On a Sunday afternoon in October 1936, Ubby Cowan, a 19-year-old Jewish tailor, put on his prized new Max Baer-style jacket that he had saved hard for and went to fight Oswald Mosley’s fascist forces in London’s East End.
The battle of Cable Street ended in victory for the coalition of Jews, Irish dockers, trade unions, communists and other anti-racists who insisted that the British Union of Fascists, protected by thousands of police, “shall not pass”. Cowan ended the day covered in blood, with his precious jacket in shreds after he was kicked through a shop window by a police horse.
Now, almost nine decades on, and eight years after Cowan’s death at the age of 99, his grandson Yoav Segal is designing sets for Cable Street, a musical opening in London next month.
It is one of two productions featuring the historic event on London stages this spring. The Merchant of Venice 1936, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play starring Tracy-Ann Oberman, in which Shylock is transported to 1930s east London amid the rise of the Blackshirts, transfers to the West End next month after a regional tour.
Oberman’s Shylock is “a strong, tough matriarch” drawn from her own great-grandmother, who escaped the pogroms of Belarus for the slums of east London, and who fought at Cable Street.
“Mosley fully expected all the working-class communities to join him in the march against the Jews. But in fact Irish workers, dockers, trade unionists, the small Afro-Caribbean community and a small group of Somali sailors all came and linked hands in an incredible moment of solidarity,” Oberman told the Observer. “My Merchant of Venice honours that story. Its message is that, in the face of great evil, you have to stand together.”
In 1936, as Hitler’s Nazis were gathering strength across Europe, Mosley was seeking to stir up anti-Jewish hatred among working-class Londoners. He announced a march through the East End which the government refused to ban.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Labour Party were against confrontation. “Jews who, however innocently, become involved in any possible disorders will be actively helping antisemitism and Jew-baiting,” said the Jewish Chronicle.
The advice was widely rejected. About 300,000 people turned out to block the fascists and the police who were protecting their march. Barricades were built from paving stones, tables and chairs, mattresses; women emptied dustbins and chamber pots from windows on to the heads of policemen; children threw marbles under police horses’ hooves.
The crowds shouted the Spanish civil war slogan “No pasarán!” – they shall not pass. Bill Fishman, a social historian who died in 2014 aged 93, recalled the scene: “We blocked the road – Hasidic Jews with little beards and great strapping Irish dockers all standing together … A mass onslaught on the police ensued, with two officers even being taken hostage.”
After hours of running battles, including about 80 arrests and scores of people treated at ad hoc first-aid stations, word came that the fascists had turned back. The crowd was triumphant.
The Merchant of Venice 1936 has been a sellout on tour. “We’re living in times that are incredibly divisive, with global players that want us to be against each other rather than standing together,” said Oberman. “Clearly the play’s message has touched a nerve. The feedback has been unbelievable and very moving.”
Dylan Schlosberg, the producer of Cable Street, the musical, also believes the story has resonance today. “When the English Defence League marched in London a few months ago, it was almost a replica scenario,” he said.
“Our audiences will be aware that antisemitism is rife today. What’s fascinating is that the East End has obviously a totally different makeup than it did in 1936. But there are the same tensions, the same fears, whether it be against Jews or immigrants and refugees.”
The show focuses on three young people and their families: a young British man who comes to London looking for work and gets embroiled with Mosley’s fascists, a Jew and an Irishman. The music, which includes rap and contemporary pop, provides additional emotion to the drama, said Schlosberg.
For Segal, the “rousing retelling” of the Cable Street story in the form of musical drama echoes the tales his grandfather told him about the battle and the need to “find your voice and stand up and do something when it matters”.
In a short film Segal made before his grandfather’s death, Cowan described the drama, noise and determination of the battle of Cable Street.
“We knew we’d be breaking the law, but we had no option. Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to get the right thing done,” he said.
“If you stand up for what you believe in, you can make history.”
The Merchant of Venice 1936 opens at the Criterion, London, on 15 February. Cable St, the musical, opens at the Southwark Playhouse on 16 February.
