by Ken Follett
Then had come this chance to fight Fascism at home.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ Bernie had said a week ago, when the march had been announced. ‘The Metropolitan Police must force them to change the route. They have the right to march, of course; but not in Stepney.’ However, the police said they did not have the power to interfere with a perfectly legal demonstration.
Bernie and Ethel and the mayors of eight London boroughs had been in a delegation that begged the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, to ban the march or at least divert it; but he, too, claimed he had no power to act.
The question of what to do next had split the Labour Party, the Jewish community, and the Williams family.
The Jewish People’s Council against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, founded by Bernie and others three months ago, had called for a massive counter-demonstration that would keep the Fascists out of Jewish streets. Their slogan was the Spanish phrase No pasaran, meaning ‘They shall not pass’, the cry of the anti-Fascist defenders of Madrid. The Council was a small organization with a grand name. It occupied two upstairs rooms in a building on Commercial Road, and it owned a Gestetner duplicating machine and a couple of old typewriters. But it commanded huge support in the East End. In forty-eight hours it had collected an incredible hundred thousand signatures on a petition calling for the march to be banned. Still the government did nothing.
Only one major political party supported the counter-demonstration, and that was the Communists. The protest was also backed by the fringe Independent Labour Party, to which Lenny belonged. The other parties were against.
Ethel said: ‘I see the Jewish Chronicle has advised its readers to stay off the streets today.’
This was the problem, in Lloyd’s opinion. A lot of people were taking the view that it was best to keep out of trouble. But that would give the Fascists a free hand.
Bernie, who was Jewish though not religious, said to Ethel: ‘How can you quote the Jewish Chronicle at me? It believes Jews should not be against Fascism, just anti-Semitism. What kind of political sense does that make?’
‘I hear that the Board of Deputies of British Jews says the same as the Chronicle,’ Ethel persisted. ‘Apparently there was an announcement yesterday in all the synagogues.’
‘Those so-called deputies are alrightniks from Golders Green,’ Bernie said with contempt. ‘They’ve never been insulted on the streets by Fascist hooligans.’
‘You’re in the Labour Party,’ Ethel said accusingly. ‘Our policy is not to confront the Fascists on the streets. Where’s your solidarity?’
Bernie said: ‘What about solidarity with my fellow Jews?’
‘You’re only Jewish when it suits you. And you’ve never been abused on the street.’
‘All the same, the Labour Party has made a political mistake.’
‘Just remember, if you allow the Fascists to provoke violence, the press will blame the Left for it, regardless of who really started it.’
Lenny said rashly: ‘If Mosley’s boys start a fight, they’ll get what’s coming to them.’
Ethel sighed. ‘Think about it, Lenny: in this country, who’s got the most guns – you and Lloyd and the Labour Party, or the Conservatives with the army and the police on their side?’
‘Oh,’ said Lenny. Clearly he had not considered that.
Lloyd said angrily to his mother: ‘How can you talk like that? You were in Berlin three years ago – you saw how it was. The German Left tried to oppose Fascism peacefully, and look what happened to them.’
Bernie put in: ‘The German Social Democrats failed to form a popular front with the Communists. That allowed them to be picked off separately. Together they might have won.’ Bernie had been angry when the local Labour Party branch had refused an offer from the Communists to form a coalition against the march.
Ethel said: ‘An alliance with Communists is a dangerous thing.’
She and Bernie disagreed on this. In fact, it was an issue that split the Labour Party. Lloyd thought that Bernie was right and Ethel wrong. ‘We have to use every resource we’ve got to defeat Fascism,’ he said; then he added diplomatically: ‘But Mam’s right, it will be best for us if today goes off without violence.’
‘It will be best if you all stay home, and oppose the Fascists through the normal channels of democratic politics,’ Ethel said.
‘You tried to get equal pay for women through the normal channels of democratic politics,’ Lloyd said. ‘You failed.’ Only last April, women Labour MPs had promoted a parliamentary bill to guarantee female government employees equal pay for equal work. It had been voted down by the male-dominated House of Commons.
