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| Italian comrades opening the ceremony |
By New Worker
correspondent
Comrades
from Britain, Greece, Italy and Israel gathered at the Cable Street memorial in
Shadwell on Saturday to remember that epic day in 1936 when Sir Oswald Mosley’s
Blackshirts were stopped in their tracks on 4th October 1936.
Communists played a major part in the mobilisation along with members of the
Independent Labour Party and the Jewish Ex-Servicemen’s Association, and their
efforts were recalled by British, Italian and Greek communists at a ceremony in
London’s historic East End last weekend.
NCP leader Andy Brooks and comrades from
the Communist Party of Italy’s Pietro Secchia (UK) branch, along with members
of the Greek communist party (KKE) and the Communist Party of Israel, paid
tribute to the East Enders’ heroic stand against fascism.
On that day some 3,000 Blackshirts and
thousands of police were met by a hostile crowd who had erected barricades to
stop the fascists marching. After hours of clashes with the police and many
arrests, the police told Mosley that the march would have to be abandoned.
The massive mural, painted by a number of
local artists, was started in 1979 and finally completed in 1983. The work has
been vandalised by fascists several times but it was substantially restored in
2011.
The design was based on original
photographs of the battle and the buildings of the day. Some of the people who
took part in the battle are depicted in the mural, along with others who
symbolise the people of the East End today.
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