Anti-fascist activity in the 1930s

The struggle against Oswald Mosley’s fascists in the 1930s still has important lessons for today. We reprint here edited extracts from a review by PETER TAAFFE of Out of the Ghetto, the autobiography of the East End Jewish militant Joe Jacobs, first carried in the spring 1992 edition of Militant International Review, No.47, our predecessor magazine. The complete version is available on the Socialism Today website.

Throughout Europe right-wing organisations seem to be on the march, in France, Belgium, Germany and even seemingly tranquil Austria. This recent sprouting of right-wing and neo-fascist organisations, however, can in no way be compared to their pre-war predecessors. Chastened by its experience at the hands of Hitler and Mussolini, let alone Franco, the capitalist class will never again entrust its fate to their would-be modern counterparts. Moreover, the mass basis of fascism, in the form of the rural petit-bourgeois in particular, has been significantly eroded by the post-war economic upswing and the rapid industrialisation which ensued.

This does not exclude that, faced with economic catastrophe and the consequent revolt of working people, that the ruling class will not once more resort to the most drastic measures to retain its rule. In fact, it is certain unless the labour movement shows a way out. But in the future it is more likely that the capitalists will resort to the method of military-police dictatorships – Bonapartism – using some of the methods of the fascist regimes.

Fascist and neo-fascist organisations will be allotted an important role, but as auxiliaries to such a military dictatorship. This does not mean, however, that they should not be combated by the labour movement as energetically as in the past. Indeed, it is necessary to combat them even in their incipient stage. This is the historical lesson, written in the blood of the German, Spanish and Italian workers, that must be absorbed by the new generation. And there is no better way of politically preparing such a campaign than in studying the excellent Out of the Ghetto by Joe Jacobs.

This autobiography pulsates with the life of the Jewish workers in east London in the inter-war period. The deep affection of Jacobs for the area and its people, which infects the reader, in no way leads him to dress up the grim reality of their everyday existence: the clothes factory "sweatshops were atrocious. Dirt and dust everywhere. The TB rate for our industry was very high". These conditions, together with the general political ferment, led Jacobs, with many of the Jewish workers of the area, to socialism and eventually to ‘communism’.

Like many before him he soaked up the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, through almost everything written by Upton Sinclair, Jack London, John Dos Pasos, Zola, Romain Holland, Mann, Tolstoy, Gorky and so on. Despite the backbreaking nature of his work and long hours, sometimes only getting four hours sleep a night, together with the best of his generation he greedily "devoured Wages, Price and Profit, Wage Labour and Capital… The Communist Manifesto, great works I thought".

Not satisfied just with the basic ideas of Marxism, however, this generation sought to absorb the theoretical treasures of Marxism, as indispensable weapons for combating the evils of capitalism which surrounded them: "Eventually, we went on to tackle Capital in full. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and always there were classes where we could discuss all these". However, given the poisonous campaign against Trotsky undertaken by the Stalinised ‘Communist’ Parties, Jacobs was inevitably prejudiced against Trotsky: "Certainly I would not read anything written by Trotsky. You might as well ask a Catholic to read Marie Stopes, when the church had said he must not".

He clearly underwent a re-evaluation of Trotsky on the basis of the shameful treatment meted out to himself by the leaders of the Communist Party (CP) later on. Before then, however, he was to go through the full gamut, of the ultra-leftism followed by opportunism, of the CP leaders. For example, he reports about when leading CPer "JT Murphy had been expelled from the CP. This came like a bolt from the blue. The article [in the Daily Worker] was a blistering attack for so-called anti-party activity. According to the Daily Worker, Murphy had been advocating the extension of trade between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world. He also thought that we should support the idea of extending credit to the Soviet Union. This apparently was anti-party. I didn’t know enough about these matters and I am afraid that I only heard the official party line. When JT Murphy was invited to speak at the Circle House in Aldgate, I helped to break up his meeting so that no one could hear what this ‘traitor’ had to say. That’s how things were. I feel ashamed of this action now".

