Cable Street - the road to Spain

Cable Street: the road to Spain

In January 1937, a young Jewish Communist called Charlie

Goodman was released from prison, having served three months

hard labour for his part in the huge anti-fascist

demonstration in London’s east-end, on Sunday the 4th October

1936. Goodman’s offence had been to climb a lamp post and urge

his fellow protestors to resist the police charges attempting

to force a path for Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts through the

mass of demonstrators. Following his arrest, Goodman was

‘clubbed, punched and kicked all the way to Leman Street

police station.’1 Nevertheless, despite the bruises, Goodman

and his fellow anti-fascists had learned an important lesson;

that standing firm against the fascists was an effective

strategy. The massed ranks of anti-fascists had physically

barred the British Union of Fascists from marching

provocatively into the Jewish areas of Aldgate and

Whitechapel; the Blackshirts had NOT passed.

On his release from jail, Goodman was determined to continue

to confront fascism, wherever it appeared. The experiences

gained at numerous anti-fascist demonstrations in London were

crystallised at Cable Street, leading him to take a momentous

decision. Goodman elected to continue his fight against

fascism, not just on the streets of east-London where he, his

1 Interview with Charlie Goodman, Searchlight, October 1996 and Imperial War Museum Sound Archive (IWMSA) interview 16612, reel 4.

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family and his friend lived and worked, but nearly 1500 km

away, in a country he had never seen. Incensed by the support

of Hitler and Mussolini for Franco’s military rising in Spain,

and the lack of help for the legitimate Spanish government by

Britain and France, Goodman saw the same enemy in Spain that

he had been arrested for fighting in London’s east-end. For

Charlie Goodman - and many others like him – Cable Street was

the road that led to Spain.

For most of the British in the International Brigades in the

Spanish Civil War, the rise of European fascism and their

experiences of fighting Mosley’s Blackshirts in the 1930s was

the primary motivation for volunteering. However, it was not

the only factor; many had been involved in political action

before the foundations of the British Union of Fascists in

1932. Winston Churchill later described the atmosphere prior

to the Second World War as ‘the gathering storm.’ It is an

appropriate analogy for, like all storms, it grew out of a

depression, the huge economic depression, which meant that the

1930s were, for many, an age of poverty, misery and

starvation. According to one recent history of the period,

perhaps as many as a third of the working-class in Britain in

the early 1930s were ‘living on incomes that were insufficient

for basic human needs.’2 ‘And an empty stomach makes an empty

head think,’ as one volunteer for Spain put it, wryly.3

2 Gardiner, The Thirties, p. 69.3 Interview with Tommy Bloomfield in MacDougall, Voices from the Spanish Civil War, p. 50.

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Not that life had exactly been easy before the great crash;

International Brigader Jim Brown later remembered the

hardships of growing up in London:

When I was five, there were occasions when we went days

without food. Sometimes in the summer we walked the

streets where we lived at Kings Cross all night because…

rats ran over the beds all night, so we dare not go in.

Life was of deep poverty and when I say deep poverty, I

mean deep poverty. Some of my brothers and sisters died

from the conditions…We were evicted from home eleven

times for non-payment of rent and the furniture thrown

onto the streets.

This was quite common, of course, but it does tend to

create a certain attitude in the individual, either

consciously or unconsciously which is reflected in later

life.4

As an adult, Jim Brown worked for a firm delivering fish to

the houses of the very rich, which revealed to him the huge

disparity between rich and poor. This spurred a passion for

economics and he read Adam Smith and Ricardo, amongst others.

However, it was the writing of Jack London, particularly People

of the Abyss, set in the slums of London’s east-end, which made a

lasting impression on him; and on many other volunteers for

Spain too – George Orwell read it as a teenager and its

influence can be seen in Down and Out in Paris and London. Like a

character from Robert Tressell’s classic Ragged Trousered

Philanthropists - which many volunteers cite as an important 4 Interview with Jim Brown in Corkhill & Rawnsley, p. 47.

