When Howard Jacobson’s father punched Mosley’s horse

There could hardly have been a more fitting place to end a week devoted to Cable Street than the magnificent Hawksmoor church just yards from where, 90 years ago, thousands gathered to stop Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts marching through London’s Jewish East End. And there could hardly have been a better trio than actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, novelist Howard Jacobson and theatre director Brigid Larmour brought together by broadcaster Trevor Phillips to to close the Board of Deputies’ ambitious programme of cultural events.

The final event was a discussion about Oberman’s play The Merchant of Venice 1936  – but this was never going to simply be a conversation about Shakespeare. Not when the parallels between 1936 and 2026 are so unsettling, or when, as Tracy-Ann observed, Jewish creatives increasingly find themselves expected to pass a political purity test. “Our writers are being silenced,” she said, describing a climate in which Jews are divided into “good Jews versus bad Jews”, depending on whether they are prepared to chant the approved slogans or embrace the fashionable political position.

Oberman, whose reimagining of Shylock as an East End Jewish widow and moneylender living on Cable Street toured Britain to considerable acclaim, spoke passionately about the similarities between the antisemitic propaganda of the 1930s and the language heard today. “Antisemitism existed like this long before the state of Israel existed,” she said, explaining how the production had used original fascist headlines, slogans and imagery to expose prejudices that have proved resistant to time.

Having faced death threats and required round-the-clock security during the production’s run, Oberman argued that “supporting Jewish artists” has become an important way of resisting cultural boycotts and the erasure of Jewish stories.”We have to support our own, and that will keep our stories alive,” she declared. “We buy our books. We see our films. We support our comedy. We support our writers. We go to our theatre.”

Jacobson admitted he had initially been sceptical of Oberman’s inventive approach to Shakespeare. “I didn’t like the idea that she was making Shylock a woman,” he confessed, recalling how he had even refused to stand when the audience was invited to join the production’s recreation of Cable Street. “I want you to know that one person did not stand up in that audience. Me.” But what he had initially regarded as political polemic, he came to recognise as “art as powerful theatre” – and admitting that Oberman had given Shylock a future that Shakespeare had denied him.

Over two hours of  passionate conversation there was also laughter,  notably when Jacobson recalled his own father’s battles against Mosley’s supporters in Manchester, including an extraordinary encounter in which he got close enough to the fascist leader to throw a punch. Unfortunately, Mosley’s horse reared up and received the blow instead. His father was subsequently charged with cruelty to animals. It was a typically Jacobson moment, finding comedy in a moment in history that was anything but funny.

But it was the larger question of Jewish cultural survival that stayed with the audience. Director Larmour spoke about the painstaking research and authenticity behind the production, and how theatre could force audiences to confront prejudice in characters they had already grown to admire. Introduced by Phil Rosenberg President of the Board, the evening was a reminder that history is not just something we commemorate, but what we must own.

Earlier on Sunday, another formidable figure of British theatre had been making the same point in a different way. At 89, Steven Berkoff remains one of Britain’s most distinctive theatrical voices, whose work has challenged audiences for more than six decades and he was at the Karma Sanctum hotel in Soho for a screening of They Shall Not Pass, his film about Cable Street. Hosted by Jewish News Life magazine editor Brigit Grant, a conversation after the screening revealed how deeply the Jewish East End had shaped the playwright’s life and imagination.

Speaking movingly about his gradual discovery of  Jewish history through relatives, it was  his uncle, Sam Berkowitz, a participant in the Battle of Cable Street who got the biggest mention and whose likeness appears in the famous mural commemorating the protest. Berkowitz spent his working life as a trouser cutter, but Steven remembered him as an extraordinarily cultured man who could recite Shakespeare and encouraged young Steven to read. “He was an absolute library of information and stories and all sorts of wonderful political and social and mystical tales,” Berkoff recalled.

“The more stories I heard,” he continued, “the more events that were shaped by these stories, the more I felt that it gave me a goal, that I had something to write about, to think about, to create from these stories.”

Both conversations provided a powerful conclusion to Cable Street 90, a remarkable week organised by the Board of Deputies with Jewish News as media partner. Hundreds attended the events, some travelling from Liverpool and Birmingham to be part of a celebration of  the East End streets that resonate beyond London. The programme was led by Liat Rosenthal, the Board’s Director of Culture, Education and Communities with Campaigns officer Ariella Knoble–Gershon, ​​​​following an idea initiated by Debby Lee, who was “determined  the anniversary should not pass without a substantial cultural commemoration.”

What emerged was an imaginative programme that opened with  Oi Va Voi live in concert at EartH Theatre, followed by the unveiling followed by the unveiling of artist Inam Zimbalista’s striking installation at Toynbee Hall, which transformed archival footage of Cable Street into swirling formations of birds in a powerful image of collective resistance.

Elsewhere, the history was explored at street level behind the heritage plaque. Rachel Kolsky led a walk through the Jewish East End and Black Cab Tours took passengers through Whitechapel, Spitalfields and Brick Lane, tracing the neighbourhoods where Jews lived, worked and built their communities. Historian Martin Sugarman explored Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War, placing Cable Street within the wider international struggle against fascism during the 1930s. Reminding us that many who opposed Mosley also recognised the threat posed by fascism rising in Europe.

Film offered another perspective, with a screening followed by a discussion about David Herman’s Jews Defending Jews, drawing on archive footage and first-hand testimony to examine the history of Jewish resistance to antisemitism in Britain. And because the purpose of Cable Street 90 was remembrance and passing on the history there was even a children’s event at JW3 where artwork was produced.

Among the week’s central discussions was Cable Street Matters, held at the historic Wilton’s Music Hall. Chaired by Board of Deputies vice-president Karen Newman, the panel brought together president Phil Rosenberg, Jewish News Life magazine editor Brigit Grant and Marc Goldberg, Head of Investigations at the CST.

The discussion challenged the notion that fascism had been defeated at Cable Street as just a week later, Jewish shops and homes were attacked in the Mile End Pogrom, while Mosley’s movement continued to attract support. Searching questions from the audience brought the debate firmly into the present, underlining the need to confront an antisemitism that has once again become a daily concern for British Jews.

Across the programme, the recurring message was that Cable Street belongs to British history, but its Jewish origins must never be forgotten or reshaped by others. The Blackshirts did not pass on 4 October 1936. But as the week’s speakers repeatedly reminded  audiences – winning a battle is not the same as winning the war against antisemitism.