EAST END OF LONDON PRIDE

Began during the Cable Street riots of 1936 and was never beaten into submission

I watched this film today and it triggered my childhood memories. I was born in 1952 and we lived in a tiny flat on the first floor of an old house in Islington. We had three rooms; a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. On the same floor was a single toilet which was shared with other families living in the house. We had a tin bath on a hook on the kitchen wall and this would be placed in front of the living room fire every Sunday evening. My father and mother would bathe and then me, followed by my younger brother. The memories I have of living in London are very like the hues of the black and white film above. I don’t remember much colour either in our homes or out on the streets. I clearly remember the choking peasouper fogs which were thick and yellowy, almost green.

Playing in bomb craters or around the heaps of building debris was my normal then. We also played on the streets because there were so few cars. The common vehicles we saw were horses and carts for the coalmen, the rag and bone men and the milkmen. My father had a motorbike and that was something very special to us.

All my extended family lived within walking distance or, at most, a bus ride away. I remember being dragged around Petticoat Lane, while my grandmother negotiated for her weekly shopping. If I was lucky, she would leave me at the pet stall, so that I could poke my little fingers through the cages full of bunnies, puppies and kittens. I was not allowed to have a pet because both my parents worked full time and our flat was too small.

My grandfather, a long distance lorry driver, living in Hackney on the edge of Victoria Park, was frequently away. He was a big strong man with a great sense of humour and a bad habit of swearing. My mum was always scolding him for it. “Kinell!” he would grumble and wink at me. He liked to teach me Cockney rhyming slang which had been useful during the war years when everyone was warned that ‘loose lips sink ships’.

Knowing as much as I do now, about the geo-politics of European aristocracy and their penchant for war, I am bitterly resentful of the way my people were treated in the past. The video above reminded me that it was our part of London which took the heaviest bombing during WW2 and it occurs to me that there was a very good reason why the fascist German military were ordered to do that.

A generation before, my grandparents were proud of an event which happened in their youth. It was 1936 and Oswald Mosely was trying to march through the East End of London.

Here are two videos explaining some opinions of the way that this event was arranged and eventually opposed:

The films above emphasise the Jewish population of Stepney and the Irish population of Wapping, who worked on the docks, but the truth is that the whole indigenous East End rose up to defend them and that seems to have been sadly overlooked, even played down by the narrators of these films.

The British aristocracy supported the fascists via their media.
The fascist Black Shirts led by Oswald Mosely, were similar to those of Italy, Spain and, of course, Germany.

As can be seen in this 2 minute news reel, the people of the East End fought off the police who were defending fascism and I think that, when the predator class conspired to foment World War Two, breaking the cohesion of our working class community was important to them. The extreme bombing of the East End of London from 1940 until 1945 was conducted in retaliation for the action of the population who defied fascism in 1936.

The rebellion was successful and my grandfather’s tale of his personal part in the battles was riveting. Even my tiny grandmother was out on the street with her cast-iron frying pan at the ready!

It should be noted that back then, as now, the Police supported the fascists.
Nothing has changed has it?

ONWARDS!
xx