Reshaping Life Style : Continentals Bring Vigor to Britain

Charles Forte’s success mirrors the American Dream.

An Italian immigrant, he rose from humble beginnings in his adopted land, bought a small soda fountain and built it into the world’s biggest hotel and catering company, the Trusthouse Forte group.

But there’s a difference. Forte’s adopted land is Britain, not the United States.

Forte, now 78 and known as Lord Forte, is part of the small but disproportionately influential wave of immigrants that has reshaped parts of British national life, injecting unaccustomed energy into a society noted more for its sense of fair play than its vigor.

Penetrated Upper Echelons

In industry, academia and the arts, these individuals--many from Eastern Europe--have penetrated the clubby, often inbred upper echelons with surprising ease, winning recognition if not always complete acceptance.

Among them:

--George Weidenfeld, now Lord Weidenfeld, a colorful Austrian who came to England at age 19 in 1938 and built one of Britain’s most respected publishing houses.

--Hungarian-born conductor Sir George Solti, 74, who came to Britain by way of West Germany in 1961 as a recognized talent and helped turn Covent Garden into one of the world’s great opera houses.

--The late Nicholas Kaldor, known as Lord Kaldor, a Hungarian-born economist who taught at Cambridge, served as a special adviser to several Labor Party governments and developed such ideas as the capital gains tax. He died three months ago at age 78.

Wins Few Friends

--The flamboyant 63-year-old Czech-born entrepreneur, Robert Maxwell, whose abrasive, showboat style has helped build a business empire but won him few friends in the British Establishment.

While the more recent flood of immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean have challenged fundamental British values, thereby stirring racial tensions, members of the earlier group, with European backgrounds, embraced their adopted land with little question, and Britons agree that they enriched this nation in the process.

“They have provided an important contribution to English life in just about every sphere,” Oxford Historian Lord Blake said. “We’d be a poorer nation without them.”

Rudolf Klein, director of the Center for the Analysis of Social Policy at Bath University, said, “This (European) group has brought a more American-style tradition--anti-consensus, more individualistic and more aggressive. They have rejected the idea of not rocking the boat.”

Certainly many non-European immigrants have also risen to prominence here, people such as India-born businessman Swraj Paul, chairman of the industrial conglomerate Caparo Industries, with annual sales of $150 million, and David Thomas Pitt, now Lord Pitt, who made his way to Britain from the Caribbean island of Grenada to become a leading civil rights advocate in the 1960s.

In relation to their numbers, however, no single group has made a greater impact than those bringing with them a common European heritage.

Remain Outsiders

Many of these immigrants have been recognized with peerages and knighthoods for services rendered to their adopted land. Yet, in contrast to the United States, where such people would be celebrated as reaffirmations of the American Dream, the British immigrant stars are rarely, if ever, held up as authentic heroes or as examples to be emulated. And some say that they have never been fully accepted by the British Establishment.

Often, the fact these individuals are foreign born is not widely known.

Many, like Maxwell or Roland (Tiny) Rowland, 69, who came from Germany to head the large British industrial and trading conglomerate, Lonrho PLC, adopted Anglicized names to go with their adopted nationality. Maxwell was born Hoch and Rowland’s original name was Fuhrhop.

In English society, unlike that of the United States, making inquiry about another’s roots is not considered polite--especially if those roots are not known to be deeply English.

Consequently, for most of these European immigrants, their ethnic identities are suppressed.

Lone Concession to Roots

John Tusa, 50-year-old managing director of the British Broadcasting Corp.’s World Service, has returned to his native Czechoslovakia only once since departing as a toddler in 1939 and counts as the lone concession to his roots the celebration of Christmas on Christmas Eve rather than on Christmas Day.

“I now have no Czech friends of my generation,” Tusa said.

By contrast, his younger sister, who emigrated from Britain to the United States several years ago, has learned Czech, sings in a Czech choir and has made three trips to the family homeland in the past five years.

But perhaps the real reason for the absence of public recognition of these immigrants is that their achievements, however admirable in American terms, are simply not considered major feats to the British, who still look askance at the notion of trying too hard. The British remain champions of compromise and rank material wealth well below pedigree on their list of status symbols.

