The Battle of Cable Street Read online

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  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER 1

  Stepney, London, 2020

  There’s a lot of talk these days about the Second World War and how plucky little Britain stood up to Hitler all alone. People rave about the Blitz Spirit when bombs were being dropped on us night after night and we all just kept calm and carried on. They say that Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s was Germany’s problem, and that nothing like that could ever possibly happen over here.

  They’re talking nonsense.

  But most people just want an easy life, and facts are itchy, awkward things that can make you feel sweaty and uncomfortable. If I’ve learned one thing in my long, long life it’s that most people prefer pretty lies to ugly truths.

  But maybe you’re not like most people.

  Maybe you’re one of the brave ones?

  If you are, then read on.

  CHAPTER 2

  Stepney, London, 1920s

  My mother was a French dancer, according to Nathan Cohen. Nathan lived next door to us and he said Mother was as dainty and delicate as a bird. Me and my brother Mikey had to take his word for it. We didn’t remember her.

  Mother died a few months after I was born, leaving Father with two small children to feed and clothe. Grandma moved in to take care of me and Mikey while Father was out looking for work.

  We lived in a flat with just two rooms on the third floor of a tenement block. The block was at the bottom of a dead-end road just off Cable Street in the heart of Stepney. It was a slum – the grottiest, nastiest place you could hope to imagine, crawling with rats and fleas and the like. Paragon Buildings was its official name, but the people who lived there called it the Paradise. We had one hell of a sense of humour.

  The East End of London was a right old mix of people in those days. Stepney was mostly Jewish, with a big dollop of Irish thrown in for extra flavour. My family was both. Or neither, depending on how you look at it.

  Grandma came from a family of Irish immigrants. Her grandparents had come to London to escape the famine in Ireland. Her parents were strict Roman Catholics, and they didn’t approve of Grandma falling in love with a young Jewish man called Max. But Grandma didn’t care what they thought. She married Max anyway, and after that her parents never spoke to her again.

  Grandma and Max raised six sons. They were very happy together until Max dropped dead of a heart attack one morning. It seemed like a terrible tragedy at the time, Father said. But then the Great War started, and Max’s death got swallowed up in a huge tidal wave of horror.

  In 1914, Father and his five brothers all went marching off to fight in France. Father was the only one of Grandma’s sons who came home. And if you’re thinking that maybe our family was just really unlucky, you’d be wrong. Everyone in the Paradise could have told you a similar story. Me and Mikey grew up surrounded by adults who were damaged in mind or body by that bloody war. They were all haunted by the ghosts of the dead.

  The Paradise was never, ever quiet. It’s not surprising for tempers to flare when you pile damaged, haunted people on top of each other, pack them into a building so tight you can’t stir them with a stick and keep them poor and desperate.

  Morning, noon and night people shouted at each other in Irish and English and Yiddish and Russian and who knows what else. There was constant noise, and a lot of it came from the third floor where we lived. We had the Rosenbergs to the left and the Cohens to the right. Either side of them were the Smiths and the Murphys.

  Mrs Smith hated Mrs Rosenberg. Their sons, Harry and Leo, had once come to blows. I can’t for the life of me recall what started the fight. Who knows? Who cares? Harry Smith and Leo Rosenberg were always scrapping.

  The boys made up two minutes later. But by then their mothers had got involved, taking their sons’ sides and screaming at each other for hours. Mrs Smith and Mrs Rosenberg carried on arguing over the smallest things for days, weeks, years after that first falling-out. Sometimes those two women would be shouting insults all day long. They’d call each other nasty names until their throats were sore.

  Every day, Grandma turfed me and Mikey out into the street to play. There was a whole gang of other kids out there, all boys apart from me. Girls living in the Paradise were Mother’s Little Helpers, doing the chores, minding their younger siblings. On the rare occasions girls were allowed out, they played skipping games and the like.

  But Grandma had raised six sons and no daughters. She didn’t know what to do with me, so she dressed me in Mikey’s old clothes. Grandma cut his hair with the kitchen scissors – short back and sides – then she did the same to me. Right up until I started school, I looked like a boy, I acted like a boy, I got treated like a boy, and that suited me fine.

  Whatever game we played, our next-door neighbour Nathan Cohen was always the leader. He was three years older than me and as tall and handsome as a film star. Nathan had dark curly hair and beautiful brown eyes. He was my hero. I was half in love with him before I could even walk. And I wasn’t the only one. In our own different ways, all the gang were desperate to please Nathan.

  Mikey did it by making Nathan laugh. My brother had wonky legs that curved like a wishbone from hip to ankle. Mikey rolled from side to side when he walked, as if he was a sailor who wasn’t used to dry land. Mikey made fun of himself to stop people making fun of him. He was always playing the fool.

  Harry Smith, on the other hand, took everything deadly serious. He was a few months younger than Nathan and did everything Nathan told him to without hesitation. If Nathan said jump, Harry would only stop to ask, “How high?”

