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Cable Street’s Jews should not be written out of history
From Brighton to the East End, this weekend showed why British Jews are once again refusing to keep their heads down
This weekend I witnessed British Jews and their allies gathering to proudly defend their identity in landmark events both on the south coast and in London. In Brighton, as the Green Party conference debated that Zionism is racist, a 100 or so Zionists protested outside the conference hall to make clear to the Greens that not only were their members supporting the terrorism of Hamas, but that they should return to their environmental and ecological credo – the simple slogan being “More Trees, Less Hamas!” While a small number of delegates paused to debate with the protestors, the vast majority expressed contempt, proudly waving their own maps of Israel that showed the entire nation, literally “From The River To The Sea”, filled in with the black, white, green and red of the Palestinian cause. Their interpretation of a one-state solution could not have been clearer.
Heading north to the capital, Sunday, 4 October marked the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, when London’s East End Jewish community, flanked by other brave minorities that stood alongside them, thwarted a march planned by Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Sadly, in 2026 there are shameful and deafening echoes of that 1930s antisemitic drumbeat.
Leading trade unions sought to mark the 90th anniversary with a march through the East End. And while various local authorities and other communal agencies joined in the planning of the march, Jewish bodies were categorically excluded. Hiding behind an anti-Zionist pretext, no members of the Jewish community’s mainstream organisations were invited to participate in the event. Incredibly, London’s Jewish community has been here before. In 1936, as Mosley prepared his march, the official message from the Labour Party of the time was that Jews should effectively lock their doors and “keep their heads down”, effectively seeking to allow Mosley a safe passage down Cable Street. Thankfully, back then, that message was ignored.
But in 2026 it was only through Jewish campaigners making clear to the police and others that an event to honour the memory of the Jewish veterans of the Cable Street conflict should be allowed that the tribute took place. The memory of the veterans was celebrated in a march carefully planned to avoid the toxicity of the nearby trade unions’ event.
Of course, as this article is being penned some 24 hours after the Brighton protest, the Green Party conference motion has passed with a clear majority. The Greens are now equating Zionism – the movement for a Jewish state – with racism, with Zionist Greens at risk of being disciplined for racism. The Greens’ long-recognised anti-Zionist, and let’s be clear, antisemitic stance, is now formally enshrined in their governance and is in plain sight.
Jewish defiance was strong this weekend, but the tide of antisemitism in Britain rises by the day. Thursday sees a by-election in London’s Holborn & St Pancras constituency, where events of recent weeks suggest that Labour and the Greens appear locked in a race to the bottom, as to which party can hate Israel (and ergo, the Jews) the most.
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