After Cable Street

After Cable Street is a powerful one-hour show, reflecting on the recent rise in hate crime, xenophobia and racial and religious intolerance in the UK. The show features musicians from across the whole spectrum of today’s cultural communities in East London.

On 4 October 1936, Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists, known as the Blackshirts, attempted to march through the streets of East London. Although the march had permission from the Home Secretary and massive support from the police, the local people, at that time predominantly Jewish, succeeded in turning the provocative march back. This event has gone down in history as the Battle of Cable Street.

The events of Cable Street alerted British people to what was unfolding in Europe at the time – fascist dictatorships in Italy and Portugal, the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the rise of Hitler – and the dangers and consequences of nationalism and racial or religious intolerance.

Now, after two generations in Europe of largely successful post-war reconstruction, reconciliation, coexistence and social harmony, we seem to be heading that way again. After Cable Street is therefore more than a nostalgic exercise or routine historical commemoration: it is a wake-up call.