Identify a Key Political or Social Movement in Modern History and Assess its Impact.
Despite its brief period of existence, the far-right British Union of Fascists (BUF)—which operated from 1932 to 1940 under the leadership of the aristocrat Oswald Mosley—has had a long lasting political and cultural legacy in Britain. It also caused anxiety during its operations that democracy was under threat, and serving as a key model for far-right parties in Britain through to the modern day.[1] The heartland of BUF support was in the East End, where they competed for votes and attention with a number of left-wing parties including the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), leading to several high-profile violent clashes.[2] This essay aims to closely examine how the BUF's presence in East London in the mid-1930s impacted local views of left-wing political groups through a combination of primary sources, including oral histories collected from former members of the BUF, voting results from local London elections, and political pamphlets from left-wing and Jewish groups. This evidence largely suggests that, while some individuals found themselves repulsed by left-wing violence against the BUF, their activities pushed more people into active support for a variety of left-wing parties from the Labour Party to the CPGB.
While reasons for joining the BUF were often built on a complex system of interrelated anxieties, including anti-immigrant and anti-semitic sentiments, frustrations surrounding unemployment in many traditional local industries, and distrust of mainstream politics. Suspicion of the CPGB's methods and international ties proved to be one of the most significant reasons behind many individuals joining up.[3] This can be seen in the words of many ex-BUF members themselves, whose anonymous testimony was collected by Thomas Linehan in the 1990s for his book on BUF support in the East End. The anonymisation of Linehan’s sources reflects the ongoing need for ex-fascists to protect themselves and their families from the legacy of the BUF and its opponents in East London, while also allowing the individuals to be as honest as they were willing to be about the often prejudicial reasons for their allegiance to the BUF. Many individuals interviewed by Linehan originated from backgrounds in left-wing groups such as trade unions or the local Labour Party, and found themselves driven towards the BUF due to the perceived failures of these groups to enact change or act against the Communist threat. These include L.W., who followed his father into the BUF after becoming disillusioned with both the Labour Party and the Communists, and G.D., who became a member at nineteen years old, having been raised by his trade unionist father to be staunchly oppositional to the CPGB, after seeing the ability of the BUF to confront the Communists head-on.[4] One of the female BUF members, H.M., who rose up the internal ranks to be head of the women’s section in Limehouse, explicitly listed the violence at Cable Street as a reason for becoming an active member. For other members, Cable Street served as moment which demonstrated the unique depravity and violence of the “scum” they found themselves in conflict with.[5] One leader of the BUF in the fascist stronghold of Bethnal Green describes these new members as joining for “protest more than anything else” and various organisers recall membership soaring into the thousands in the aftermath of Cable Street in several local areas in the East End, though these numbers ultimately did not last.[6] Linehan's oral histories suggest that the BUF had a significant role in turning some people in the East End against left-wing politics, especially that of the CPGB, who repulsed certain individuals with their violent tactics of opposition.
However, other sources reveal that this distrust of leftist politics was vastly outnumbered by the support which the CPGB and the ILP were able to muster against the BUF, including many thousands of protesters at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. The ILP themselves published a pamphlet claiming that 300,000 members of “East London Working Class” ensured that the fascists “did not pass” and the East End was not “terrorised into submission”.[7] The ILP presents themselves as representing the voice of the people in the East End, claiming that their disseminated leaflets and other announcements appealing for mass mobilisation against Mosley’s fascists were, in fact, the key call to arms for protesters at Cable Street. Even as the Labour Party tried to urge their members and supporters to stay away from open clashes with the BUF, Herbert Morrison admitted that “he was very doubtful if it would be useful unless the Communists agreed also”, which also indicates the significant popular influence of more radical left-wing groups on responses to the BUF.[8] While the ILP’s claimed turnout is more than likely inflated, more neutral newspaper reporting from newspapers such as The Times and Daily Telegraph describe a crowd of “over 100,000” following the banners of the CPGB and the ILP.[9] These varied news sources suggest that, despite the repulsion of some individuals from left-wing politics in the East End due to their violence against the BUF (as seen in Linehan’s work), a significantly larger proportion of East Londoners were willing to respond to the call of left-wing groups in opposition to fascism than vice versa.
The performance of the BUF in the 1937 local elections in comparison with previous years also reveals important information about the extent of popular support for fascism in East London. In the 1928 County Council elections, the CPGB were able to win around 20% of the vote in the BUF heartland of Bethnal Green, and 18% in the 1934 Borough Council elections in Whitmore, Shoreditch. By 1937 much of this had been replaced by the BUF, who won 23% of the vote in Bethnal Green North East and 10-15% in multiple areas of Shoreditch, competing for votes with the anti-socialist alliance People’s Party.[10] While this increase in support for the BUF might suggest evidence for reduced support for left-wing parties, in the same areas support for the mainstream Labour Party also increased, in some places by a significant margin. In Shoreditch, Labour’s vote share in the Borough Council elections jumped from 44% in Church, 69% in Hoxton and 72% in Wenlock, to 61%, 73%, and 80% in those areas respectively.[11] While the motivations of individual voters are impossible to know for certain, these electoral results suggest that the BUF’s activities contributed to a burst in support for the left-wing party with the widest base, perhaps out of a particular desire to counteract fascism, and that support for the BUF was comparatively marginal.