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influence on their political development - Brown later

laboured in the building trade, where ‘you worked in the

summer and starved in the winter.’

For Leslie Preger, a young Jewish volunteer from Manchester,

joining the Clarion Cycling Club introduced him to politics

and instilled in him a passion for reading newspapers:

I started reading the New Statesman and I gravitated from

the News Chronicle to the Daily Worker. I suddenly found myself

buying two morning papers – the Manchester Guardian and the

Daily Worker and then I started to read Class Forward, the

Glasgow Independent Labour Party paper. I became

completely besotted by the whole thing; I started to

think that the Soviet Union had the answer to everything

from appendicitis to divorce. There was nothing that

could not be cured by the dictatorship of the

proletariat.5

Discussion groups and meetings provided an opportunity to meet

others with similar interests, such as those organized by the

Young Communist League. As one volunteer from Middlesbrough

remembered, ‘we went hiking, we went camping, we had dances;

it was a club as well as a centre for political activity.’6

Manchester volunteer Joe Norman’s political teeth were cut on

the famous Kinder Trespass of 1932, an action to gain access

to open spaces in what is now the Peak District National Park.

Here he met many individuals who would later fight – and die -

in Spain, ‘men like George Brown...Clem Beckett, Ken Bradbury 5 Interview with Leslie Preger in Corkhill & Rawnsley, pp. 27-8.6 Interview with David Goodman in Corkhill & Rawnsley, p. 96.

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[and] Ralph Cantor.’ 7 At Kinder they encountered the

determination of landlords to protect their property:

I was among the first few who charged up the hill…we were

met by a dozen or so keepers, wielding sticks and trying

to intimidate the hikers…one fellow was struck and he

struck back…we got on to Kinder Scout, held a meeting

with a contingent who had come from Sheffield and then we

returned…when we stopped, police who had been hiding in

the homes on either side of the Kinder Road arrested five

men at random.8

Another volunteer was involved in similar protests as part of

the Ramblers’ Association; ‘it was a job to ensure that our

heritage and that the right of walking was free to all, and

this was probably the first political activity that I ever

remember myself carrying out.’9 The two features of hiking and

protesting came together in one of the most potent symbols of

political dissent in the 1930s, in which many who would later

go to Spain participated; the hunger marches.

‘If one is to seek a major factor in the motivation of a

significant proportion of the British Battalion, one could

well begin with the hunger marches and the conditions which

provoked them,’ one observer declared.10 In 1934, a young John

Longstaff took part in a hunger march from Stockton to London:

7 Joe Norman memoir, IBA, MML, Box 50, File Nr/1a.8 Levine, pp. 24-5.9 Longstaff, MS, p. 29.10 Hynes, unpublished dissertation, p. 17. See also, Francis, pp.80-81, which outlines the connection between the NUWM and Spain. Four of the leaders of the march which left South Wales for London later fought in Spain: Tim Harrington, D.R. Llewellyn, Will Paynter and J.S. Williams.

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Being unemployed was no joke for a young lad or young

lass in the 1930s. I had heard of some men who were going

to march to London to find work and others from the

surrounding towns and villages were also joining the

march. I decided that I would join them and find a job in

London, as Stockton-on-Tees in the 1930s was then a

derelict and distressed area...I had no idea of the

distance to London and in complete ignorance of the route

the marchers were taking, or even the time it would take

to walk to London.11

When the march eventually arrived at London, Longstaff

remembered that:

We went...through the City of London, where some well-

dressed men started shouting at us – ‘Bloody Reds, you

all want shooting.’ Others were shouting, ‘Go to Russia

where you came from.’ I could not understand why these

well-dressed men, and some women, had hurled such abuse

at us. I did not know what a Red was.12

The marches were organized by the National Unemployed Workers’

