Background
His paternal grandparents, Barnet Galinsky and Leah Schreiber, hailed from the small towns of Saki and Tels in Lithuania, where, so far as is known, their ancestors had lived for generation as peasants and small traders. Alick"s grandmother, whom he knew well i his boyhood, was a shrewd and kindly woman. About the year 1880 anti-Semitic oppression, which had long been a feature of the Lithuanian scene, was intensified and many Jews, Alick"s grandprents among them, fled the country.
On arrival in England, unable to speak the language, Alick"s grandfather gave his name to the immigration officials as Barnet the son of Isaas, and thus receives the English surnams Isaacs.
At first he settled in Leeds where he worked as a tailor"s presser. lieutenant was there that he married and that Alick"s father Louis, the first of the five children of the marriage, was born in 1890.
Soon after, his parents moved to Wigan and then to Glasgow, where the family settled in the Gorbals area. Barnet was barely able to support his family, and at the age of 12 Louis left school and started work as a butcher"s message boy.
Louis was everything that his father was not--intelligent, ambitious, cheerful and hard-working.
Fro mhis earliest days he was determined to drag his family from the poverty in which they lived and to attain the standards of material and cultural well-being which he saw around him.