He was involved in military activity; first becoming involved with Comintern's International Brigades against the Nationalist insurgency during the Spanish Civil War and then during the Second World War, as a British citizen, he joined the British Army's Royal Army Medical Corps.

His parents, Harry Levitas and Leah Rick, having emigrated to Ireland from Lithuania and Latvia in 1912, were married in the Camden Street Synagogue in Dublin.

He was also an active trade unionist and he and his brothers Max and Sol, were involved in the 1936 "Battle of Cable Street" against the British Union of Fascists.

He attended the commemoration of the Connolly Column in 1991 in Liberty Hall, Dublin, where he was chosen to read out the list of members.

[5] His brother Max Levitas (1 June 1915 – 2 November 2018) was Communist councillor for 15 years in Stepney in London.