Movement [f. 1921], an organisation set up by the Communist

Party of Great Britain [f.1920] to publicize the plight of the

unemployed. Not surprisingly, many hunger marchers went on to

become communists: ‘For a lot of young people in the late

1920s and 1930s the Communist Party was the only political

party to join,’ declared one.13

11 Longstaff, MS, p. 8.12 Longstaff, MS, p. 15.13 Levine, p. 21.

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However, though the Party gained from [its opposition to the

National Government (1931-35)] its championing of the

unemployed and its opposition to the means test, it was the

rise of fascism in both its domestic and European forms, which

was to be the principal recruiting agent for the Party and

which would harden the political convictions of those who

would go on to fight in Spain. As one historian of the British

in Spain argued:

There was a logical, sequential development of issues in

the lives of many British militants: first, looking for

explanations for the unemployment and repression they

experienced; second, seeing the rise of fascism on the

continent as an issue that concerned them; and third,

seizing the opportunity to strike back at oppression, if

not in Great Britain, then in Spain.14

During the 1930s the Communist Party grew large enough to

become an organisation able to create alarm amongst sections

of the British establishment. The membership of the Party

tells its own story, peaking at nearly 11 000 in 1926 at the

time of the General Strike, then slipping into decline until

1931, after which the membership starts to increase once more.

Between 1935 and 1942, Communist Party membership rose from

just under eight thousand [7700] to over fifty thousand [56

000], mainly as a response to the rise of fascism.15

Whilst a number of small British fascist parties had existed

before the 1930s, it was only with the foundation of the 14 Hopkins, p. 107.15 Stevenson and Cook, p. 154.

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British Union of Fascists (BUF) by Oswald Mosley on 1 October

1932, that a mass movement was created. From the beginning the

BUF was ‘slavishly imitative’ of other European fascist

movements: Mosley deliberately made use of all of the fascist

tricks: the uniforms, the grandiose stage shows, the

speechifying and rolling eyes of Mussolini and, crucially, the

violence. As one Blackshirt member later admitted,

deliberately provoking violence was an essential part of the

fascist programme, all part of a wider to scheme to blame

Communists as a justification for seizing power by force.16

Membership grew quickly and by the summer of 1934, the BUF had

as many as 50 000 members. This rapid growth was partly due to

members of the other British fascist parties joining, but it

must be recognised that it was also due to a genuine appeal.

Mosley possessed a remarkable talent as a public speaker.17 As

the BUF’s membership increased, it also gained a number of

extremely powerful backers, the foremost of whom was Lord

Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, who lent his newspapers’

support to the BUF’s cause from January 1934. Whilst

Rothermere may have been ‘more of an anti-communist than a

fascist,’ pro-Blackshirt reporting in the various Rothermere

newspapers undoubtedly gave the movement a huge boost.18 The

infamous article ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’ appeared in the

Daily Mail on 15 January 1934. Crucially - and despite Mosley’s 16 Hope, ‘Blackshirts, Knuckle-Dusters and Lawyers: Documentary Essay on theMosley versus Marchbanks Papers’, Labour History Review, 65, 2000, pp. 46-48.17 One of the foremost historians of British fascism has gone as far as to suggest that, ‘Mosley was without peer as a public speaker in twentieth century British politics.’ Richard Thurlow ‘The Failure of British Fascism 1932-40,’ p. 75.18 Stevenson and Cook, p. 225.

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denials both at the time and later - the BUF also received

substantial financial support from Mussolini, estimated to be

in the region of £60 000 between 1933 and 1936.19

Many people shared Mosley’s belief in an impending crisis,

particularly the Communist Party, who argued that the end of

capitalism was nigh with ‘all the intense, irrational fervour

of street corner evangelists.’20 Therefore, for Mosley and his

followers in the BUF, it was fundamental that they prevent the

Communist Party from capitalising on the expected crisis.

However, just as Mosley’s overtly calculated fascist trappings

generated huge enthusiasm amongst his followers, it likewise

inspired suspicion, loathing and dread amongst his opponents.

