The Battle of Cable Street Was an Antifascist Landmark
Ninety years ago this Sunday, antifascist demonstrators routed Oswald Mosley and his supporters when they tried to terrorize the Jews of London’s East End. It’s an important anniversary in a year when a new far-right movement is gathering strength.
The antifascist mobilization in Cable Street on October 4, 1936, stands out for its extraordinary scale and the powerful psychological blow it dealt to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Mosley admitted that his followers had been “humiliated.” (ullstein bild via Getty Images)
Twenty years ago, I shared a platform with Aubrey Morris, one of the “ordinary” heroes of the Battle of Cable Street on October 4, 1936 — the iconic event in Britain’s prewar antifascist history. Aubrey was sixteen at the time, a Labour League of Youth member, and he still glowed with pride at having been part of the mass defiance that put the slogan “They shall not pass” into spectacular effect. He helped build barricades in Cable Street.
Aubrey denied being a hero: “I did what any young Jewish boy would have done at that time.” Though he did have an additional motive. If Oswald Mosley’s uniformed, jackbooted British Union of Fascists (BUF) had invaded that narrow street to terrorize its largely Jewish residents, they would have reached number 86, where Aubrey’s grandmother ran the family’s bagel bakery! He took this personally.
Eventually, police partially dislodged the first barricade — a tipped-over truck with furniture stacked behind it, blocking the road. They ran through to find a route for the fascists to march but got trapped between that truck and the next barricade. There they faced fierce resistance at ground level and an aerial barrage of objects thrown by women in flats above the shops.
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