¡No Pasaran!: Writings from the Spanish Civil War

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Cable Street, though, also raises questions about the nature of cultural and collective memory and the role archives and documentary evidence play in maintaining or challenging that memory. The initial route was meant to see marchers parade down Commercial Street towards the East End, but a huge crowd of anti-fascist demonstrators blocked the intersection of Whitechapel High Street and Leman Street. Brother civilian, the underhand offensive of 'white peace' will attack you in turn; and like me you must stand firm and vanquish. He notes that he had just received a box of chocolate, and that Sam send him newspapers or books as they “receive a special welcome here.

He became a Labour councillor in 1927, at the age of just 22, and had quite a leftist life from that point: he travelled to the Soviet Union with an Independent Labour Party Youth Delegation, and met both Stalin and Trotsky, and worked as a messenger for the Trades Union Congress during the General Strike in 1926. In the two days prior to the march the Jewish People’s Council collected an impressive 100,000 signatures to protest ‘grave concern’. These are political stories, and they are deeply personal stories, humanizing ‘antifa’: while also detailing, with plenty of citations, why they—we—are absolutely necessary. Perhaps Demissie and Iglikowski should have noted Sir Phillip Game’s words (at page 10 of his report reproduced above) ‘there were many cries of “Shame” when it was learned that the march and meetings had been banned’.

Whilst the political left had grown in support across Europe during the interwar years, so too had another force on the far-right: fascism. The phrase was brought to the public consciousness again following action in December 1943 by French-Canadian officer Paul Triquet of the Royal 22 e Regiment; his action included his use of Nivelle's phrase "to win a key objective at Ortona, Italy, in the face of overwhelming German opposition. H. Auden or George Orwell (who was upper-middle class at the least) but the vast majority of those who volunteered for the International Brigades, and those who undertook a lot of the fundraising efforts were from the working class. Frank Graham was later an important publisher on Tyneside, championing amongst other things the works of Jack Common. His work has been featured in places such as NBC News, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, The Independent, Jacobin, The Daily Beast, Bandcamp Daily, Jewish Currents, Haaretz, and Full Stop.

was ringing out across Madrid as the International Brigades marched up to the battlefront on 8th November 1936. We don’t know exactly who made them, or where they were used, but they really show that, even if people didn’t volunteer, they still pushed to support the fight against Franco’s fascism. The Communist Party were central to helping volunteers get from Britain (and various other countries) to Spain. Their victory over racism and anti-Semitism on Sunday October 4 1936 became known as the Battle of Cable Street and encapsulated the British fight against a fascism that was stomping across Europe. There had been advances in Britain in the fight against Mosley, the general threat was beginning for the whole of Europe.More recently, in June and July 2021, the memorial was vandalised several times with fascist graffiti before being cleaned up by local volunteers. His attention was first attracted by on of these cards mentioning a "concentration camp", a term which, even if it doesn't means by itself extermination, was already used in nazi Germany.

At first, this may seem a strange choice: Madrid was a dangerous and scary place to be back then, under siege by the fascist legions of General Francisco Franco and facing an all-out attempt to conquer the city. This would suggest he was doing aid work for Soccoro Rojo at the time, rather than fighting on the front line. Our bust offers insight into the first year of the war, where these idealistic movements had created an innovative social-political experiment in cities like Barcelona.We also have some absolutely magnificent posters discovered in our collection that are hand-drawn, encouraging support for the Republican cause – we think by a member of the Communist Party.