74 Years Since Cable Street

 © 2006 Peter Marshall

Grey though my beard is getting, I wasn’t at Cable St in 1936, but four years ago I was there for the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, which I described as:

“a joyous event, celebrating an important grass-roots victory for the labour movement, when the people of the east end stood up and took action, largely against the orders and advice of the organised Jewish and socialist leadership.

it was a real peoples movement when workers from London’s east end fought the police at Gardiner’s Corner and barricaded cable street to stop Mosley’s fascist black-shirts marching through their area.

(I’ve made a few minor corrections to the lower case original version.)

The festival started on Cable Street itself, and then those taking part came into the gardens where it was to continue for the rest of the day, coming past the splendid mural about the event. I’d decided to try to catch the group holding the letters making up the slogan ‘They Shall Not Pass‘ in front of it, and just about managed to do so, though the exposure wasn’t quite correct.

It was something that there was really no time to do, and of course I don’t believe in posing such things, so it was a minor miracle that it came out. It’s also an example of a file that I could I’m sure process rather better from the RAW file now compared to the rush job I did for the web in 2006. I’ve improved it a little working from a larger jpeg and added my copyright watermark for this post. But I get the feeling that I could get an improved result with Lightroom 3 on the original file. RAW software really has improved in the last 4 years.

© 2006 Peter Marshall.

I try not to pose portraits either, although I did ask some of those who had been there in 1936 to stand in front of the mural for me, and moved myself to get them looking in the direction I wanted. Of course by this time there where other photographers also taking pictures of them.  But I hope this picture expresses a little of the kind of spirit of those who stood up and stopped the fascists.

© 2006 Peter Marshall.

There were of course plenty of reminders that it is a battle that still needs to be fought – and at times on the street as well as elsewhere.

More of my pictures from 2006 on My London Diary, and you can read a number of eye-witness reports on the web, though not I think one by the man I talked to and suggested he write his story. One I like was written in 2005 by NUJ member Reg Weston.

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