‘You don’t give up on democracy every time you lose a vote,’ Ethel said crisply.
The trouble was, Lloyd knew, that these divisions could fatally weaken the anti-Fascist forces, as had happened in Germany. Today would be a harsh test. Political parties could try to lead, but the people would choose whom to follow. Would they stay at home, as urged by the timid Labour Party and the Jewish Chronicle? Or would they come out on to the streets in their thousands and say No to Fascism? By the end of the day he would know the answer.
There was a knock at the back door and their neighbour, Sean Dolan, came in dressed in his churchgoing suit. ‘I’ll be joining you after Mass,’ he said to Bernie. ‘Where should we meet up?’
‘Gardiner’s Corner, not later than two o’clock,’ said Bernie. ‘We’re hoping to have enough people to stop the Fascists there.’
‘You’ll have every dock worker in the East End with you,’ said Sean enthusiastically.
Millie asked: ‘Why is that? The Fascists don’t hate you, do they?’
‘You’re too young to remember, you darlin’ girl, but the Jews have always supported us,’ Sean explained. ‘In the dock strike of 1912, when I was only nine years old, my father couldn’t feed us, and me and my brother were taken in by Mrs Isaacs the baker’s wife in New Road, may God bless her great big heart. Hundreds of dockers’ children were looked after by Jewish families then. It was the same in 1926. We’re not going to let the bloody Fascists come down our streets – excuse my language, Mrs Leckwith.’
Lloyd was heartened. There were thousands of dockers in the East End: if they showed up en masse it would hugely swell the ranks.
From outside the house came the sound of a loudspeaker. ‘Keep Mosley out of Stepney,’ said a man’s voice. ‘Assemble at Gardiner’s Corner at two o’clock.’
Lloyd drank his tea and stood up. His role today was to be a spy, checking the position of the Fascists and calling in updates to Bernie’s Jewish People’s Council. His pockets were heavy with big brown pennies for public phones. ‘I’d better get started,’ he said. ‘The Fascists are probably assembling already.’
His mother got up and followed him to the door. ‘Don’t get into a fight,’ she said. ‘Remember what happened in Berlin.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ Lloyd said.
She tried a light tone. ‘Your rich American girl won’t like you with no teeth.’
‘She doesn’t like me anyway.’
‘I don’t believe it. What girl could resist you?’
‘I’ll be all right, Mam,’ Lloyd said. ‘Really I will.’
‘I suppose I should be glad you’re not going to bloody Spain.’
‘Not today, anyway.’ Lloyd kissed his mother and went out.
It was a bright autumn morning, the sun unseasonably warm. In the middle of Nutley Street a temporary platform had been set up by a group of men, one of whom was speaking through a megaphone. ‘People of the East End, we do not have to stand quiet while a crowd of strutting anti-Semites insults us!’ Lloyd recognized the speaker as a local official of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. Because of the Depression there were thousands of unemployed Jewish tailors. They signed on every day at the Settle Street Labour Exchange.
Before Lloyd had gone ten yards, Bernie came after him and handed him a paper bag of the little glass balls tha
t children called marbles. ‘I’ve been in a lot of demonstrations,’ he said. ‘If the mounted police charge the crowd, throw these under the horses’ hooves.’
Lloyd smiled. His stepfather was a peacemaker, almost all the time, but he was no softie.
All the same, Lloyd was dubious about the marbles. He had never had much to do with horses, but they seemed to him to be patient, harmless beasts, and he did not like the idea of causing them to crash to the ground.
Bernie read the look on his face and said: ‘Better a horse should fall than my boy should be trampled.’
Lloyd put the marbles in his pocket, thinking that it did not commit him to using them.