Many suspected that Mosley sought not just to benefit from a

political and economic crisis, but to create it.

Until 1935, the Communist Party of Great Britain had followed

the line dictated by Moscow via the Communist International,

the Comintern, known as ‘class-against-class.’ This portrayed

all moderate and centrist democratic regimes as ‘social

fascists’ and dictated that they were be opposed. However, the

rise of fascist and authoritarian regimes across Europe during

the 1930s forced the Comintern to adopt a rather more

practical policy. At the Seventh World Congress in the summer

of 1935, the Bulgarian General Secretary, Georgi Dimitrov,

advocated ditching the disastrous class against class policy

and its replacement with pacts of all left and central

19 Both Italy and Germany provided funding for Mosley’s British Union. See Stephen Dorril, Blackshirt. Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, pp. 376-7.20 Morgan, Against Fascism and War, p. 19.

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democratic parties in people’s (or popular) fronts in order to

confront the fascists.

Within Britain, both the Communist Party and the Independent

Labour Party appealed for a ‘united front’ against fascism.

However, the Labour Party remained deeply suspicious of

Communists and were unwilling to have anything to do with

them. Thus the Party adopted the clandestine tactic of

channelling most of the anti-fascist activity through

Communist front organisations, such as ‘The British Anti-war

movement.’21

Anti-fascist demonstrations were held by those perceiving

themselves to be targets of the fascists: Communists, members

of the Labour movement and, in particular, Jews. There were

increased numbers of confrontations between ‘the radical left’

and the BUF, especially in London where, on several occasions,

BUF newspaper sellers were jostled, or even attacked.

During 1934, Mosley planned three big rallies in London: in

the Albert Hall in April, Olympia in June and White City in

August. The first of these, on 22 April, saw Mosley address a

crowd of 1000 people in a large and ultimately successful

meeting in the Royal Albert Hall. However, opponents were

determined that Mosley’s next appearance, at Olympia on 7

June, would be strongly opposed. The counter-demonstration was

pre-planned in detail, and determined efforts were made to get

as many opponents of Mosley as possible inside the hall. Some

600 tickets were purchased for the event, and increasingly

21 Copsey, p. 23.10

preposterous letters were sent to the Daily Mail begging for more

tickets. One applicant memorably proclaimed that, ‘I like the

Blackshirts because I want to die for my country and they seem

to offer the best opportunity.’22

By 8am on the morning of the rally, 1000 people were already

protesting outside Olympia and taunted anyone entering the

hall: ‘Hitler and Mosley, what are they for? Thuggery,

buggery, hunger and war!’23 Several hundred protestors had

successfully managed to get inside, although they were

severely outnumbered amongst an audience of twelve thousand.

The Blackshirts’ brutal response used wholly unnecessary

levels of violence to maintain order. Any hecklers were

violently ejected and thrown physically out of the hall. As

one protestor described, ‘Once the protest started there was

so much violence used that it became a whole shambles until

apparently half the audience was thrown out’.24

The violent scenes were met with outrage by newspaper

commentators and politicians, who accused both sides of

responsibility for the violence. The Labour supporting Daily

Herald blamed the Communists, arguing that if they hadn’t been

in the hall, there would have been no disturbance. Criticism

also came from the conservative press, such as the Daily Telegraph

and The Times, who denounced the use of violent private armies

and the tactics of the brutal BUF stewards. Initially Lord

22 L.W. Bailey, ‘Olympia’, The Times, 6 March 1996, cited in Renton, p. 17. 23 In Philip Toynbee’s account of the demonstration, the chant is the rather less obscene ‘Hitler and Mosley mean hunger and war!’ See Toynbee, Friends Apart, p. 21.24 Interview with Frank Graham in Corkhill & Rawnsley, p. 36.

