The Battle of Cable Street (13.06.15)
A delegation of the BMA (UK) travelled to Cable
Street on Saturday the 13th of June, 2015, as a mark of respect for antifascist
protest that occurred there on October the 4th, 1936, which saw
250,000 members of the British Working Class clash with thousands of uniform wearing,
Nazi German Swastika flag-waving fascists led by the renowned British racist
and anti-Semite – Oswald Mosely. The
British Union of Fascists (BUF) intended to march through the East End of London
and claim the area and its people for the fascist cause. The British Working Class, however, had other
ideas, and hundreds of thousands gathered around the Dock Street – Cable Street
area (the plaque commemorating this event is in fact on a wall in Dock Street
near the corner of Cable Street), and stopped the fascists, eventually pushing
them out of the area. The hand-to-hand
fighting was ferocious with police officers recorded as fighting with
supporters of both sides – thousands were injured at a time before the
existence of the National Health Service (NHS).
The British bourgeois governments of the day refused to ban the BUF (due
to the movement’s popularity amongst the middle and upper classes), and nor
would they offer support to the British Workers, but instead decided on a
policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler’s fascism internationally. However, the British Workers took things into
their own hands, and whilst their privileged governments did nothing about the
threat of fascism in the UK, the British Workers risked life and limb to stop
the spread of this ideological disease throughout Britain. In 1976 an official mural was designed depicting
the events which was then painted on the side of St Georges Town Hall, itself
situated next to a park on Cable Street – not far from the DLR Shadwell
Station.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2015.