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.”
Life or at least writing this blog was rather easier in those pre-Covid days. Then I was still getting out and visiting places and covering events, meeting people and going to exhibitions, and there was usually something obvious for me to write about. Now I’m largely living in front of a screen, simply taking the occasional walk or bike ride for exercise and watching and listening aghast as Britain slides increasingly into a country ruled by greed and moving into fascism. Certainly dispiriting times.
So I’ve been looking back, publishing on Flickr the work I made back in the 70s and 80s (and soon the 90s) much of which has never been seen before, and also in writing in posts like this about things that I covered on this day a two, three or twenty years ago. And that’s a problem too. Today I had the choice between 2008, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2018 (and possibly more) in all of which I was taking pictures of events on London’s streets on March 21st. Should I go for racism, anti-racism, tax-dodging and fair treatment for low paid workers in 2015 or against deportations, knife crime and Lambeth Council closing community centres in 2017? Should I choose on issues or on my opinions of how good my pictures were?
In the end I chose 2008 for today, largely because its different to most of the other days I’ve written about recently. It perhaps is time for a short rest from me banging on about corrupt Labour councils, though in the 2017 piece I wrote on closing community centres there I did have a nice quote from Anna Minton who found that “20 per cent of Southwark’s 63 councillors work as lobbyists” for developers in the planning industry and that a significant number of Councillors and Council officers are making use of a ‘well-oiled revolving door’ to the industry.
But March 21st 2008 was for me a day about religion in London, with three religious festivals coming together, Christians celebrating Good Friday, the Jewish festival of Purim and Hare Krishna celebrating Gaura Purnima. Although these happen around the same time of the year they seldom all fall on the same day. For 2021, Gaura Purnima is on the 28th March, Purim was on 25-6 February and Good Friday comes on April 2nd.
Twelve years ago today, rather than sitting at home in front of a computer as I am today, still avoiding the virus, I was photographing one of the more contentious regular protests on the streets of London, the annual Al Quds Day march.
Al Quds is the Arabic name for the city of Jerusalem, literally meaning ‘The Holy One’ and in 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran announced the last Friday of the month of Ramadan as International Quds Day to express support for oppressed Muslims around the world and in particular to protest against the occupation of Palestine and the oppression of its people.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews opposed to Zionism took a leading role in the march
In the UK, a march through London takes place on the Sunday after the day itself, and is generally attended by several thousand people, mainly Shia Muslim families from mosques around the UK, but supported by many other groups, mainly Muslim but including some Jewish, pro-Palestinian and left-wing groups. This year because of the virus it was celebrated on Friday May 22 by a world-wide on-line event.
Back in 2008 the main groups opposing the march were Iranian opposition groups, along with a larger number of protesters from extreme right anti-Islamic groups, with just a small number of Zionist supporters of Israel. Police largely managed to keep the two sides apart while allowing both to protest.
But the situation did get rather fraught, particularly when the march was passing the where the opposition groups had been kept behind barriers at Piccadilly Circus, and I found myself getting abuse and threats from both sides. At the time I wrote:
“Things got a little heated at Piccadilly Circus, and some demonstrators objected to me taking pictures of them shouting and gesturing at the counter-demonstration, pushing me out of the march. Doubtless some of the other demonstrators on the other side didn’t like me photographing them either, and the police certainly wanted me back on the other side of the tape again. It is important to record what’s happening, and to stand up for a free press, so I kept taking pictures.”
There are many (too many) of these pictures on the pages of this story on My London Diary.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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My album 1986 London Photographs is now complete on Flickr, and this is the second of a short series of posts pointing out a few of my favourite images from the year.
Several things come out strongly to me as I look through these pictures, mostly taken around Brick Lane and other areas of Whitechapel. One of the major themes that has run through much of my photography is the writing on the wall, whether graffiti or signs and posters. Language is such an important aspect of our social interactions and its inclusion in these images makes them into a record of how people lived and thought.
In 1984 London was rapidly becoming the multicultural city we now know, though of course it had been so on a lesser scale for many years if not centuries. Spitalfields where some of these pictures were made had long been a home for new communities moving to London and there was still abundant evidence of its Jewish population as well as the Bangladeshis who had by then largely replaced them.
Housing, then as now, was an important issue in London in particular, and some of these pictures reflect this and other issues such as racism. Although I think some of these pictures are well-composed and even attractive compositionally, I’ve always considered the formal aspects – line, shape, tone, texture, form etc to be the means to communicate a message rather than an end in themselves. I aimed to make photography that had something to say and said it well rather than to produce well composed, attractive or even striking or popular images.
There are another 95 pictures on the second page of the album, all with a location, taken from the usually rather incomplete information I recorded on the contact sheets. I’ve tried to check these before posting, but corrections and other comments are always welcome. I’m happy for these pictures – with suitable attribution – to be shared on social media, but they remain copyright and any commercial or editorial use requires a licence from me.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media. And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.
