1936 Cable Street Riots
Writer: David Rosenberg
4 October 1936 |
Working Class Jews |
Political Radicals |
Jewish Class war |
How fascism came to Britain |
Mosley's movement |
Media stereotypes |
Police protection? |
Trouble brewing |
Fighting anti-Semitism |
The Battle of Cable Street |
After Cable Street |
Resources
The Battle of Cable Street
On 4 October 1936 Mosley surveyed thousands of his Blackshirted followers who had assembled in the City of London ready for their East End raid.
The gateway to the East End was Gardiners Corner in Whitechapel, an island in the main road, where streets branched off north, east and west. Within hours Gardiners Corner was a compact sea of people, Jews and non-Jews, determined to stop Mosley's thugs intimidating the East End community. A sympathetic bus driver abandoned his vehicle using it as a barricade.
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Jews and non-Jewish supporters retreat as police dismantle the barricades at the Battle of Cable Street.
(LP Pictures)
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The police told Mosley that it would be impossible to enter via Whitechapel. Word spread that they would attempt to break though via Cable Street close to the Tower of London. But thousands, from the local Jewish and Irish communities, gathered there too, quickly erecting barricades. The police were determined to ensure a way through for the BUF. Violent clashes took place between mounted and foot police and protesters at Cable Street. After several hours, with dozens of police injured, and 84 protesters arrested, the police finally told Mosley he would have to march in the opposite direction.
Most of those arrested were fined, but some were jailed for defending their community, a precedent to be repeated when the National Front intimidated black and Asian communities in Lewisham and Southall in the late 1970s and when the BNP intimidated Asian communities in Bradford and Oldham in 2001.
Media perspectives then and now read depressingly similarly; with racists and fascists cast as martyrs for free speech and anti-racists as hooligans and rioters. The papers even claimed that huge numbers took to the streets because of the good weather!
Today the media often praise the Jewish community as a successful law-abiding community, and compare it favourably with more recent immigrant groups. On 4 October 1936, though, the Jews of the East End were portrayed as violent hoodlums and rioters denying freedom of speech and movement to British patriots.
After Cable Street >
