The Battle of Cable Street 2015

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.