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Rothermere continued to support the BUF through the Daily Mail,

despite the violence. However, concerns that the BUF could

split the Tory vote in the forthcoming election and the

increasing evidence of the viciousness of Hitler’s Nazi

regime, such as the murderous purge in the ‘Night of the Long

Knives’ three weeks after Olympia, led to Rothermere gradually

distancing himself from the movement.25

The violence at Olympia had two other significant

consequences. The first was a near-collapse in BUF membership,

which forced Mosley to change tactics and attempt to appeal to

local populations on local issues. This was most successful in

London’s east-end, where nearly half of the BUF’s membership

congregated. It was, of course, also the home of the highest

concentration of Jews in Britain, where 100 000 Jews lived out

of a total national population of 330 000.26 Anti-Semitism

became an official policy of the Blackshirts from September

1934, though any reading of BUF speeches with their frequent

allusion to ‘alien and foreign influences,’ demonstrated

clearly enough that anti-Semitism had always been present.27

Mosley’s claims that he opposed the behaviour of Jews, rather

than the Jews themselves, were not convincing, particularly as

his Blackshirt foot-soldiers seemed unable to make the same

fine distinction. Attacks on Jewish properties and on Jews

themselves became a regular occurrence during 1935 and 1936,

when the BUF campaign in the east end began in earnest.28 By

25 Pugh, p.536 and Copsey, p. 27.26 Copsey, p. 42.27 Newsinger, ‘Blackshirts,’ p. 832.28 Renton, p. 14.

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1936 the BUF’s anti-Semitism was showing some fruit in east

London, where they had 4000 members in Shoreditch alone.29

During 1936, the Blackshirts concentrated their resources in

East London ‘and their campaign, at its peak, approached a

siege of terror,’ as one young Jewish anti-fascist

remembered.30

In Stepney ... the anti-Semitism was so great that you

could hardly venture out of your own particular area -

for instance, to go to Bethnal Green or to Shoreditch,

the Elephant and Castle, Hoxton, anywhere like that, you

were entering enemy territory. You could be attacked if

you appeared Jewish.31

The second consequence was that, after Olympia, the Communist

Party became seen as the leading force in the fight against

Mosley’s Blackshirts. The BUF acted as a highly effective

recruitment aid for the Communist Party amongst those

frustrated by the passivity of the Labour Party and the Jewish

leadership towards fascist provocation, and the police’s

inability, or unwillingness, to protect them. Many saw the

Communist Party as the only serious opponent to fascism,

including a young Denis Healy:

For the young in those days, politics was a world of

simple choices. The enemy was Hitler with his

concentration camps. The objective was to prevent a war

by standing up to Hitler. Only the Communist Party seemed29 Renton, p. 18.30 Benewick, p. 217.31 Interview with David ‘Tony’ Gilbert, IWMSA 9157, reel 1.

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unambiguously against Hitler. The Chamberlain government

was for appeasement, Labour seemed torn between pacifism

and a half-hearted support for collective security, and

the Liberals did not count.32

To the frustration of many of the victims of the Blackshirts’

violent attacks and to young Jewish radicals, the Jewish

establishment, as represented by the Jewish Board of Deputies,

(BOD), and the British Labour Movement both [appeared to be]

pursuing a largely apathetic and ineffective response to anti-

Semitic violence. To working-class Jews, many of whom already

held Left-wing sympathies, their abandonment by the Jewish

establishment and mainstream political parties meant that to

oppose fascism, they, as Lou Kenton recalls, ‘naturally

gravitated towards the Communists’.33 As one Jewish activist

put it, ‘Who do you think was defending Jews in the East End

of London in the 1930s? ... The CP were the only organisation

that had the power and the organisation to oppose Mosley.’34

Nevertheless, the Labour Party continued to reject Communist

overtures for joint actions, believing that the fascist threat

was being deliberately and shrewdly overstated.35 It is

certainly true that Communist leaders were fully aware that

newspaper reports of fascist intimidation and violence were

great aids to recruitment. Two leading antifascists in the

32 Healey, p.34.33 Interview with Lou Kenton, IWMSA 9722/6.34 David Renton, ‘Docker and Garment Worker, Railwayman and Cabinet Worker: The Class Memory of Cable Street’, in Kusher & Valman, p.102. [Orig. appears in P. Cohen, Children of the Revolution: Communist Childhood in Cold War Britain, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977, p.61].35 Copsey, p.32.

