More traditional segments of the Jewish population did not approve, including members of AJEX (Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen), who advocated peaceful protest. They took matters into their own hands, infiltrated fascist groups, and met violence with violence, breaking up meetings, damaging equipment and publications, and generally creating chaos. The 43 Group, formed in 1946 and named for the number of people attending its initial meeting, realized that they could not count on official protection for British Jews. The police would only become involved if property were damaged.
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The government, anxious to restore normal life and touting the proud British tradition of free speech, did not want to get involved, to the horror of Jewish servicemen returning home. It’s hard for us to reconcile the open and often violent anti-semitism of the decade, running parallel with news from Europe, the liberation of the camps, the Nuremberg Trials, and the founding of the state of Israel. Fascist prisoners interned during the war began to reorganise their crippled movement, while a new presence of captured Nazi soldiers being released from prisoner-of-war camps and into British society prompted a far-right renaissance. Though it may run counter to the popular narrative of the triumph over Hitler, fascism grew rapidly in Britain immediately following the Second World War. Moseley’s influence waned, and he retired in 1945 the British League of Ex-Servicemen, led by Jeffrey Hamm, resurrected anti-semitism. Although Moseley was under house arrest, almost immediately, Fascism was back on the streets. Churchill released Mosley in 1943, fearing that his failing health might make him a martyr and empower his followers. The BUF’s policy of peace and appeasement in Europe, rather than anti-semitism at home, made Churchill consider Mosley a wartime threat, sending him, his family, and followers to internment camps. Paul Danquah and Rita Tushingham in A Taste of Honey.
The latter intended to march on East London. (Southern Poverty Law Center)įascism was not new to Britain - Oswald Mosley, a darling of high society and with friends in high places, had formed the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. In 1936, the famous Battle of Cable Street (in which Soley fought) took place when trade unionists, gangsters, Irish dockworkers, Communists, and Socialists, united against the Fascists. The original skinhead subculture explodes among urban, working-class youths in Britain, combining style elements drawn from white "Mods" and West Indian “Rudeboys.” Though tinged with soccer hooliganism, traditional skinhead culture is not racist (to this day, there are black "trad" skins).
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Youth subcultures, which espoused everything from fashion statements to extreme and violent political views, were on the rise, including Mods and Rockers, Teddy Boys, and Skinheads, who later became associated with the anti-immigrant National Front founded later in the decade. In 1961, A Taste of Honey, starring Rita Tushingham (Nettie in Ridley Road) in her breakout role, explored an inter-racial affair, abortion, and gay subculture. Hemlines were rising discreetly above the knee. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were just becoming popular, Doris Lessing’s feminist novel The Golden Notebook was published, satirical magazine Private Eye started, and the Pill was now available.
Conservative Prime Minister Harold MacMillan had been in power since 1957 but was losing support, and his government would come crashing down the next year following the Profumo Affair. The year Ridley Road was set in 1962 wasn’t quite the swinging sixties, but change was definitely in the air. (Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)