It’s seventy years ago that the Battle of Cable Street against Mosley’s fascists was fought and won by a broad coalition of Jews, trade unionists, Labour Party members, Communists and residents. It showed that anti-fascists forces could win these battles, despite police interference, despite unwillingness on the part of the then Communist Party leadership to commit themselves to the battle. Ordinary people could defeat fascists as long as they were united against it. Even though, as this this eyewitness report shows, the police was largely on the fascists side and was busy protecting their march.
That’s the other lesson of Cable Street of course, that the police is far more willing to use violence to protect fascist’ demonstrations against leftwingers than it is to do the opposite. You still see this whenever the modern equivalent of Mosley’s fascists march like recently in Amsterdam, when under the guise of an anti-pedophile march skinheads marched through Amsterdam-zuid, a neighbourhood with a large Jewish presence…
Of course you can have some sympathy for the view that in a democracy any group, no matter how odious their views, should be allowed to air them, as long as they stay within the law while doing so. But even when they don’t stay within the law, the police has a remarkable reluctance to take the fascists on, as the case of Redwatch shows:
Alec McFadden was dozing in his armchair when a loud bang on his front door brought him to his senses with a jolt. Looking out of the window of his Wallasey home, he saw a young man half slumped in the driveway. “I couldn’t see his face but he looked like he was in some sort of trouble, like he needed help,” says McFadden. “I opened the door just a bit to ask if he was OK and he threw himself at me and started hitting me around the head.”
What McFadden did not realise at the time was that he was not being punched but stabbed. “I think it went on for a couple of minutes before I managed to get the door closed. I turned round and my daughter was screaming. It was only then, as I put my hand to my face and felt the blood, that I realised what had happened.”
The attack, which left the long-time union activist with serious injuries, was the latest and most violent incident in a campaign of intimidation that has been waged against opponents of the far right in the UK over the past five years. Like hundreds of people who have spoken out against the rise of the British National Party and other extremist groups, McFadden’s picture and home address have been collected by far right activists and posted on a website called Redwatch.
The site, which has links with the neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18 and a host of European fascist organisations, is hosted in the US but registered and run from the UK. It lists the personal details and shows the photographs of anti-racists – many taken during protests against the British National Party – alongside the slogan: “Remember places, traitors’ faces, they’ll all pay for their crimes.” This month a delegation of MPs and union activists will visit the Home Office to call for the site to be closed down. It is a familiar refrain and in the past officials have argued that because the site is hosted abroad, there is nothing they can do. However, Redwatch’s sister site in Poland, which was also hosted in the US, was recently closed down after collaboration between authorities in the the two countries, and Home Office minister Vernon Coaker has agreed to champion the campaign within government.
So seventy years after the police attempted to let Mosley march through the Jewish area of Cable Street, the Home Office protects the right of Mosley’s spiritual heirs to intimidate and attack leftwingers and antifascists.