Cable Street – Labour Lost: Over recent days I’ve seen a number of posts and articles celebrating the ‘Battle of Cable Street’, when people from the East End of London prevented a march through their streets by Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists on October 4th 1936.
Battle of Cable Street 80 March – Altab Ali Park & Cable St
Back on Sunday 9th October 2016 along with many others I went to Cable Street to celebrate the 80th anniversary of that event, and here are a few of the pictures that I made.
I also wrote a little about what actually happened back in 1936, though of course I wasn’t around then, so what I know about it relies on what others have written and said, including the testimonies I’ve heard over the years from some of those who were there and have spoken at this and various earlier celebrations.
Cable Street has acquired a mythical status that it doesn’t entirely deserve, or at least one which distorts the actual nature of the event. It certainly was not a great victory for the organised left – with the Labour Party actively urging people to stay away. They urged people instead to attend a rally in Hyde Park, miles away in West London. If anything it was a victory for the ordinary common decency and solidarity of the working class population of the area who came out and fought the police (and generally not the fascists) who were trying to clear the streets to allow Mosley and his blackshirts to march. A victory for the kind of community self-organisation which is at the centre of anarchism.
So in 2016 for me the anarchist groups taking part were the real centre of attention rather than the more official aspects of the celebration – this was really their day, though none were invited to speak at the official rallies at the start or finish of the event. And here I’ll repeat a little of what I wrote about the event 4 years ago.
“Probably many of those present already knew that the battle wasn’t fought by the political parties – Labour told people to stay away and urged them to protest in Hyde Park, while the official communist party opposed any opposition on the streets until almost the last minute, when it was pretty clear it was going to happen anyway.
“It was the community that came out onto the streets. People from the mainly Jewish areas of the East End, trade unionists, communist rank and file and Irish dock workers. Men and women in a grass roots movement opposed to Mosley, people who knew that they would be the victims if he came to power. And of course the battle was not against Mosley, but against the police.
“Of course there were communists and socialists among those who came out on the streets, and some who played a leading role. But it was essentially a victory for the working class left, for the anarchists and for many without political affiliations who came together spontaneously to defend their place and their people.
“It wasn’t a great defeat for Mosley and his National Socialists; they actually became more active in the East End after it, and areas such as Bethnal Green remained strongly supporting the Nazis. There was an even larger ‘battle’ the following year in Bermondsey. But Cable Street was undoubtedly an important event for the left, and one that has come to be associated with a much greater battle of the era, the Spanish Civil War. Cable Street radicialised many on the left.”
