'THE BATTLE OF CABLE STREET' - by Jon Horner

Sunday the 4th of October marks 90 years since the Battle of Cable Street.
On that day in 1936, in the heart of the East End of London, the working class residents - the Jewish community, trade unionists, communists, socialists, Irish dockers, and Somali seamen - stood up against Oswald Mosley's Fascist Black Shirt Army and stopped them marching through their community.

Legend has it that up to 5000 fascists, supported by the entire Metropolitan Police Force came up against hundreds of thousands of Anti-Fascist demonstrators, who despite being beaten by police and charged by baton wielding police on horseback, refused to budge, and forced the Fascist Black Shirt army to turn on its heals. 
The final stand came at Cable Street. The demonstrators in the East End were in such huge numbers that the Black Shirts were forced to divert their march down the then thought 'safe route' of Cable Street, however they soon discovered that local residents had united. They had set up road blocks, turning over a truck and gathering materials donated from a local wood store to barricade themselves in the street, chanting 'THEY SHALL NOT PASS' and 'NO PASARAN' (the famous rallying cry of anti-fascist republicans defending Madrid against General Francisco Franco's fascist forces in July 1936). Their defence was so formidable, and so unified, that the police eventual lost control and Oswald Mosley was forced to call off the march and his Black Shirts dispersed, defeated.

The Battle of Cable Street proved that ordinary working-class people from diverse immigrant and local backgrounds could set aside differences to successfully defend their neighbours against the rise of hatred.
That together, they could force Police and Fascists to back down, and force government to take a stand against hatred.

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