Fascist lack of UK leadership

My late father was a keen observer of politics and life.

Though I never knew him to read a newspaper he was always remarkably well informed. I had many interesting and informative conversations with him about growing up in Hackney in the 1930s.

I asked him about the Fascist Marches. He replied that you heard them first because of a big drum beating.

Jewish people are not renowned for their fighting (the comedian Jackie Mason once observed you would not cross the road if four Jewish accountants were walking towards you) but they came out in numbers to confront the Blackshirts.

It was heroic as some were badly beaten up but refused ambulances and medical assistance in order to get back to the fight.

The key strategic point was Jackson’s Corner – the gateway to the East End – and the resistance was crucial, as my Dad explained.

“The Nazis got to power by controlling the streets. We were not going to let it happen here. They were not going to pass. The police were not that interested – many of them were on the march”.

Two of the heroes were the hairdresser Vidal Sasson (then aged only 17), and his friend Gerald Ronson (pictured), later the founder of the Heron property group – whose father was a well-known boxer – got stuck in.

Later, when the British Union of Fascists reconstituted after World War 2, a Jewish paratrooper and Arnhem veteran Gerald Flamberg and Morrie Beckman – a specialist in disrupting fascist meetings and more than useful with a Stanley knife – confronted these Blackshirts.

My father, who was educated at Hackney Downs School – known then as the Grocers School – and amongst its famous alumni was his close friend Stanley Clinton Davis (pictured) who became a solicitor, Labour MP and European Commissioner.

Though they did not see each other that often in later life –  as Clinton Davis pursued his legal and political career and my father his medical one – he was reassured to hear the view (when he met up later up with his old friend) that whilst Oswald Mosley might have been a fine fencer, he was no Mussolini or Hitler, and the fascists never had any sort of charismatic leader, loathsome though these two were.

Though both of different political views, I suspect they both would be rather proud of those who recently took to the streets to confront the far right-wing rioters.