THE anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street 1936 — the iconic clash between fascism and anti-fascism in Britain of that decade — has added poignancy this year. It is just weeks since several places in Britain were gripped by what the mainstream press labelled “riots,” instigated by far-right activists. 

Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke of “thuggery” and was especially concerned that police were attacked, though the main targets of what anti-fascist activists prefer to label “pogroms” by an insurgent far-right were long-settled Muslim communities and current asylum-seekers, including many Muslims. Yet Starmer would not let the word “Islamophobia” cross his lips. 

There were attempts to set fire to hotels temporarily housing refugees, and threats made against law firms and advice centres that support asylum-seekers. 

The state’s law and order-centred response to far-right pogroms in 2024 mirrors its responses to Cable Street. For several months in 1936, Jews experienced repeated street violence from Oswald Mosley’s fascists, culminating in Mosley’s threat to march thousands of Blackshirted fascists through the East End’s most heavily Jewish-populated streets on Sunday October 4. 

Grassroots Labour members and trade unionists wanted to confront them, but Labour’s aloof hierarchy colluded with Tory and Liberal leaders to denounce plans for a counter-demonstration. From the relative comfort of the West End, the Jewish Board of Deputies made the same call. 

Thankfully, many Jews completely ignored them, following the lead instead of the Jewish People’s Council against Fascism and Antisemitism (JPC), formed in the East End, and the Communist Party which had many local Jewish members. Trade unionists and Labour members, especially from the Labour League of Youth, joined the mass blockade at Gardiner’s Corner, and dockers from Irish Catholic families whom Mosley had tried to woo helped reinforce the barricades in Cable Street.

The police arrested 84 people that day; 79 of them were anti-fascists. The courts jailed several demonstrators. Others suffered severe beatings and anti-semitic abuse at Leman Street Police Station. The Tory-dominated National Government passed the Public Order Act which banned political uniforms and granted the police much stronger powers over demonstrations. 

The National Council for Civil Liberties, founded in 1934, opposed this Act, as did the JPC who warned that increased police powers would not only fulfil fascist demands to erode democratic rights, but would ultimately be used more against the left than the right. The JPC insisted that Britain did not need a Public Order Act; it needed a law on racial incitement. They were decades ahead of their time.

Labour failed to win amendments to the Act but voted for it anyway, though they did press the Tories to withdraw a clause giving police powers to ban flags and provocative placards. Can anyone imagine Starmer-led Labour doing anything to reduce police powers today, especially on pro-Palestine demonstrations?

Lessons from the 1930s need to be relearned. I’ve been struck by the strong desire among activists today to find one single, simple explanation for our 2024 pogroms; one identifiable puppet master pulling the strings. 

But fascism in the 1930s was not simply down to Hitler or Mussolini. It rose independently in Austria, Belgium, France, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and of course Spain. Its roots were not in one individual, one people, one ethnicity, but in political systems produced by capitalism in crisis that utilised ultra-nationalism and promoted dictatorship.  

The countries today where far-right ideologues are growing in confidence certainly include Israel, India, Italy, France, Austria and Germany, and fascists in different countries do create networks, but we lose rather than gain clarity if we think there is one single driver.

Right now, many anti-racists and anti-fascists in Britain focus on Tommy Robinson, a chancer, opportunist and grifter who is capable of whipping up hatred and violence and attracting thousands to street protests. 

When he mobilises in numbers we must do so as well, but we also need to politically defeat him, and his ideas, in our localities — not only in physical confrontations in central London. We have to expose the far-right’s paper-thin scapegoating arguments to those attracted to them, and offer progressive alternatives for struggling working-class people. 

Robinson and other far-right ideologues are exploiting a perfect storm: years of state-sponsored Islamophobia, especially since 9/11; anger about asylum-seekers arriving on boats, amplified by right-wing media and Tory and Labour politicians; and widespread dissatisfaction with and alienation from the political establishment, as demonstrated in the low turnout in the general election. 

Labour won its landslide of seats (64 per cent) on barely 33 per cent of votes cast. Farage’s Reform UK won 4.1 million votes on an embryonic far-right ideological programme, but attained just five seats. They received half a million more votes nationally than the Lib Dems, who won 72 seats. Labour’s hierarchy gifted Farage his seat in Clacton when they pulled a very popular local black candidate away from the constituency to work elsewhere. 

The far right have also benefited from the media and hard-right politicians playing to the racist gallery over Palestine protests, falsely labelling them “hate marches” led by “jihadis” and “Hamas supporters.”

Robinson claims that his followers will defend Jews from Muslims and other “anti-semites,” but says this work is being undermined by “two-tier policing” that  is allegedly soft on minorities! He cynically exploits the situation in Palestine/Israel and the wider region to exacerbate communal tensions here. Islamophobic and anti-semitic incidents and abuse are both growing.

Farage and Robinson are gaining confidence and strength from the increasing popularity of the far right in Europe especially. Rightwingers who dominate the Jewish establishment cry crocodile tears about the far right elsewhere, but feed the same Islamophobic narratives that help Farage and Robinson here. 

We have to link our struggles here to those fighting racism and fascism everywhere. We owe it to those who fought so bravely through the 1930s, including at Cable Street, to meet those challenges today and in the coming period with courage, serious arguments and analysis, and unity in action. No Pasaran!

David Rosenberg was Convenor of Cable Street 80 in 2016 and is active in the Jewish Socialists’ Group.

Stop Tommy Robinson. Stop the Far Right. Unite against Racism, Islamophobia and Antisemitism. Saturday 26 October. Location tbc