I’m bit late in mentioning it, but October 4th was the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street. This may not ring any bells for you, but it was a now almost mythical event in the history on British Anti-Fascism and in the role of Anglo-Jewish History. Faced with a proposed march through the East End by Oswald Mosley and his black-shirted British Union of Fascists an opposing force made up of East End Jews, Irish, communists and other right thinking workers fought the London police to a stand-still until they relented and told Mosley to call it a day.
The 80th anniversary brought comment from such diverse sources as Time Magazine, The Guardian, The Irish Times and Al-Jazeera. The East End is now largely Muslim rather than Jewish. Sadly Britain is now infested by Fascists of the left and right and the population then as now is anxious and doubtful of the likelihood that police presence will be for their protection. For a Jewish journalistic take see: http://forward.com/culture/350764/80-years-ago-jewish-london-fought-off-the-fascists. There are a couple of websites specifically devoted to the Battle of Cable Street. The better of the two is http://www.cablestreet.uk/, but another, specifically devoted to the 80th anniversary, http://cablestreet80.org.uk/ is also pretty good. In our stock we have one title that discusses the Battle of Cable Street and the East End Jewish environment in the interwar years. It is: Sheridan, Yoel. “From Here to Obscurity: A Novel.” London, Tenterbooks, 2001. ISBN: 0-9540811-0-2. Octavo, paper covers, viii, 215 pp. Softbound. Fine. “From Here to Obscurity,” tells the story of the now lost Jewish East End of London through the eyes of Shulem, an immigrant from Poland, his wife Rivka, and Yulus, their English born youngest son. It takes us through the turbulent years in London from 1933 to 1945, through poverty, fascist incursions, evacuation and targeted war-time bombings by Hitler's Luftwaffe that destroyed the infrastructure of this one time thriving East London Yiddish-speaking community, forcing its ultimate dispersion. Shulem's relatives are lost in the Holocaust and many of Yulus's friends are killed by the last German V-2 rocket to fall on London. Despite all this trauma, 'From Here to Obscurity' is an uplifting tale of human warmth, humour and solidarity in the midst of overwhelming global forces. (26005) $14.00 postpaid within the US. Call 415-831-3228 or email to reserve a copy. My choice of subject matter should not be considered a reference veiled or otherwise to recent events here in the US. At Cable Street and today the UK faced and faces a Fascist threat, but as of yet it has not yielded to it.
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