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London Communist Party, Lionel Jacobs and Phil Piratin, both

later admitted that Communists deliberately exaggerated the

violence of the BUF.36

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 further

encouraged a Manichean view of a fascist or anti-fascist

world.37 Authoritarian regimes were spreading across Europe, in

particular, Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy in 1922 and

Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933

had created the impression that fascism was in an unstoppable

ascent. As the Labour councillor Jack Jones explained:

The awful realisation that black fascism was on the march

right across Europe created a strong desire to act. The

march had started with Mussolini and had gained terrible

momentum with Hitler and was being carried forward by

Franco. For most young people there was a feeling of

frustration, but some determined to do anything that

seemed possible, even if it meant death, to try to stop

the spread of fascism…This was Fascist progression. It

was real and it had to be stopped.38

The rapid intervention by Hitler and Mussolini in Spain, and

Franco’s use of Moroccan mercenaries meant that most British

anti-fascists saw the war in Spain not as a civil war, but as

one more episode in the European war against fascist

aggression. Londoner Joe Garber explained how,

36 Cullen, pp.257-260.37 Copsey, p.51.38 Introduction by Jack Jones in Judith Cook, Apprentices of Freedom, London: Quartet Press, 1979, pp. vii-ix.

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The Blackshirts were attacking elderly Jewish people

around Stepney...and then the report came through that a

German unit had landed [in Spain] via Portugal. They were

pouring in. I thought to myself ‘now it is my job, I’ve

got go to’. We can’t wait after reading Mein Kampf ...

they are going to wipe us out.’39

Meanwhile, buoyed by BUF gains in east London, Mosley hatched

his plan to march provocatively through London’s east end on 4

October 1936, to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the

founding of the Blackshirt movement. But unknown to Mosley,

the antifascists were fully informed of all details of the

march, for the Blackshirts had been heavily infiltrated.40

However, opinions on how to respond to Mosley’s march

differed. While the ILP argued for staging a major anti-Mosley

demonstration, the initial response of the Communist Party to

the march was to recommend that Party members stay away. They

were organising their own demonstration in support of the

Spanish Republic in Trafalgar Square, for by the end of

September Franco’s Rebel army had captured Toledo, and were

only fifty kilometres from Madrid. 41

But by late September, the Communist Party leadership was

coming under increasing pressure to cancel the aid-Spain

demonstration and support the anti-fascist protest in the

39 Interview with Joe Garber, IWMSA 12291 reel 10.40 Dorril, p. 381 & p. 390. The Jewish Board of Deputies also had a mole in the BUF. Known as Captain X, he was actually Captain Vincent Collier, an Irish ex-officer.41 Thurlow, ‘The Straw…’, p.82 and James Eaden and David Renton. The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, p. 58.

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east-end. Joe Jacobs, the Secretary of the Stepney Branch of

the Communist Party approached Willie Cohen, the Secretary of

the London Young Communist League, about the anti-fascist

demonstration, only to discover to his horror that the Party

was not prepared to cancel the Trafalgar Square rally and

still argued that Spain was a more important issue than

Mosley.

