A LEEDS LIFE
A LEEDS INSTITUTION
Leslie Howard Silver O.B.E. 1925-2014
by Hilary Brosh
Leslie Silver is a much-celebrated man of Leeds, known for being a successful businessman and philanthropist, the first Chancellor of the Leeds Metropolitan University, and Chairman of Leeds United. He was also my father. Leslie built up a multi-million-pound business from nothing; donated a lot to local institutions and charities; and met with royalty, politicians and famous people from around the world. Yet when asked in an interview to name the most exciting and important moment in his life, he answered that “it was to hold his first grandchild in his arms.” Leeds was a city he loved and contributed so much to, but what is not so well known is how much family meant to him – and that in his background lay the roots of his success.
Leslie’s parents were children of Jewish immigrants who fled the pogroms of Easter Europe in the late nineteenth century. They were part of a large and loving family. His childhood home in the East End of London was full of political talk alongside music, literature and good food. In later life, however geographically dispersed they were, there was always a strong and affectionate bond in the way he talked of “the Cousins”.
Leslie’s father set up a workshop in a room above a garage where he employed his brothers and sisters as machinists and pressers for the garment trade. The rise in fascism and anti-semitism in the 1930s affected many in the East End and consequently the Silver family became associated with the Communist Party. Leslie accompanied his father at “the Battle of Cable Street”, an infamous 1936 protest against fascist agitator Oswald Mosley.
During the war, Leslie’s father moved to Leeds to a house in Easterly Avenue, Harehills to work fashion business. And so, although he never lost his London accent, Leslie became a Yorkshireman! He left school at age 14 and went to work in his father’s clothes workshop - and hated it. Leslie was convinced that wasn’t the life he wanted. Aged 17, he signed up for the R.A.F. He gave four reasons for volunteering: he was British, Jewish, wanted to defeat Nazism and he wanted to fly.
As a Flight Sergeant he flew 42 missions for Bomber Command, including dropping spies and supplies to the Underground movements in Europe and dangerous low-level flying. In 1947 he used his demob money of £250 to take up a business opportunity from an uncle, selling cellulose thinners. Displaying the same entrepreneurial spirit as his father, he rented a derelict building in Torre Road and, with the help of his father and brother, started his first business: Silver Paint and Lacquer Company Ltd.
He worked hard, putting in long hours through my childhood. The business grew. In the early 1960s he started exporting the paint to Nigeria, eventually developing a healthy export business to Africa and the Middle East. The O.B.E. he was awarded in 1982 was for Services to Export. Over the years, production moved from Leeds to an old mill on Bradford Road Batley, then to Birstall and on to a state-of -the-art 60-acre site on Huddersfield Road. In 1991 Leslie retired and started to enjoy the rewards of his hard work.
"Leeds was a city he loved and contributed so much to, but what is not so well known is how much family meant to him – and that in his background lay the roots of his success.”
The prosperity he’d worked so hard for not only gave him an enjoyable life but also enabled him to follow the ethical path of his culture and upbringing and become an active philanthropist. He contributed to the extension of the Leeds City Art Gallery in 1982, meeting the Queen at the opening. A space upstairs was named the Leslie and Anita Silver Gallery. Sadly, two months later, Leslie’s beloved wife Anita, who had helped him build up the business, died at the young age of 57.
Leslie always loved football and he was invited to join the Leeds United Board in April 1982. There was great excitement in the family when in 1983 he became Chairman. The highlight for us came in 1989 when Leeds was promoted back to the First Division and then to win the League title in the 1991/92. I was with my youngest daughter to join the victory parade in front of the Art Gallery and we both welled up with delight to hear the crowd sing “One Leslie Silver, there’s only one Leslie Silver!”
For someone who’d left school at 14 with no qualifications, it was very exciting for him to be invited to help in the development of a university from the old Leeds Polytechnic. Leeds Metropolitan became a university and Leslie was honoured to be the first Chancellor. The ceremony in Leeds Town Hall for his installation was a grand affair. I couldn’t help but wonder what his grandparents in Poland, or his East End family, would have thought of hearing the Earl of Harewood describe Leslie as his “good friend”!
Away from the honours and garlands, my abiding memory of Dad is of the Sunday afternoon family tea parties at home with his children, grandchildren and step-family. Seeing him playing on the floor with youngest members of the family or talking with his grandchildren trying to understand the latest technology - with the TV showing football news in the background.
The year before he died, I was giving my father a lift to one of his medical appointments at the L.G.I. Driving through the city centre, I commented on how he’d given so much to so many of the Leeds institutions that bear his name. “On the contrary,’ he replied, ‘Leeds has given me so much.”
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