4th October 1936: The Battle of Cable Street скачать в хорошем качестве

4th October 1936: The Battle of Cable Street

Oswald Mosley had formed the British Union of Fascists, known as the BUF, in 1932. In the 1920s he had served as a Conservative Member of Parliament before crossing the floor to the Labour Party. By the start of the 1930s, however, he had formed his own party that was strongly influenced by the ideas of Fascism. The presence of Nazi sympathisers within the party meant that the BUF became increasingly anti-Semitic, while anti-fascist opposition began to mount. When Mosley proposed that his uniformed Blackshirts march through the East End of London, anti-fascists quickly petitioned the Home Secretary to ban the march. Cable Street is situated in the Whitechapel area of East London, and had a large Jewish population at the time. Unwilling to ban the march, the government instead provided 7,000 police officers to clear the route for the BUF. Yet when the march began on 4 October, the 3,000 Blackshirts and their police escort were massively outnumbered by anti-fascist protesters drawn from a variety of political and religious groups. As the police attempted to clear a route through the improvised barricades, violence erupted. The worst fighting took place on Cable Street where protesters attacked the heavy-handed police with improvised weapons. Unable to clear the route, Mosley and the BUF were eventually persuaded by Sir Philip Game, the Commissioner of Police, to abandon the march and leave the area. Although the Battle of Cable Street was a success for the anti-fascists in the short-term, membership of the BUF grew and the violent ‘Mile End Pogrom’ took place a week later.