  Harry was Nathan’s second-in-command. When Nathan was the pirate king plundering ships for treasure, Harry was his first mate. If Nathan was a captain leading a cavalry charge, Harry was by his side yelling, “Death or Glory!” Leo Rosenberg was devoted to Nathan and would have loved to have been in Harry’s shoes. Maybe that was why they fell out so often. But the rest of us never argued; we just accepted whatever roles we were handed without question.

  Nathan would make up all kinds of games. Sometimes he got the ideas from films he’d seen in the cinema. But mostly Nathan pulled stories out of his head. He wrapped us up in a make-believe world that was so much more real than the dull, drab one the grown-ups lived in.

  Sometimes the kids from the next street got drawn in to our games. It didn’t matter what we played – we were always the goodies, and they were always the baddies. We’d fight them all day. And I mean really fight, with sticks as swords. We’d use stones as cannonballs, and anything else we could get our hands on. Nathan always seemed to walk away unscathed, but me and Mikey went home from those battles covered in cuts and bruises. I didn’t know what my legs looked like without a peppering of scabs across my knees.

  But our days weren’t always spent yelling and running about the place. Sometimes Nathan would lead us all the way from Stepney to Bethnal Green, and on to the park. We’d lie there on the grass under the trees. Or we’d go down to the river and watch the tide coming in, filling the Thames with
water. And in those quiet times my mind overflowed with tricky questions.

  Why do the trees lose their leaves in winter?

  Where does the water go when the tide is out?

  Nathan said I asked all the right questions, but none of the answers were easy. He’d give me these long, complicated explanations. Nathan convinced me that there were fairies living in the park. The fairies made the trees lose their leaves so they could use them as blankets in winter. Nathan said there was a huge monster fast asleep and buried deep in the mud somewhere east of Tilbury. This monster breathed water instead of air and sucked the whole Thames in and out of its lungs twice a day.

  The answers Nathan came up with were so good I pestered him with more and more questions. But the one thing I never, ever asked was, “Why are we poor?”

  It was just the way things were. The way they always had been; the way they’d always stay. Everyone was struggling, but we were all in the same boat. The boat had so many holes in it that it was steadily sinking no matter how hard we bailed. But I never, ever wondered why.

  Not until Oswald Mosley came marching into our lives, with easy answers to all the wrong questions.

  It was Oswald Mosley who turned the whole bloody boat upside down.

  CHAPTER 3

  Stepney, London, 1930s

  Oswald Mosley. Sir Oswald Mosley. He was the Sixth Baronet – whatever the hell that meant. He was an aristocrat. A toff. One of the ruling class. Later on, Oswald Mosley became the founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists and a close personal friend of Hitler.

  But all that hadn’t happened the first time I heard Oswald Mosley’s name. That was in early 1931, when I was eight and Oswald Mosley was just an ordinary Member of Parliament.

  I’d been kept home from school because I had a fever and a bad chest. Grandma was in a temper, so all day I was on eggshells. I was scared to move, trying not to let my coughing annoy her. When Mikey came back from school, I was desperate to get out and play, but Grandma wouldn’t let me.

  Time ticked by. At long last Father came through the door, and it was such a relief. Grandma made him a cup of tea, and as he sipped it down he read his newspaper, the Daily Worker. Suddenly Father said to Grandma, “Oswald Mosley’s starting a new party.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  “He’s calling it the New Party,” Father went on. “There’s imagination for you.”

  I knew nothing about politics. And I suppose my head was all muddled with the fever. Images flashed into my mind of the kind of party that Nathan said posh children in books got invited to. There’d be food. Presents wrapped up in paper and string. A birthday cake with candles. Lemonade and ginger beer and the like. Jelly. Sausage rolls. Cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I’d never eaten any of those things, but it would be lovely to try.

  There’d be fun and games too. Pass the parcel and musical statues, pin the tail on the donkey and blind man’s buff. I’d never played any of those games, but I was looking forward to having a go. Maybe there would even be a Punch and Judy show. Oswald Mosley – the man who was starting this party – sounded wonderful.

  So why did Father look so furious? Why did Grandma pinch her lips as if she’d been sucking on a lemon? I was confused.

  “Mosley will be coming down here,” Father said grimly. “Wanting people to join him.”

  “Can we?” I said.

  Father turned to look at me. He was frowning as if he was struggling to understand what I’d just said.

  “Will there be cake?” I asked. “And jelly?”

  Suddenly Father burst out laughing.

  “God bless you, Elsie!” he spluttered. Father was laughing so hard his eyes were watering. Grandma joined in. And it should have been nice to see the pair of them looking happy for once. But being laughed at like that made me want to cry. I sweated hot and cold all over, not understanding why what I’d said was so funny. I had no idea who Oswald Mosley was, but I truly hated him for making me feel so stupid.

  It took a few minutes for Father to steady himself. But when he did, he explained that Oswald Mosley wasn’t having that kind of party. He was a politician. A Member of Parliament.

  Oh, I thought. One of them. They came from a whole different world to us. I’d seen Members of Parliament on the rare occasions we could afford to go to the cinema. There had been newsreels of posh old men in top hats and black suits. Their shirts had collars starched so tight they looked like they could choke a man.