This was the wildly ultra-left ‘third period’ of Stalinism, when the social democrats were condemned as ‘social fascists’. But no lies, no amount of bureaucratic hounding of opponents, can ever drown out historical truth, no matter how powerful ‘the machine’ used to temporarily enforce them. Thus "as time went on, his (Murphy’s) views were adopted, but I can’t remember a single attempt to withdraw any of the awful things said about him and his ideas. This practise was commonplace without my being aware of it at this time. I had not read Trotsky or any other person who had been cast out. We learnt to accept all of this as the years passed, only to find that the accusers were guilty parties in respect of the charges they made".

The book’s main theme, however, is the rise of fascism, in the form of Mosley’s Blackshirt movement, and the role of CP militants such as Jacobs in combating this. There are undoubtedly certain tinges of ultra-leftism in his approach, the elevation of ‘direct actionism’ and the false counter-posing of this to broader political objectives and perspectives. Nevertheless, what shines through is the basically correct instinct of the best workers, like Jacobs, in how to combat the mortal threat they perceived to them, their class and their organisations from fascism. This is particularly so when compared not only to the passivity of the official leaders of the labour and trade union movement but to the dilatory approach adopted by the very leaders of Jacobs’ own party, the Communist Party.

It was the world slump of 1929-33 that saw the emergence of Mosley’s fascist movement. The relatively favourable position of British capitalism in comparison to its Italian and German counterparts in particular, had meant that the British ruling class had up to then no need to deploy murderous fascist bands against the working class and its organisations. Fascist organisations were merely kept in reserve for use at a later stage.

This began to change, however, with the slump and the inevitable resistance of the working class. As is well known, Mosley himself left the Labour Party in March 1931 to form the ‘New Party’. Mosley in turn ‘evolved’ towards fascism and in the process shed some of those lefts who had mistakenly followed him into this party. By 1934 significant sections of big business were backing Mosley, including Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, who called on people to join the Blackshirts.

Mosley and his fascist forces made serious attempts to break into working-class districts, such as Deptford, but were resisted and had to beat a hasty retreat. But at the big ‘mass demonstration’ organised by Mosley in June 1934, the British working class were given a little taste of what to expect if Mosley was to follow Hitler and Mussolini in taking power. Fascist thugs organised in specially trained bands, mercilessly beat hecklers while the police stood by. Mosley followed this by attempts to penetrate working-class areas including the East End.

But they were incapable of holding meetings in many parts of London. The CP and the Young Communist League (YCL) "were emerging more than ever as the ‘leaders’ of the fight against fascism". This demanded a new approach by the Communist Party. This in turn brought to a head a simmering conflict which had been brewing in the east London CP. Those youth like Jacobs had come into conflict with the older layer more rooted in the trade unions and with a longer term perspective.

Jacobs comments: "The real basis for this division is to be seen in the fact that the trade union people saw the organised labour movement as the most likely place from which to develop the Communist Party and so hasten the revolution. Whereas it was alleged that those who favoured ‘street work’ saw the future in terms of the organisation of the unorganised, who were the overwhelming majority of the working class". He then goes on to make the relevant comment: "You may well wonder why a combination of both should not have been agreed upon. In theory, it was".

The poll tax struggle and the role of the Militant in this have shown that it is utterly false to counterpose work amongst the ‘organised layers’ of the working class to the so-called ‘unorganised’. The organised working class within the unions and the labour movement are decisive. It is ABC for Marxists, a generally accepted historical proposition, that only the organised working class in the long run is capable of mobilising behind it the unorganised and downtrodden layers.

Yet there are periods when the labour movement is empty, virtually paralysed, due to the bureaucratic dead hand of right-wing leaders. In this situation, as the poll tax struggle demonstrates, work amongst the so-called ‘unorganised’ exercises a powerful effect on the organised working class. Militant gained from the poll tax struggle not just amongst the most impoverished sections of the working-class but reached trade unionists, shop stewards – future workers’ leaders in the factories – in the course of this movement.

