I grew up or at least grew up politically with fellow denizens of London’s East End who spoke in awe about the 1936 Battle of Cable Street when a motley collection of Jews, Irish, working class Britons and some on the Left, fought Oswald Mosley’s fascist Blackshirts. Even if you was not a dyed in the wool communist or were just someone who understood the area’s history and its peoples, you could not help but be impressed with how normal locals in Cable Street in what is now Tower Hamlets fought an enemy that wanted the same for Britain as what Hitler and Mussolini had brought to Germany and Italy respectively. Those who fought for the people in the locality of the East End fought not only the Blackshirts but also the Metropolitan Police who had assisted the Blackshirts and enabled them to walk through what was an area with a vast number of Jews and others who were not flavour of the month for the Blackshirts. It appears that the Met were a bit ‘two tier’ when it came to Jews even back then.

Since then the Battle of Cable Street has taken on an almost mythic and totemic place in the British Left. I can completely understand why. It was the point when it became clear that the sort of fascism that had engulfed Germany and Italy was less likely to gain support in Britain. It was an exemplary example of Jews, Irish, dockworkers and indigenous working class Britons working together to defeat a potentially dangerous enemy of freedom.

But today’s Left with their exclusion of Jews, their hatred of the Jewish state, their pandering and cleaving to some quite nasty currents within Islam and their support for murderous terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, are not fit custodians of the heritage of the Battle of Cable Street. In fact I’d go so far as to say that the modern Left makes a mockery of that Battle and wears it like a skin-suit and a shield to divert the public’s attention to what the Left are really about.

Brendan O’Neill of Spiked Magazine has written a long form piece on the left and the legacy of the Battle of Cable Street. It’s a stunningly good read. I’d recommend that you go and read all of it but for the present here’s a few excerpts.

“There’s chutzpah, and then there’s the left celebrating the Battle of Cable Street despite having spent the past three years knifing Britain’s Jews in the back. There’s gall, and then there’s liberals and leftists taking a break from marching shoulder to shoulder with Islamofascists to go all dewy-eyed over a Jewish uprising against Blackshirt fascists. There’s hubris, and then there’s the sickening sight of the same people who’ve been praying for the violent destruction of the Jewish nation now posing as champions of the Jewish bravery we saw on the streets of London 90 years ago this weekend.”

And

“It is nothing less than an act of moral theft for the contemporary left to claim Cable Street as theirs. They are plundering the glorious history of British anti-fascism in search of a disguise they might wear to hide their own Jewphobia. They are demanding their moral pound of flesh from Cable Street in order that we might finally believe their great lie – that their myopic hatred for the world’s only Jewish state is anti-fascism, not fascism”

Mr O’Neill then went onto describe how the great and good the members of ‘polite society’ and the Communist Party along with the Establishment Jews of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper begged East Londoners not to countermarch against Mosley’s mob. I can see why the Establishment said this as any counter protest was bound to end up in conflict as feelings were running extremely high. Politics reared its ugly head in Jewish families as it became clear that there was a need to defend themselves against the same type of fascist that had targeted Jewish communities in Continental Europe. Politics sometimes split non-Jewish families with some members of these families supporting Mosley whilst other family members were supporting those who opposed Mosley.

Mr O’Neil added:

“The working class ignored the pleas of polite society and readied itself for a showdown with Hitler’s pal, Mosley. When it came, it was intense. Five thousand fascists vs thousands of anti-fascists. The people erected barricades on Cable Street. They used an upturned bus, tables, chairs and paving stones to block the fascist trudge. There was ferocious hand-to-hand combat. The rebels wielded stones, chair legs, rotten veg and even the contents of their chamber pots against both the Mosley militia and the Metropolitan Police who had been deployed to ferry the fascists through East London. Children were sent to roll marbles under the hooves of police horses. A whole community, armed with little more than fury and broken furniture, stood firm against fascism. Hundreds were injured, many arrested.

And they won.”

They did indeed. Mosley’s fascist movement was never the same after the Battle of Cable Street. Many more people who might not have understood what Mosley was all about took a peek behind the British Union of Fascist’s curtain and walked away in disgust. Mosley’s attempt to rebuild his movement after World War II also failed dismally due to a combination of public resistance to them, groups like the 43 Group physically countering them and internal problem within those inclined to Mosleyism not willing to share power or responsibilities with others. There were dozens of little Mosleyite groups post WWII but the leader of every one of them believed that only they could be the UK’s ‘Fuhrer’.

The modern Left have soiled and sullied the story of Cable Street. The Left is using the legacy of Cable Street to put themselves in the centre whilst at the same time trying, with their Islamic extremist pals, to erase the Jewish aspect of Cable Street, erase the Jewish national home of Israel and ultimate erase Jewish people itself.

The Left has failed to live up to the ideals that were fought for at Cable Street. Instead of being the anti-fascists they once were, they’ve morphed into something that on the subject of Jews, hold views that might be difficult to distinguish from the views held by Mosley and his lot. The Left don’t own Cable Street and I’m glad to see Mr O’Neill telling the Left that.

Here’s the link to the entire piece by Mr O’Neill.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/04/how-the-left-betrayed-the-spirit-of-cable-street/