  “Members of Parliament?” Father used to say. “What do they know? What do they care?”

  Suddenly I felt deflated.

  Grandma called Mosley a few nasty names, so I realised he wasn’t the kind of politician she’d want to vote for.

  “The man can’t decide which side he’s on,” Father said. “Tory one minute, Labour the next. And now a party all of his own.”

  “It won’t last,” Grandma said. “Oswald Mosley will see which way the crowd is heading, then walk out in front claiming he’s their leader. He’ll promise everything and deliver nothing but hot air.”

  They carried on talking, Grandma and Father. I didn’t listen. It was grown-ups’ stuff – nothing to do with me.

  That was the first time I heard Oswald Mosley’s name. But it wasn’t the last. And every time someone mentioned him, I felt that same hot flush of embarrassment I’d had when Father and Grandma almost wet themselves laughing at me.

  You know how sometimes you notice something for the first time? Maybe a lamp post or a drinking fountain or a statue. It’s always been right there in plain view, but somehow you’ve missed it before. But then you do suddenly see it. And after that it smacks you right between the eyes every time you go past it. You can’t stop seeing the thing.

  It was like that with Oswald Mosley. One day I’d never heard of him. The next his name seemed to be on everyone’s lips.

  CHAPTER 4

  I might not have heard of Oswald Mosley before that day, but I most certainly knew who Ted Lewis was. There wasn’t a soul in the East End of London who hadn’t heard of him.

  His real name was Gershon Mendeloff, but everyone called him The Kid, or Kid Lewis. He had been a world champion boxer back in his day. The Kid was Father’s age or thereabouts. But while Father and his brothers had every kind of bad luck thrown at them, Fortune had smiled on Kid Lewis. He had toured the world as a young man, winning fights, mixing with film stars and the like. He’d lived the kind of life I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  The Kid had made himself a fortune, and then he’d spent it all, bit by bit. His fame had sent him up like a shooting star, and then he’d fallen back down to earth again. The Kid had come home to London a while back and was now broke and looking for work.

  You’d see The Kid sometimes in the street, and there would always be a crowd gathered around him. Men laughing and joking and clapping him on the back. Women smiling and flirting. Children trying to get close in the hope that some of The Kid’s star quality would rub off on them.

  One morning, Nathan managed to get The Kid’s autograph. I remember Nathan coming back to the Paradise that afternoon, his face all flushed like he had a fever. He gathered the gang around him, saying he had something to show us.

  I thought maybe Nathan had caught one of those fairies who made the leaves fall off the trees in the park. I was expecting something amazing and held my breath so long I almost fainted. And then all Nathan pulled from his pocket was a torn scrap of paper with a scribbled signature across the middle. Mikey reached out to take it, but Nathan slapped his hand away.

  “No touching,” Nathan said, like the paper was made of stardust. “This is The Kid’s autograph.”

  There was this long silence while Nathan stared at the piece of paper. The rest of us just stood there confused, not really getting it. I had no idea what an autograph was, but I was thinking if it was The Kid’s, then maybe Nathan should give it back?

  “What is it?” said Davey, the youngest of the Ros
enberg lads.

  Nathan gave us all a disgusted look. Then he folded the piece of paper very neatly and tucked it back inside his pocket.

  *

  Ted “Kid” Lewis was a nice man. Everybody loved him. Right up until the day he got a job as Oswald Mosley’s bodyguard.

  The first I heard about it was when me and Mikey came back from school. We always went to the flat for a slice of bread and margarine before heading out to play. If there was no bread at home, we’d try the Jacobsons’ bakery in Cable Street. It was a place of magical wonders. The smells that wafted out of the door made me and Mikey drool like dogs every time we walked past.

  The bread and cakes marked the passing of time better than any calendar. Challah was a sweet plaited bread that appeared every Friday morning for Shabbat. Honey cake was made for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Triangles of hamantaschen, filled with poppy seeds, were for the festival of Purim in the spring. Me and Mikey could never afford to buy nothing, but Mrs Jacobson had a soft spot for my brother. She’d sometimes slip him a little something if she had anything to spare.

  We were coming up the stairs to the third floor of the Paradise that day when we heard Mrs Smith and Mrs Rosenberg on the landing yelling at each other. There was nothing strange about that, but then we heard Mrs Cohen joining in. And there was that name again. Oswald Mosley.

  Mosley this and Mosley that. The three of them were kicking the name back and forth at each other like a football.

  “Gershon Mendeloff’s his bodyguard, ain’t he?” said Mrs Smith. She spat The Kid’s proper name out like it was a filthy swear word. “And he’s as Jewish as you are. I’m telling you, Mosley ain’t no antisemite.”

  Mikey and I stopped dead. Our mouths dropped open. Antisemite? I felt a cold prickle of horror. It didn’t matter if you were Jewish or not. If you grew up in Stepney, you’d heard of antisemitism. You knew it meant hate and fear and every kind of bad thing you could possibly imagine. Most of the people in the Paradise were first-, second-, third-generation Jewish migrants who’d been driven out of their homes by antisemitism.