He was pleased to see many people already on the streets. He noted other encouraging signs. The slogan ‘They shall not pass’ in English and Spanish had been chalked on walls everywhere he looked. The Communists were out in force, handing out leaflets. Red flags draped many windowsills. A group of men wearing medals from the Great War carried a banner that read: ‘Jewish Ex-Servicemen’s Association.’ Fascists hated to be reminded how many Jews had fought for Britain. Five Jewish soldiers had won the country’s highest medal for bravery, the Victoria Cross.
Lloyd began to think that perhaps there would be enough people to stop the march after all.
Gardiner’s Corner was a broad five-way junction, named for the Scottish clothing store, Gardiner and Company, which occupied a corner building with a distinctive clock tower. When he got there, Lloyd saw that trouble was expected. There were several first aid stations and hundreds of St John Ambulance volunteers in their uniforms. Ambulances were parked in every side street. Lloyd hoped there would be no fighting; but better to risk violence, he thought, than to let the Fascists march unhindered.
He took a roundabout route and came towards the Tower of London from the north-west, in order not to be identified as an East Ender. Some minutes before he got there he could hear the brass bands.
The Tower was a riverside palace that had symbolized authority and repression for eight hundred years. It was surrounded by a long wall of pale old stone that looked as if the colour had been washed out of it by centuries of London rain. Outside the walls, on the landward side, was a park called Tower Gardens, and here the Fascists were assembling. He estimated that there were already a couple of thousand of them, in a line that stretched back westward into the financial district. Every now and again they broke into a rhythmic chant:
One, two, three, four,
We’re gonna get rid of the Yids!
The Yids! The Yids!
We’re gonna get rid of the Yids!
They carried Union Jack flags. Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?
They looked impressively military, in their wide black leather belts and black shirts, as they formed neat columns across the grass. Their officers wore a smart uniform: a black military-cut jacket, grey riding breeches, jackboots, a black cap with a shiny peak, and a red-and-white armband. Several motorcyclists in uniform roared around ostentatiously, delivering messages with Fascist salutes. More marchers were arriving, some of them in armoured vans with wire mesh at the windows.
This was not a political party. It was an army.
The purpose of the display, Lloyd figured, was to give them false authority. They wanted to look as if they had the right to close meetings and empty buildings, to burst into homes and offices and arrest people, to drag them to jails and camps and beat them up, interrogate and torture them, as the Brownshirts did in Germany under the Nazi regime so admired by Mosley and the Daily Mail’s proprietor, Lord Rothermere.
They would terrify the people of the East End, people whose parents and grandparents had fled from repression and pogroms in Ireland and Poland and Russia.
Would East Enders come out on the streets and fight them? If not – if today’s march went ahead as planned – what might the Fascists dare tomorrow?
He walked around the edge of the park, pretending to be one of the hundred or so casual onlookers. Side streets radiated from the hub-like spokes. In one of them he noticed a familiar-looking black-and-cream Rolls-Royce drawing up. The chauffeur opened the rear door and, to Lloyd’s shock and dismay, Daisy Peshkov got out.
There was no doubt why she was here. She was wearing a beautifully tailored female version of the uniform, with a long grey skirt instead of the breeches, her fair curls escaping from under the black cap. Much as he hated the outfit, Lloyd could not help finding her irresistibly alluring.
He stopped and stared. He should not have been surprised: Daisy had told him she liked Boy Fitzherbert, and Boy’s politics clearly made no difference to that. But to see her obviously supporting the Fascists in their attack on Jewish Londoners rammed home to him how utterly alien she was from everything that mattered in his life.
He should simply have turned away, but he could not. As she hurried along the pavement, he blocked her way. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ he said brusquely.
She was cool. ‘I might ask you the same question, Mr Williams,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you’re intending to march with us.’
‘Don’t you understand what these people are like? They break up peaceful political meetings, they bully journalists, they imprison their political rivals. You’re an American – how can you be against democracy?’
‘Democracy is not necessarily the most appropriate political system for every country in all times.’ She was quoting Mosley’s propaganda, Lloyd guessed.
