Anti-Fascist Footprints

Guest blog post by Lara Smallman

‘How do you normally celebrate a birthday?’ David Rosenberg, our tour guide for the morning asked us as we gathered outside Aldgate East tube. ‘With cake or a meal with friends perhaps…’ Well, not if your name is Oswald Mosley. When the political party he created - the British Union of Fascists turned four in 1936, he chose to mark the occasion in a somewhat more ostentatious way – with a rally through the heart of the East End, home to 60,000 Jews at the time.

Image courtesy of www.historyworkshop.org.uk

During last week's two-hour ‘Anti Fascists Footprints Walking Tour’, we discovered the back-story behind a man who may well have become leader of the Labour Party, but instead turned out to be Britain’s answer to Adolf Hitler.

We started off in what was formerly known as St. Mary’s Gardens, renamed Altab Ali Park in memory of a Bengali clothing worker who was killed in a racist attack in 1978. We learned how Mosley started his political career at the tender age of 21, becoming the youngest member of the House of Commons. He fell out with the Conservative Party over Irish policy of all things, and before long allied himself with the Independent Labour Party.  In 1929, perhaps because of his aristocratic roots, lack of staying power or hints of ultra-nationalism, Mosley was snubbed by Labour. Just one day later, he founded the New Party, later renamed the British Union of Fascists. For Mosley, it was to be third time lucky, so to speak.

David our guide pointed out the small cemetery in the corner of the gardens, and told us that a participant of a previous tour had an incredible claim to fame: One of the tombstones belonged to a relative of his, who had beheaded Charles I - not strictly relevant, but fascinating nevertheless.

The stunning stained glass panel on the top of St. Boniface’s German Church, made even more beautiful on a gloriously sunny day, caught our attention, and we made a pit stop outside for a quick Yiddish lesson from David. Ironically, Hitler’s bombs fell on the German Church during the War, and it wasn’t until the 1960s that it was rebuilt.

‘We’ve been to Church, now let’s go to Shul!’ We were led through side streets and up to Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue, which stands alongside the site of the first Grodzinski bakery. It is surrounded on three sides by the East London Mosque, and is apparently the closest a synagogue comes to a mosque outside of Jerusalem. It is one of four synagogues still functioning in the area. There used to be over 150.

Back to Oswald Mosley, and the rise of Fascism. There were plenty of surprises during our tour. Firstly, Mosley was not the one to make the ideology a populist one. There was a groundswell of opposition to Jews long before the Battle of Cable Street, thirty years before in fact. The British Brothers League, equivalent to today’s English Defence League, openly intimidated the East End’s Jewish population around the turn of the century. The second surprise came in the form of Mosley’s original rejection of anti-Semitism, arguing that it wasn’t needed to promote Fascism. He was more a fan of Italy’s Mussolini than he was of Adolf Hitler. However, it wasn’t long before Mosley started pedalling the very rhetoric he had once rejected - that of Nazi Germany. Last but not least, Mosley’s bodyguard in the early 1930s was a Welterweight professional boxer, and a Jew by the name of Gershon Mendeloff, known to Mosley as Lewis.

By 1934 Mosley’s BUF Party had an impressive 500 branches across the country, and was busy planning three indoor rallies: One in Albert Hall (which would house 7-8,000 people), one in Olympia (for 15,000) and one in White City (for 23,000), which never actually went ahead. The Daily Mail, which openly supported Mosley’s Black Shirts, ran a competition offering tickets to the Olympia rally. All you had to do to be in with a chance of snapping up free tickets was to write what you liked about the British Union of Fascists. Several Communists entered, and won a few tickets, thereby gaining access to the rally. Once inside, they heckled Mosley and were, under his instruction, violently removed by the ever-present Black Shirts. The Fascists were exposed as a violent Party and soon the Daily Mail withdrew their support, as did most supporters. And so came the sharp demise of the British Union of Fascists.

As our tour came to an end, we passed Coke Street, birthplace to Paul Peratin MP, a Jew who was so horrified by the infamous Olympia rally that he joined the Communist party a week later, and became the architect of its anti-Fascist policy.

Posters detailing Mosley’s planned march were put up just ten days before the 4^th October 1936, giving the anti-Fascists very little time to coordinate a response. Despite the short notice, they collected an astonishing 100,000 signatures in two days. There were 60,000 Jews in the area. The remaining signatures came from socialist, anarchist, Irish and communist groups.

The Anti-Fascist movement's response to Mosley's advert: Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Over a quarter of a million demonstrators took to the streets to say ‘no’ to Mosley and ‘no’ to Fascism. For the people of the East End, the commemoration of choice was a mural in Shadwell, which was to be our last stop on the tour. We looked up and read the slogan: ‘Mosley shall not pass. Bar the road to British Fascism’.

Cable Street Mural: Image courtesy of www.cablestreet75.org.uk