Therefore, it is absolutely false to counterpose work in the ‘official’ labour movement to work allegedly ‘outside’. The correct policy is to seek to organise those who are prepared to struggle now, but at all stages linking this to the need to win over the shop stewards organisations and the official organisations of the working class. The echoes of the debate which took place in Jacobs’ day in the CP are reflected within the labour movement today.

Nine-tenths of the right in the approach towards combating fascism lay on the side of Jacobs and his comrades. Mosley had held an inaugural meeting in east London in 1934 but had to be rescued by the police. Nevertheless, he announced a rally in Hyde Park for September of that year. Predictably, the "official Labour Party, trade union and co-ops, the National Council of Labour, signed by Walter Citrine and Arthur Henderson, called on the workers to have nothing to do with the Mosley rally in Hyde Park". Shades of opposition to the anti-poll tax non-payment campaign! One million leaflets were distributed during the campaign to oppose Mosley and 150,000 mobilised in Hyde Park. The rally was a fiasco. The fascists were hurriedly marched in at 6pm and out again at 7pm under the protection of a massive display of police.

Jacobs’ increasingly militant stance brought him into conflict not just with the local but with the national leaders of the CP. In the lead up to the famous battle of Cable Street the simmering conflict came to the boil. Mosley announced that the British Union of Fascists (BUF) was to march through the East End on 4 October 1936. The YCL had organised a rally in Trafalgar Square on the same day in support of the Spanish workers, who had risen up against Franco. The London YCL secretary confirmed to Jacobs that the London district committee of the party were going ahead with the plan for the Trafalgar Square demonstration. "He said Spain was more important than Mosley. I was horrified!"

Rubbing salt in the wound, the east London organiser left a note for Jacobs, on 28 September, in which he stated: "Keep order: no excuse for government to say we, like BUF, are hooligans. If Mosley decides to march let him. Don’t attempt disorder (time too short to get a ‘They Shall Not Pass’ policy across. It would only be a harmful stunt). Best see there is a good, strong meeting at each end of march. Our biggest trouble tonight will be to keep order and discipline".

Jacobs, expressing the fury felt at the time by himself and others like him, states: "I could hardly believe my eyes. How could they be so blind as to what was happening in Stepney". He phoned the London CP headquarters and reported that the CP ranks in the East End would defy the London leaders if they persisted with their false policy of mobilising in Trafalgar Square while Mosley was marching through the East End.

A delegation was sent to the East End by the London leadership to impose the line. Jacobs and his friends argued that "the people of east London had their own ideas about all this and would oppose Mosley with their bodies, no matter what the CP said. We argued long and hard". However, during this meeting an emissary from the national leaders of the CP arrived and "announced that the centre had decided to change the line. The call would go out to all branches to rally to Aldgate instead of Trafalgar Square on 4 October. The slogan would be ‘They Shall Not Pass’, which was already being repeated all over Stepney and could not be ignored, in this case, by the CP or anyone else".

What followed in the battle of Cable Street is history. It was a decisive turning point in the battle against the fascists in Britain. Estimates of 500,000 – Jacobs puts it at 250,000 – mobilised to confront Mosley’s pathetic 2,500 fascists protected by 10,000 police, including mounted police. Despite repeated baton charges, the police and the fascists were repulsed by the workers who threw up fresh barricades when other barricades were demolished. The defeat in Cable Street in 1936 was a big blow to Mosley. Fascist activity in the East End receded, with demoralisation in the fascists’ ranks, while the working class were given a big boost to their confidence.

However, after 1936 the policy of the CP and the YCL changed. In line with Stalin’s attempts to forge agreements with ‘democratic’ capitalist countries, the CP proposed a policy of class collaboration between workers and ‘good’ capitalists. The British CP, attempting to placate Tories and Liberals, distanced itself from any militant opposition to fascism. Jacobs, with others, resisted this position. Inevitably, his conflict with the local and national leadership of the CP led to his expulsion. He nevertheless continued with his heroic work in the labour movement and was eventually readmitted into the CP, only to be expelled once more in 1952.