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Ninety years after the Battle of Cable Street, a major London-wide festival of art, music and performance will commemorate one of Britain’s defining moments of collective resistance.
Cable Street 90, running from 1–11 October, will bring together artists, musicians, writers and historians for events across the capital, with participants including Tracy-Ann Oberman, Howard Jacobson and acclaimed band Oi Va Voi.
Organised by the Board of Deputies, the programme spans venues including Toynbee Hall, Wilton’s Music Hall, JW3and Sandys Row Synagogue, exploring the Battle’s legacy through exhibitions, performances, films, talks and heritage events.
Among the highlights is Murmur Mural, a new large-scale moving-image installation by artist Inam Zimbalista, projected onto the exterior of Toynbee Hall. The work transforms archive footage of the Battle into a striking meditation on community and resistance using vast bird murmurations.
Tracy-Ann Oberman joins novelist Howard Jacobson for The Merchant of Cable Street, a discussion inspired by her acclaimed East End reimagining of The Merchant of Venice. Other events include walking tours, Jewish heritage taxi tours, family workshops, documentary screenings and an open day at Sandys Row Synagogue.
The festival marks the anniversary of 4 October 1936, when tens of thousands of Jewish, Irish and local East End residents prevented Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists from marching through the area.
Liat Rosenthal, the Board of Deputies’ Director of Culture, Education and Communities, said the festival would invite audiences to experience the history “through new commissions, performance, music and conversation”.
Full programme details are available at bod.org.uk/cable-street-90
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