In an attempt to reach a compromise, on 30 September the Daily

Worker instructed Party members to attend the Spain rally then

to head to the east-end. However, aware that many would simply

go directly to the east-end, on 2 October the CP finally

abandoned their plans for the pro-Spain march at Trafalgar

Square and got behind the anti-fascist demonstration.42 A

determined and, if need be, violent response was planned. One

anti-fascist later claimed that a number of dockers had guns

stored on the roofs at Cable Street.43

There were huge publicity efforts by the ILP, CP, and the Ex-

Servicemen’s Movement against Fascism, all calling for people

to ‘Block the road to Fascism.’ Whilst the main targets of the

Blackshirt march were the Jewish residents of the east end,

the Daily Worker stressed the wider implications: ‘The attack on

the Jews is the beginning of the attack to wipe out the

42 Copsey, p. 55.43 ‘It could have been a very, very bloody affair, for many of the dockers had First World War rifles. They had First World War weapons which soldiersvery often took away with them when you were demobbed and came out of the army. Any they were on the roofs of Cable Street and the areas leading up to Cable Street, and if the Fascists had started the march…’ Interview withTony Gilbert, IWMSA 9157, reel 1.

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socialist movement, trade unionism and democracy in Britain.’44

In a demonstration that the Party was finally taking the anti-

Mosley protest seriously, Dave Springhall, the secretary of

the London district of the Communist Party and a member of the

Party’s PolitBureau who had twice been gaoled for his

activities in the General Strike and its aftermath, spoke at a

meeting just before the demonstration. Springhall blamed the

Home Secretary for any ensuing violence, arguing that the BUF

march should have been banned.45

Many of those at Cable Street were experienced anti-fascist

activists who had been at Earls Court and Olympia and many of

those would later continue their fight in Spain. The parallels

between the fight against Mosley in London and against Franco

in Madrid were clear. The struggles against domestic and

overseas fascism were inextricably linked for the Communist

Party and the use of the emblematic slogan, ¡No Pasarán! (they

shall not pass), the use of the term ‘civil war’ and the

quoting of La Pasionaria’s speech that ‘it is better to die on

your feet than live on your knees’, were calculated and

deliberate.46 Barricades were built in the side streets by

people who had learned what to do from photographs of the

Spanish people preparing to defend Madrid in the British

newspapers.47 The young Stockton hunger-marcher, John Longstaff,

was at Cable Street that day:

44 Daily Worker 3 October 1936, cited in Branson, History of the Communist Party, 1927-1941, p.164,45 Report on Cable Street demonstration, NA HO 144/21061, p. 113. 46 Kushner, ‘Long May Its Memory Live,’ pp. 117-118.47 Interview with John Longstaff, IWMSA 9299, reel 3.

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It seemed the whole of London was turning out to stand by

the Jews and the working people. All were determined that

the British Union of Fascists would not get through the

East End.48

Whilst Georgi Dimitrov, the General Secretary of the

Comintern, had originally warned the CPGB not to waste too

much time and resources on ‘the small fry of Mosley’s BUF,’

the response from those under attack in Manchester’s Cheetham,

or the east-end of London, was to confront the Blackshirts,

directly and robustly.49 It was a powerful and often formative

experience, a key feature in the political development of

those who would go on to confront fascism not just on the

streets, but on the battlefield. Like Charlie Goodman, Jack

Shaw, a Jewish east-Londoner, was also arrested at Cable

Street and sentenced to three months’ hard labour.50 Upon his

release he signed up on a ship bound for Spain where he

arrived in April 1937. There Shaw joined the International

Brigades and served as a runner in the British Battalion. Alf

Salisbury’s story was very similar:

I was just one of a number of people who, as a result of

what happened at Cable Street, felt that we had to do

something to defeat fascism, to take up arms against it.

Otherwise there would not only be many dead, but they

48 Longstaff, MS, p. 33.49 James Eaden and David Renton. The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, p. 57.50 Interview with Jack Shaw, Searchlight, October 1996.

