The Ghosts of Cable Street

The Ghosts of Cable Street

Max Levitas was a child of Jewish refugees who had fled from the dreadful anti-Semitic pogroms in imperial Russia to begin a new life in Ireland. His father had worked with Jim Larkin in Dublin and fought for the rights of workers there although his activities saw him blacklisted and made finding work difficult. Max was born in Dublin in 1915 and his parents had to lie with him and his sibling on the floor of their tenement as the bullets flew during the 1916 rising. He moved to Glasgow when he was 15 due to his father’s difficulty in earning a living in Ireland. Glasgow had a major Jewish population in those times mainly in and around the Gorbals area. It was in Glasgow that Max developed further his own lifelong commitment to fighting for the rights of the ordinary working class people he saw struggling around him in the depression hit city.

His family moved to London in the early 1930s and settled in among the east end’s large Jewish population. Living cheek by Jowell with tens of thousands of Jews in the packed terrace houses of the east end was a large Irish Catholic population who had come to the city to work in the docks which were at that time the busiest in the world. Max recalled being told about the dockers' strike of 1912 when the employers sought to starve the workers into submission. Jewish families fed the children of striking Irish workers as it was plain that many were going hungry. Despite occasional friction between the communities this act of kindness wasn’t forgotten.

The rise of fascism in Italy, Spain and Germany in the 1930s found its parallel in the British Union of Fascists, a Political movement led by Oswald Mosely. Mosely had visited Italy, met Mussolini and saw fascism as the way forward for Britain. By the mid-1930s the British Union of Fascists claimed 50,000 members and adopted some of the hallmarks of European fascism. Anti- Semitism was never far from the surface and when Moseley announced that he would lead a march of thousands of Black-shirted Fascists through the east end of London in October 1936 there was genuine alarm in the Jewish community. They had watched Hitler and his followers terrorise the Jews of Germany and most Jews in the east end came from families who fled persecution in Russia and elsewhere. There was a determination that the black shirts wouldn’t be given free rein to terrorise the east end’s Jewish community.

Max Levitas, who had been arrested a year earlier for painting ‘No to Fascism’ in large letters on three sides of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, saw that a storm was coming. He was determined that there would be no pogrom in London’s east end and joined community leaders in discussing what they should do. When it became clear that Moseley and his Fascists would be funnelled down Cable Street, enabled by a huge Police operation, the local community decided to act. The Jews of the east end were joined by thousands of Irish workers who remembered the Jewish community’s support during the 1912 strike and together they set up barricades to stop the black-shirts. Max Levitas recalled what happened next…

‘Mosely and his fascists wanted to take over the east end, to run out the Jews and communists. We had to stop them. It was the people, united, and fighting together. Suddenly a barricade was erected there and they put an old lorry in the middle of the road and old mattresses. The people up the top of the flats, mainly Irish Catholic women, were throwing rubbish on to the police. We were all side by side. I was moved to tears to see bearded Jews and Irish Catholic Dockers standing up to stop Mosley. I shall never forget that as long as I live, how working-class people could get together to oppose the evil of racism.’

As the Police attempted to clear the barricades they were resisted by thousands of ordinary people determined to keep the fascists out of their impoverished but proud streets. Children threw marbles under the police horses and some riders fell as their horses slipped and stumbled. Max and his brother Morri (Maurice) were involved for hours in the battles with the Police who were determined to clear the road and get Mosely and his Black-shirts through. Morri would later join the Connolly Column of the international brigades which went to Spain to fight Franco and his fascists.

As the battle of Cable Street was fought out, Mosely was giving fascist salutes from his Rolls Royce car to his followers who were positive that the Police would clear the road and let them march but the people of the east end were equally determined that it would not enter their streets. The barricades, flying bricks and bottles and above all the sheer determination of the people meant that Police officer in charge had to return to Mosely and tell him that there was no possibility of the march going down Cable Street; he would have to turn back. It was seen by the left in Britain as a great victory of ordinary working people over the powerful and insidious forces of fascism.

Bernard Kops was a ten year old Jewish boy in the east end of London then and he recalls that his parents had to review their opinions after the events at Cable Street. He said in a BBC documentary…

“My mother said there were only two types of people in the world. Jews and Jew-haters. Of course, when Cable Street came along, the Irish labourers and Dockers came out and it was them that really made sure Mosley didn’t get through. My mother and father really had to change their minds after that and accept that others did come to help us out.”

Mosely and his movement were far from finished and some UK newspapers supported him openly. He went to Berlin after the battle of Cable Street to marry society girl Dianna Mitford and his old friend Joseph Goebbels hosted the wedding. Guest of honour was a certain Adolf Hitler. The British Union of Fascists was closely allied to the Nazis and when the true nature of fascism became apparent it spelled the end of its seemingly inexorable rise. There was a time when it looked as if Fascism was the coming force in British politics but the horrors of the war demonstrated its true face.

Like many working class lads from Glasgow, my formative years introduced me to left wing politics in a way that seemed entirely natural. We didn’t have much and people with any intelligence would look at the conditions we lived in and asked why it was so. The only people living in the poorer parts of Glasgow who voted Conservative in those times were those of an Orange persuasion. I recall chatting to one such chap at a new year’s party and he told me it was all to do with the Tories being stronger on Northern Ireland than Labour which struck me as odd. To ignore the social issues he saw every day and view everything through the lens of his orangeism blinded him to the reality of the times.

Trips on the supporters’ bus to Celtic park and indeed all over Scotland and Europe also saw many interesting debates on politics. Of course the ongoing conflict in Ireland at the time was a regular topic of discussion and there was a surprisingly lively debate about the nature and place or armed struggle and whether it made reunification more likely or drove a wedge between the communities. There was and remains a smug assumption that football supporters lack the faculty for nuanced debate about complex political issues but trust me that wasn’t the case. I’ve heard men quote James Connolly or Jim Larkin to support their arguments and learned that the poison of sectarianism is not only divisive but detrimental to the progress of all working people.

The music scene then also saw bands with a distinct political message. In those days I saw The Tom Robinson Band, The Men They Couldn’t Hang and a variety of Irish and Scottish folk groups who often sang of working class life and the events which shaped it. Politics then was still largely influenced by social class and the political parties reflected this. Labour was still a party of the left then until the Blair years changed that irrevocably.

Life has changed hugely since those times but Brexit and populism has seen the rise of fascism and racism again across Europe and America. It may not have reached the levels Max Levitas saw in the 1930s but its face is just as ugly. It calls itself the ‘Alt-Right’ or other such pseudonyms but it remains the same in ideology. It is to be hoped that the ordinary people aren’t seduced by its message and resist it as Max did all those years ago.

Max died in 2018 at the age of 103 and never stopped working to improve the lot of ordinary people. To his dying day he warned working class people not to be divided by racism sectarianism or any form of intolerance. That message still resonates today.

We may not be called to the barricades as people were at the battle of Cable Street but we should still resist and challenge intolerance whenever we see it.