“I doubt if people in this country are particularly impressed by the accomplishments of a man like Lord Forte or, in general, that they see it as particularly admirable to pull one’s self up by one’s bootstraps,” said publisher Paul Hamlyn, 60. The German-born Hamlyn came to Britain in the late 1930s, changed his name from Hamburger and built an influential publishing empire, mainly by ignoring conventional wisdom.

‘A Sideline in Cocaine’

“If you earn a lot of money, people look at you as if you’ve got a sideline in cocaine,” he added.

Those who study British social trends are quick to acknowledge the contribution of these immigrants, but they also note there appears little evidence that their novel ideas and dynamic style have rubbed off.

“So far, we seem to have ignored almost everything they have to offer us,” said Brian Walden, a well-known political commentator and former Labor member of Parliament.

The influx of these immigrants into Britain began in the years between the two World Wars and continued through the 1950s. Some immigrants, affluent and well-educated, made their way privately, while others were recruited from post-World War II displaced persons camps to do manual jobs.

There are no widely circulated studies, but historians estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 people arrived here from Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Italy. About 80,000 Poles who had fought in the Allied armies during the war settled in Britain after their homeland slid under the Stalinist yoke.

Reasons for Success

Historians and social commentators list three principal reasons for the immigrants’ disproportionate success:

--A European educational tradition coupled with a natural energy associated with immigrant communities the world over;

--An inherent British tolerance (cynics label it apathy or dismissiveness) toward such immigrants;

--The lack of an entrepreneurial spirit in Britain, which makes it relatively easy for someone with drive to succeed.

“We were cheeky and ready to elbow in a society that wasn’t cheeky and didn’t elbow,” summed up publisher Andre Deutsch, who came to Britain from Hungary in 1939 at age 21.

Obstacles to Overcome

Anthony Sampson, whose “Anatomy of Britain” books stand among the most comprehensive contemporary social surveys of this nation, commented: “There’s a greater sense of social cohesion here (than in the United States), so there are more obstacles to overcome, but when immigrants break through, they do extremely well because there’s a sleepiness to the surroundings.”

Walden and others also believe success in many cases is facilitated by either ignorance or contempt for the social niceties that tend to dampen initiative among Britons.

“Somebody like Maxwell doesn’t give a damn about social constraints,” noted a colleague who declined to be quoted by name. “He goes in with both feet and makes money. He doesn’t understand that it will keep him off the guest lists of the ‘right’ parties or cost him membership at the ‘right’ club.”

And publisher Hamlyn said: “I’ve never wanted to be part of the Establishment. When it comes to old-school ties or social conventions, I just giggle. I don’t take it seriously.”

Still, a strong countercurrent also runs through these immigrants that lures them toward other aspects of English life.

Losing to an Egyptian

The unconventional Rowland, for example, owns the country’s oldest continuously published national newspaper, the Observer. He twice tried to buy Harrods, the famed department store, losing the second time to the Egyptian Fayed family, which was apparently drawn by similar feelings.

In addition to his business empire, Maxwell owns the Oxford professional soccer franchise and played a key role in organizing last summer’s Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. Hamlyn last year bought every seat for a week’s performances at the Covent Garden opera and distributed them to groups, such as the aged, who would not otherwise be able to afford them.

Others have affected excessively British styles and mannerisms.

“From my time in the House of Lords, I’ve watched them (foreign-born peers),” recalled Lord Blake. “They get very assimilated into British ways.”

But the absence of deep British roots and, some believe, their drive to succeed prevent these immigrant stars from being accepted as genuinely British. Occasionally, lack of acceptance is reflected by a refusal of membership in an exclusive club and even by public feuds.

‘Greatest Living Immigrant’

The satirical magazine Private Eye, in a long-running battle with Maxwell, referred to him recently in print as “Our Greatest Living Immigrant.”

Usually, however, this distance is reflected in more subtle ways.

“I’ve got a knighthood, a peerage and yet I’m still considered as having the flavor of a foreigner,” said Forte in perfect Oxford English. “I can’t put my finger on any one thing, but it’s there.”

“It’s usually unspoken, but it happens,” said Deutsch. “You just feel it. It comes across.”

The immigrants don’t seem to resent this, however.

“I think the combination has been a fruitful one both for Britain and for us,” said conductor Solti. “We East Europeans have become much fairer, and we’ve shown the English they should push a bit harder. In today’s world, you have to do that.”