He said: ‘But these people torture and kill everyone who disagrees with them!’ He thought of Jörg. ‘I’ve seen it for myself, in Berlin. I was in one of their camps, briefly. I was forced to watch while a naked man was savaged to death by starving dogs. That’s the kind of thing your Fascist friends do.’
She was unintimidated. ‘And who, exactly, has been killed by Fascists here in England recently?’
‘The British Fascists haven’t got the power yet – but your Mosley admires Hitler. If they ever get the chance, they’ll do exactly the same as the Nazis.’
‘You mean they will eliminate unemployment and give the people pride and hope.’
Lloyd was drawn to her so powerfully that it broke his heart to hear her spouting this rubbish. ‘You know what the Nazis have done to the family of your friend Eva.’
‘Eva got married, did you know?’ Daisy said, in the determinedly cheerful tone of one who tries to switch a dinner-table conversation to a more agreeable topic. ‘To nice Jimmy Murray. She’s an English wife, now.’
‘And her parents?’
Daisy looked away. ‘I don’t know them.’
‘But you know what the Nazis have done to them.’ Eva had told Lloyd all about it at the Trinity Ball. ‘Her father is no longer allowed to practise medicine – he’s working as an assistant in a pharmacy. He can’t enter a park or a public library. His father’s name has been scraped off the war memorial in his home village!’ Lloyd realized he had raised his voice. More quietly he said: ‘How can you possibly stand side by side with people who do such things?’
She looked troubled, but she did not answer his question. Instead she said: ‘I’m late already. Please excuse me.’
‘What you’re doing can’t be excused.’
The chauffeur said: ‘All right, sonny, that’s enough.’
He was a heavy middle-aged man who evidently took little exercise, and Lloyd was not in the least intimidated, but he did not want to start a fight. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said in a mild tone. ‘But don’t call me sonny.’
The chauffeur took his arm.
Lloyd said: ‘You’d better take your hand off me, or I’ll knock you down before I go.’ He looked into the chauffeur’s face.
The chauffeur hesitated. Lloyd tensed, preparing to react, watching for warning signs, as he would in the boxing ring. If the chauffeur tried to hit him, it would be a great swinging haymaker of a blow, easily do
dged.
But the man either sensed Lloyd’s readiness or felt the well-developed muscle in the arm he was holding; for one reason or the other he backed off and released his grip, saying: ‘No need for threats.’
Daisy walked away.
Lloyd looked at her back in the perfectly fitting uniform as she hurried towards the ranks of the Fascists. With a deep sigh of frustration he turned and went in the other direction.
He tried to concentrate on the job at hand. What a fool he had been to threaten the chauffeur. If he had got into a fight he would probably have been arrested, then he would have spent the day in a police cell – and how would that have helped defeat Fascism?
It was now half past twelve. He left Tower Hill, found a telephone box, called the Jewish People’s Council, and spoke to Bernie. After he had reported what he had seen, Bernie told him to make an estimate of the number of policemen in the streets between the Tower and Gardiner’s Corner.
He crossed to the east side of the park and explored the radiating side streets. What he saw astonished him.
He had expected a hundred or so police. In fact, there were thousands.
They stood lining the pavements, waited in dozens of parked buses, and sat astride huge horses in remarkably neat rows. Only a narrow gap was left for people who wanted to walk along the streets. There were more police than Fascists.
From inside one of the buses, a uniformed constable gave him the Hitler salute.
Lloyd was dismayed. If all these policemen sided with the Fascists, how could the counter-demonstrators resist them?
This was worse than a Fascist march: it was a Fascist march with police authority. What kind of message did that send to the Jews of the East End?
In Mansell Street he saw a beat policeman he knew, Henry Clark. ‘Hello, Nobby,’ he said. For some reason all Clarks were called Nobby. ‘A copper just gave me the Hitler salute.’
‘They’re not from round here,’ Nobby said quietly, as if revealing a confidence. ‘They don’t live with Jews like I do. I tell them Jews are the same as everyone else, mostly decent law-abiding people, a few villains and troublemakers. But they don’t believe me.’
