LONDON - Britain needs to address an "appalling" spike in anti-Semitism, Home Secretary Theresa May said on Sunday in a speech to the Jewish community designed to address their security fears after an Islamist gunman killed four French Jews in Paris.

May said she was "deeply distressed" by a poll which last week showed anti-Semitic beliefs were prevalent among the wider public, with 45 percent of Britons agreeing with at least one anti-Semitic sentiment.

"We must ... confront the appalling spike in anti-Semitism which we've seen," she told an event organized by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. "Those attitudes have absolutely no place in Britain and we must do everything we can to eradicate them."