Jewish East End | >Re-PHOTO

The Jewish East End & Al-Quds Day: On Sunday 22 October 2006 I went on a morning guided walk around parts of the formerly Jewish East End, one of the activities of the now long gone (and still missed) London Arts Café. The name was rather misleading as it never achieved its aim to open a cafe dedicated to London and the arts in the city, but did organise some interesting talks as well as exhibitions at various venues showing painting and photography of London and walks and visits such as this. Some record of these is still on-line although the organisation closed down in 2007, though was continued as a short-lived Meetup group.

After lunch I went to Marble Arch for the start of the annual Al-Quds Day march. I didn’t stay long as it began to rain heavily.

Here (with minor corrections) is all I wrote in 2006 and a few of the pictures. You can still see more at the links to My London Diary.

The (formerly) Jewish East End

The Jewish East End & Al-Quds Day - 2006 — *Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue, built in 1899 and one of the very few synagogues still open then in the East End.*

On Sunday morning I took a walk with members of London Arts Cafe through the once Jewish areas of London’s East End. We were fortunate to be able to go in both the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue, as well as the Bevis Marks Synagogue, Britain’s oldest standing Jewish place of worship, built in 1698, where unfortunately, photography is not allowed, but you can see some other pictures from our walk.

A few more pictures on My London Diary

International Al-Quds Day March

Marble Arch

Al-Quds is Jerusalem, and Sunday saw the annual march calling for its liberation, and that of Palestine.

*Hizbullah capes help keep some marchers dry*

The idea of an international Al-Quds Day came from Ayatollah Khomeini, shortly after he gained power in Iran in 1979.

Shortly after the start of the march, it started to rain heavily and I came home rather than get my equipment soaked again.

A few more pictures on My London Diary.

The External Security Organisation of Hizbullah was proscribed in the UK in 2001, but it was only in 2008 that the whole of its military wing was proscribed. But Hizbullah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party with around 12% of the seats in the Lebanese Parliament, and operates a vast social services network in the country including schools and hospitals, as well as a satellite TV station. The party flag covers both the civil and the military wings of the party, and so its display was not an offence after the 2008 proscription. There were probably more Hisbullah flags on display than usual in 2006 because the march took place just a couple of months after the Israeli invasion and occupation of parts of Lebanon in July-August 2006.

Following years of lobbying the proscription was extended to cover the whole organisation in 2019 and it is now an offence to carry the flag. My pictures are a historical record and do not imply any support for the organisation.

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Battle of Cable St: On Sunday 2 October 2011 well over a thousand trade unionists and anti-fascists celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street when Mosley’s fascists were prevented from marching into London’s largely Jewish East End.

Battle of Cable St - 75 Years On — *Max Levitas leads the march*

Since 2011 we have seen other celebrations of this famous event and the people of the East End have also come together to stop other racist organisations marching into the East End, notably the EDL.

In 1936 Oswald Mosley led the ‘British Union of Fascists’, an organisation modelled on Mussolilni’s Italian fascist paramilitary groups on a march designed to intimidate the large Jewish community in the East End.

Although various groups tried to get the march banned the Home Secretary sided with the fascists insisting their democratic right to march had to be upheld by the police. The fascists were also supported by the right wing press, particularly the Daily Mail, while more liberal newspapers urged people to stay away from the counter demonstration.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews had condemned the march as anti-Semitic, and they had advised people to stay away from the march as did the Labour Party. The opposition to Mosley was led by local members of the Communist Party of Great Britain including Phil Piratin who nine ears later became Communist MP for Mile End. They eventually persuaded the party to back the counter-demonstration.

Somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people turned out to stop the fascists. Many were Jewish, and many were members or supporters of the Communist Party but the call brought out many others from the East End, including “Irish Catholics, Jews, Orthodox Jews, dockers and Somali seamen” in a huge mobilisation across the community.

There are three routes leading into the East End from the City of London where Mosely and people gathered at key points on them, particularly at Aldgate, where most of the fighting between police and protesters took place, particularly around Gardiner’s Corner – where a ten years ago Class War carried out their long series of Poor Doors protests against social apartheid in housing.

Police decided to try and force a way through at Cable Street a little to the south and tried to force a way through the crowds and remove the barricades they had set up.

According to Wikipedia, police managed to take and dismantle the first barrier but the anti-fascists set up another a few yards down the road.

“The police attempts to take and remove the barricades were resisted in hand-to-hand fighting and also by missiles, including rubbish, rotten vegetables and the contents of chamber pots thrown at the police by women in houses along the street … children’s marbles were also used to counter charges by mounted police.”

Eventually the police gave up and told Mosley to march with his followers back to the West End, where they held a rally in Hyde Park rather than those they had intended in Limehouse, Bow, Bethnal Green and Hoxton.

Seventy five years after the battle the crowd was rather smaller, but the well over a thousand who met at Aldgate included several veterans of the 1936 battle, among them 96 year old Max Levitas who led the march and spoke at the rally. He was also there and spoke at the 80th anniversary event in 2016.

The oldest person on the march was 106 year old lifelong political activist and suffragette Hetty Bower who had also been at the 1936 demonstration and was later one of the founder members of CND. I photographed her on several occasions at CND and other protests, the last at the Hiroshima Day commemoration in 2013 where she spoke briefly, a few months before her death.

*Beattie Orwell, 94, was another of the veterans of 1936*

You can read more about the Cable Street 75 event on My London Diary, where there are also many more pictures.
Battle of Cable St – 75 Years

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Tag: Jewish East End

The Jewish East End & Al-Quds Day – 2006

The (formerly) Jewish East End

International Al-Quds Day March