They Were Willing to Do Unpleasant Things to Unpleasant People
In the years after the defeat of Nazism, Britain's fascist movement alarmingly began to rebuild. But a group of young British Jews sprung into action to beat the fascists off the streets.
Excerpt from the cover of We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain. Courtesy Verso Books
Few periods of Britain’s recent past have evaded demystification more successfully than the immediate postwar era. When discussing the five years before 1950, most people of practically every political persuasion are content with a common perception of those years — a Britain that was plucky and optimistic, poor but on the up, austere but reforming itself to suit a newer, more humane age, and acutely aware of its moral responsibilities after having been the force that stopped the slaughter of European Jewry.
The reality was somewhat different. In high society, figures like the Bloomsbury Set luminary Elizabeth Bowen still felt comfortable espousing traditional Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theories, warning a lover that a Labour vote was a vote “to be ruled by Jews and Welshmen.” The severe national fuel shortages that took place under the Labour government’s watch found a popular scapegoat in Manny Shinwell, the most prominent Jewish Labour politician of the day, and rising anger over the deaths of British soldiers in the British Mandate of Palestine led to vicious anti-Jewish riots in major cities in 1947.
From Under the Rock
While the Allied armies may have put a stop to the Holocaust, war-scarred Britain was a long way away from learning the lessons, and the conditions for a new fascism to grow were ripe. Yet the Home Office — even under a government led by Clement Attlee, a man who had a battalion of the International Brigades named in his honor — seemed more concerned about the rights of fascists than of threatened communities.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.