A grandfather’s story has inspired a film about the Battle of Cable Street

By Yoav Segal

Since I can remember, I have known my grandfather’s memories of his involvement in the Battle of Cable Street. As a child the story filled me with excitement and wonder. I never understood what fascism was or why it was so important to make a stand against it but this did not interfere with my instinctive understanding that my grandfather’s actions were justified.

At 16, Ubby Cowan was standing up for his right to be in a union. Ever since, he has remained very socially active. It seemed to me that the Battle of Cable Street, when Oswald Mosley’s fascist thugs were kept out of the East End, was the galvanising event that cemented his commitment to a shared community existence. It is this shared sense of mission and purpose that inspires me from his story.

Whether it was the working classes, Communists, Jews, Irish or other anti-Fascists who mobilised the counter demonstration, October 4 1936 was a defining moment in British and Anglo-Judaic history, not least for making the government bring in legislation that crippled right wing activity, including a ban on political uniforms, pre World War 2.

As a young adult I continued to tell the story of Cable Street to myself and to try to work out a way to retell it. I am not a historian, and after making a short documentary recording my grandfather’s story I still felt unsatisfied. The story had always aroused within me a latent feeling that everyone has the facility to make change. It was this idea that I wanted to express. Or possibly I wanted to highlight the event as a moment when the working classes stuck their fingers up to the aristocracy and the powers that be, having the wisdom to recognise the evil of fascism before others cottoned on. Maybe I wanted to look at the East End as a historical melting pot of immigration and use the Battle of Cable Street to examine Britishness and how a group’s actions can help define its own nationalism. The options seemed endless.

The opportunity arose to write a script for the UK Jewish Short Film Fund and I took the dialogue of my grandfather from the documentary and started to build a screenplay. I based it on my recollections of being a child hearing the story. After many months, and having won the award, I still had not quite found the heart of the story I wanted to tell. Luckily, by then I was working with a script developer, Kate Leys, who was putting me through my paces. She demanded that I sum up the whole film in one sentence. If I could not do this, how could I communicate my intentions to a crew, actors or anyone else involved? So I walked to Golders Hill Park, got a coffee and sat staring at the distant bandstand.

By this point in the script I had a child, engrossed in his sketchbook, who was taken to Cable Street by his grandfather. To get his grandson’s attention, he takes them inside the boy’s sketchbook. There he seizes control and takes the boy into the story of the Battle of Cable Street. This is told in animation; they return to the real world and we are standing in front of the mural on Cable Street. We realize we have been inside it through the vivid imagination of a young child.

This idea had come to me many years before when Ubby had taken me to the mural. I had the concept but had too many messages. Why make the film? I realized that I wanted to convey the story as I saw it – to define and express it in the way it had inspired me.

“Look up, see the world around you. Find a voice. Express yourself.”

My grandfather, like many others who were there, left school at 14. What always amazed me was that they looked up from the newspapers telling them to stay away from the fascist march, the Board of Deputies asking Jews to keep clear and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police agreeing to the march, and organised themselves in protest. Here this diverse group found a voice, and one that I believe is still needed as loud as ever.

In the film the boy is stuck in his sketchbook and learns from his grandfather’s story to look around him, find his own small voice and get involved – to be loud and interact with the world. This I realized is what I and my close family have learnt from my grandfather.


Yoav's short film, The Battle of Cable Street, will be screened at the 10th UK Jewish Film Festival, which runs from Saturday November 4 until Thursday November 9 at the Screen on the Hill, Belsize Park, London NW3, and then at selected London cinemas from Saturday November 11 until Wednesday November 16. It is to be taken on tour across the UK in 2007.

For a programme, e-mail info@ukjewishfilmfestival.org.uk, call 01273 735 522 or visit www.ukjewishfilmfestival.org.uk from September 25. Advance booking is recommended.

Cable Street memories from Hilda in the USA:

I lived at 221 Cable street and was standing at the window looking at the commotion (the Battle of Cable street) that was going on in the street when my mother took me by the hand and pulled me away from the window and closed the shutters.  Your website brought back many memories and I only came across it this year.  I live in the United States, each time I come back to London, Cable St changes, and so does Watney st.  The last time I was in London was 2000. I have an enlarged copy of the mural that was done on the side of the Town Hall. I used to watch at the bedroom window before the war  when the Lord Mayor would come in his coach dressed in his finery to officiate at some party that was going on in the Town Hall. and I could see all that what was going on, with couples dancing, that was a good time for me. I used to visit the Library, no more is it there.  I used to go through the park to get to my school St Georges in the East located at the Highway and Dellow street. The park is no more.

Thank you for giving me memories.
Hilda Baxter