19

would also throw us back a thousand years. I went to

Spain.51

Salisbury was one of many who cited Cable Street, involvement

in anti-fascist demonstrations and the rise of fascism in

Europe as fundamental to their political development and the

decision to volunteer for the war in Spain. One Manchester

volunteer said that he ‘wasn’t interested in politics at all

until the rise of Hitler, and then Mosley coming into the

picture in England.’52

Fighting fascism in Spain would help the fight against fascism

across Europe: conversely a victory for Franco was seen, by

extension, as a victory for Hitler.53 The rapid and determined

support for the Spanish rebels by Germany and Italy provided

convincing evidence for a connection between the fascist

regimes. Time and time again the refrain, ‘We went to Spain so

that we could defeat Hitler,’54 is repeated in interviews with

volunteers.

Many of the volunteers in Spain had been arrested fighting the

Blackshirts at some stage.55 ‘I felt we had to smash them off

the streets,’ declared one Scottish volunteer.56 Londoner Tony

Gilbert had previously had his nose broken by fascists whilst

51 Interview with Alf Salisbury, Searchlight, October 1996. 52 Interview with Josh Davidson, Manchester 193, reel 1, side 1.53 Zaagsma, ‘Jewish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War’, p. 19.54 Interview with Bob Cooney, in Cook, p. 148.55 NA HO 144/21043. Report on political violence at public meetings, 1934-1938. The file lists numerous people arrested demonstrating in London who would later go to Spain including Hugh Slater, David Guest, Harold Horne, Hamish Fraser, Jeffries Mildwater, James Pugh, Winifred Bates, Donald Renton and many others. 56 Sid Quinn, in Cook, pp. 17-19.

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a member of a Jewish organisation called ‘The Blue and White

Club’, which used to ‘deal out their own medicine,’ as he put

it:

More than a few were attracted by the Blue and White

Society, which saw combat with those that would attack

them as the answer. And it’s one of the reasons why, in

those days, a great many young Jewish people either

joined or supported the Communist Party in their area,

and it’s one of the reasons why the East-End of London

supplied so many people to enter into the struggle

against fascism in Spain.57

Londoner Harold Horne was arrested on several occasions; he

later claimed that it was all made worthwhile when, during a

melee at a meeting in Willesden, in north-west London, he

managed to land a kick in William Joyce’s testicles.58 His

fellow Londoner, Wally Togwell, a waiter from St. Pancras, is

a typical example of this type of seasoned anti-fascist

campaigner:

Wherever the fascists were, our group of the YCL was

there also. I was thrown out of the Albert Hall, I took

part in anti-Mosley demos. at Olympia and Hyde Park, I

was at Cable Street helping to erect barricades.59

And he was also in Spain.

57 Interview with Tony Gilbert, IWMSA 9157, reel 1.58 Harold Horne, All the Trees were Bread and Cheese, p. 43.59 Interview with Wally Togwell, in Hynes, ‘The British Battalion of the XVth International Brigade’, p. 27.

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The rise of the BUF and the lessons learned confronting them

at anti-Mosley demonstrations such as Cable Street encouraged

a coterie of experienced anti-fascists to engage in armed

conflict. As Maurice Levine from Manchester described, ‘I

should say that it was the prime motive, the emergence of

Fascism and Mosleyism in Britain in persuading lots of people

like myself to go to Spain.’60 Joe Garber was in no doubt that

his involvement in fighting fascism in Britain was a major

factor: ‘I decided to go to Spain especially after the Cable

Street battles when we stopped the Blackshirts getting

through’.61 Like almost 2500 other men and women, Maurice

Levine and Joe Garber graduated from fighting Mosley’s

Blackshirts on the streets of Britain, to fighting Franco’s

soldiers on the battlefields of Spain. For many of these

opponents of fascism, fighting in the Spanish war was a

defining moment. As one American volunteer eloquently put it,

‘I saw in the invaders of Spain the same people I’ve been

fighting all my life.’62

60 Interview with Maurice Levine in Corkhill and Rawnsley, pp. 6-7.61 Interview with Joe Garber, IWMSA 14277 reel 4.62 Eluard Luchelle McDaniels from Mississippi, cited in Carroll, p. 18.

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