Actress Maureen Lipman, pictured, said she was considering leaving the UK because of the rise in attacks on Jewish people

Maureen Lipman has said she is contemplating leaving the UK because of the ‘worrying’ rise of attacks on Jewish people.

Mrs Lipman, 71, said the Jewish community in Britain ‘give, give and give’ and described the recent rise in anti-Semitic attacks as ‘very, very depressing’.

The actress, best known for her 1980s adverts for BT, told LBC Radio: ‘When the economy dries up they turn on the usual suspect the Jew… and when the going gets tough the Jews get packing.’

When asked if she’d considered leaving the UK, Mrs Lipman replied: ‘Yes it’s crossed my mind that it’s time to look around for another place to live.

‘One school of thought says it’s because of Israeli policy in the Middle East, it isn’t. There’s been anti-Semitism for 4,000 years.’

Last year Mrs Lipman announced she was ending five decades of support for the Labour Party, as she furiously denounced Ed Miliband’s stance on Israel.

Mrs Lipman said she would vote for ‘almost any other party’ until Labour is ‘once more led by mensches’ – the Yiddish word for a person of integrity.

The actress added Mr Miliband’s support for a motion recognising the state of Palestine ‘sucks’ at a time of rising anti-Semitism in Europe.

In her interview on LBC, Mrs Lipman continued: ‘I’ve thought about going to New York, I’ve thought about going to Israel. I’ve been talking about this for a long time’

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‘My kids are very bored with me…but it’s only in the last few months they’ve said “mum, we think you have a point”.

‘There are 245,000 Jews in the country. [W]hat’s to fear? We don’t fly planes into buildings, we generally keep on the right side of the law.’

Mrs Lipman’s comments add to the growing clamour of voices calling for protection of Jews and an end to anti-Semitic attacks

Yesterday, on Holocaust Memorial Day - which marked 70 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp - film director Steven Spielberg told a group of Holocaust survivors that Jews are again facing the ‘perennial demons of intolerance’.

He warned of ‘anti-Semites, radical extremists, and religious fanatics’ who are again provoking hate crimes — a warning that comes after radical Islamists massacred Jews at a kosher supermarket in the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, pictured, warned that Jews were facing the 'perennial demons of intolerance' during a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau to mark the 70th anniversary of the camp's liberation

Spielberg also noted that there are now Facebook pages that identify Jews and their geographic locations with the intention to attack them, and a growing effort to banish Jews from Europe.

‘These people ... want to all over again strip you of your past, of your story and of your identity,’ he said.

This week it was revealed that nearly half of Britons think at least one anti-Semitic view presented to them was ‘definitely or probably true’, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism for YouGov poll found.

One in eight said they thought Jews talked about the Holocaust to get sympathy, while one in four believed Jewish people ‘chase money more than others’.

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) said the findings were a ‘shocking wake-up call’ and warned that anti-Semitism would grow unless it was met by ‘zero tolerance’.