Mick Hartley

The fight against Oswald Mosley's fascists has been crystallised in memory as the 1936 Battle of Cable Street in the East End. As Michael Crowley informs us, though, the struggle was playing out in the early and mid-1930s in Manchester, where the local Jews successfully organised and defeated Mosley on his home ground, in the the face of intimidation and violence – with little or no support from the left.

Worth a read for the historical background. Crowley's conclusion:

In the shape of the anti-Israel movement, Britain’s Jews today face a different threat. But it’s one that bears comparison with the Blackshirted menace that once stalked Britain’s streets. Once again, Jewish people find themselves confronted with a movement shot through with anti-Semitism. A movement that wants to drive Jewish people out of public spaces, just as it wants to drive Israel off the map. A movement that wants to efface all expressions of Jewishness.

In 1930s Manchester, Cheetham’s Jewish community, led by young Communist radicals, fought back. They did so courageously and determinedly. But they also did so alone, without the support of the mainstream left. There is a danger that Britain’s Jews now find themselves in a similar position, left alone to face the oldest hatred in its new Islamist and identitarian guise.

They need the solidarity of those outside the Jewish community more than ever. To defend synagogues, Jewish schools and businesses. To defend Jewish people from the Israelophobia that now seems to grip a significant minority of the population, much as fascism once did.

The legacy of Cheetham’s struggle against the Blackshirts is one of courage, conviction and resistance. Young radicals fought back against the most reactionary ideology of the era. It’s time we started doing the same.