Zionist lobby groups in Scotland, such as the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the British Zionist lobby group.

The connection with the Workers’ Circle is also significant. This was a grouping including a variety of socialist currents, including Socialist Zionists.  It was not anti-Zionist. In fact, as was reported at the time (1936), the circle was part of Glasgow’s Poale Zion branch, a Zionist organisation.

By 1943, any equivocation that there may have been was removed when the Glasgow branch voted unanimously to affiliate with the World Jewish Congress, a Zionist group, since it was set up in 1936.

In December 1948, the Workers’ Circle organised a bazaar and “raised a substantial sum in aid of the Histadrut Israeli Appeal.” Histadrut is the Jewish-only trade union federation of the Zionist colony.

The connection with a variety of Southside Shuls is also noteworthy. All of these have now effectively merged into one, the Giffnock Newton Mearns Synagogue. Like the Shuls which merged to form it, this is a Zionist synagogue under the aegis of the Chief Rabbi.

It also serves as the main headquarters for the Zionist movement in Scotland. As it happens, Raymond Strang, nephew of Philip, is one of several Honorary Life Presidents at the Shul.

It’s worth recalling that though Maccabi may seem to be an innocent sporting body, it is in fact a core part of the World Zionist Organisation.  Back in 1949, when the Sragowitz/Strangs were centrally involved in Maccabi, a speech by the Chairman of the Glasgow branch enthused, “It was a source of great jubilation amongst the ranks of Maccabi at the establishment of the Zionist entity. 

Maccabi throughout the world had played its part in reinforcing the ranks of the Haganah during its time of need and Glasgow Maccabi feel proud that out of their ranks, eight men and two women are now proudly bearing the insignia of the Haganah.

It was essential that Jewish youth who are contemplating emigrating to Israel should go out there not only equipped spiritually, but also physically. That is why it is so essential to have a strong and virile Maccabi branch in Glasgow.” (Jewish Echo, 25 February 1949.)

 

Coming back to today, David’s son Raymond is married to Amanda (born 1960), whose maiden name was Winocour. She is the daughter of a former GP in Glasgow’s East End, Bertram Winocour, who died in 2015, and his wife, Sandra. 

Incidentally, they lived in the same house in the 1950s, in which Amanda and Raymond presently live.

Bertram’s brother Elliott (died 2009) had a son named Paul (Amanda’s cousin)  who lives just across the road, and to whom we now turn.

The Winocours

A few doors along, on the other side of the road, live Paul Anthony and Helena Joanne Winocour, who have been listed on the electoral roll between 2007 and 2020.

Also registered there (via a directorship at Companies House) at one time was Richard Alan Winocour, Paul’s older brother. He and his family of four grown children are now settler colonists in occupied Jerusalem/Al Quds.

The house was last purchased in September 2006 for £707,000, while the average house price in Glasgow that month was £120,320. Paul and Helena’s previous house on Roddinghead Road, where they were registered on the electoral roll from 2002 to 2007, was also in Giffnock, G46.

It was sold in February 2007 for £827,950, at a time when the average house price in Glasgow was £116,709. Both Paul and Helena are involved in Zionist activism—Helena most notably as the Hon. Secretary of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust, which has funded Zionist projects in Glasgow and beyond for 60 years.

Paul, meanwhile, like his cousins’ family, has been a director of Jewish Care Scotland since October 2014.

We do not claim that this whistle-stop tour of Whitecraigs, the leafy suburb that is part of Giffnock in Glasgow, is an exhaustive catalogue of the genocidaires living there, but it is worth summarising the overall picture.

At these nine addresses, the following are or have been present:

·         Trustees of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust, the key coordinating body for funding the Scottish Zionist movement and its support for genocide. (David Walton, Adam Lewis, Raymond Strang, Helena Winocour)

·         Trustees or committee members of the KKL (Scotland) Charitable Trust, the Scottish branch of the Jewish National Fund, the land theft agency. (David Links, Delia Berkley, Samuel Groundland)

·         Supporters of the genocidal Chabad cult: Adam and Anita Berkley, Delia Berkley, David and Carole Walton; (and all the trustees of the GJCT above, which donates to the cult)

·         Leading figures of the UJIA: Adam and Anita Berkley, Stephen and Tracy Grabiner

It can be concluded from this tour that the Zionist movement is very closely integrated, even in terms of how physically close its main protagonists live or have lived to each other.

This close personal, familial, business, and political interaction helps to explain how they act so cohesively and how they effectively groom and indoctrinate their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren into the racist, genocidal ideology of Zionism.

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