The actions and rhetoric of the BUF also had a significant impact on the Jewish community in the East End, who often found themselves at the direct receiving end of fascist ire. National Jewish organisations such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews were the subject of significant frustration in areas where fascists were more active, as their policy of relative neutrality and non-engagement failed to match the realities of constant threats and violence.[12] As a result, many East End Jews turned towards left-wing groups, including the Jewish Labour Council (JLC) and the CPGB, who were willing to take direct action.[13] The JLC drew a direct link between protecting the Jewish community, fighting fascism and working alongside left-wing groups in the work they distributed, such as in a 1935 pamphlet entitled “Sir Oswald Mosley and the Jews: anti-semitism in England”.[14] In the final line of the pamphlet, the writer proclaims that in the fight against fascism, “the workers of the world stand together, Jews and non-Jews alike”.[15] The pamphlet aimed to present protection of the Jewish community as a vital part of the class struggle, and anti-semitism as a desperate attempt to redirect the frustration of the working class as a whole. The writer encouraged unity from both directions, for Jewish people to understand the importance of left-wing political groups in protecting themselves from fascism (not hesitating to mention Germany and Hitler on multiple occasions), and for anti-fascist activists to realise the vital role that anti-semitism played in the ideology of Mosley and the BUF. This source suggests that the BUF’s increasing aggression, and the “venomous” language of Mosley, pushed many in the Jewish community towards the CPGB as a result in the years before the Battle of Cable Street. The publication of this document by the JLC, a left-wing organisation, might suggest that this was not necessarily reflective of the wider views of the East London Jewish community. However, evidence indicates that a significant proportion of Jews in the East End, especially younger people, were vehemently in support of the CPGB, mainly as a result of their determination to fight fascism at a time when neither mainstream political parties nor larger Jewish organisations were willing to engage with the dangers posed by the BUF and their supporters.[16] This again shows how the BUF had a relatively positive impact on the outlook of people in the East End on left-wing political groups, influencing large parts of the Jewish community to create their own leftist organisations and work with the CPGB as a method of self-defence.
The political climate of London’s East End in the 1930s was heavily impacted by the British Union of Fascists, whose rhetoric and actions drove appreciation in some groups, and significant fear and anger in many others. The BUF’s flashy, propagandistic events, such as the Olympia Rally and the Battle of Cable Street, often provoked violent confrontations with local communists and other left-wing groups. These confrontations influenced some into greater support for the BUF, as seen in Linehan’s oral histories, while many others chose instead to respond to the calls of the CPGB and the ILP by turning out in great numbers to show their opposition to the BUF. Newspaper reports and election results from the mid-1930s reveal that the broad extent of support which left-wing parties from Labour to the CPGB prior to the emergence of the BUF was in many places maintained and in some even increased. Alongside this, documents from Jewish organisations show that many in the community found themselves working more closely with or even joining radical groups primarily because of their opposition to fascism. Ultimately, primary evidence shows that popular opinion towards left-wing politics in the East End was in fact positively impacted by the BUF to a large extent, as their actions and rhetoric pushed many to publicly demonstrate their support for groups such as the Labour Party and the CPGB.
For more sources related to those discussed in this essay, please see our collection, The British Union of Fascists: 1933–1953.
[1] Nigel Copsey and Andrzej Olechnowicz, eds., Varieties of Anti-Fascism: Britain in the Inter-War Period (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 13–15; Matthew J Goodwin, New British Fascism: Rise of the British National Party (Routledge, 2011), 24–25.
[2] Stephen M. Cullen, “Political Violence: The Case of the British Union of Fascists,” Journal of Contemporary History 28, no. 2 (1993): 245–67.
[3] Thomas P. Linehan, “Memories of Fascism: Some Motivational and Ideological Characteristics of Local Joiners,” chap. 8 in Thomas P. Linehan, East London for Mosley: The British Union of Fascists in East London and South-West Essex, 1933–1940 (Frank Cass, 1996).
[4] Linehan, East London for Mosley, 254–57.
[5] Ibid., 256 and 280.
[6] Ibid., 203.
[7] “THEY DID NOT PASS. 300,000 WORKERS SAY NO to MOSLEY”, Independent Labour Party (1936), 3.
[8] Colin Holmes, “East End Anti-Semitism, 1936,” Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History 32 (Spring 1976): 26–33.
[9] “Fascist March Prohibited,” The Times, October 5, 1936; “Fascist March Banned in East End,” Daily Telegraph, October 5, 1936.
[10] Alan Willis and John Woollard, Twentieth Century Local Election Results, vol. 1 (Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre, 2000), 88, 2:230, 1:158, 2:260.
[11] Ibid., 2:230, 260.
[12] David Rosenberg, Battle for the East End: Jewish Responses to Fascism in the 1930s (Five Leaves, 2011), 175–79.
[13] Ibid., 180–83.
[14] Sir Oswald Mosley and the Jews: Anti-Semitism in England (Jewish Labour Council, 1935).
[15] Ibid., 4.
[16] Varieties of Anti-Fascism, 49–50; Rosenberg, Battle for the East End, 173–74.