Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism
‘The Battle of Cable Street ninety years on: the struggle against fascism and antisemitism, then and now’
BISA panel discussion
Date: 6 October 2026
Time: 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: In person – Birkbeck, University of London, WC1E 7HX
Speakers: Nadia Valman, Queen Mary University of London; Liam Liburd, Durham University; Joseph Finlay, Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, University of London
Free event – book your place here.
The Battle of Cable Street is a moment of iconic significance in British Jewish history and in the history of anti-fascism in this country. On 4 October 1936, massed ranks of Jews, leftists and dock workers, many of them Irish, confronted the Metropolitan Police and prevented Oswald Mosely and his Blackshirts from marching through the Jewish East End.
In 1936, Jews ignored calls from Jewish leaders to stay at home, keep quiet and put their faith in the police and government. Instead, they built alliances with trade unions, communists and another racialised minority, the Irish.
In the current moment, when the far right is resurgent, when Jewish leaders look to the state for support in the struggle against antisemitism, and when alliances between Jews and the anti-racist left are fragile, this public discussion asks what it should mean to remember Cable Street today.
Nadia Valman is Professor of Urban Literature at Queen Mary University of London. She has published widely on the history and culture of London’s East End and co-edited Remembering Cable Street: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in British Society (Vallentine Mitchell, 1999).
Liam Liburd is the Assistant Professor of Black British History at Durham University. His research explores the history of the British white supremacist movement and the relationship between institutional racism and “extremist” racism in modern British history.
Joseph Finlay is a historian and a postdoctoral fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism. His research centres around British Jews, race relations, anti-racism, empire, decolonisation and questions of philosemitism and antisemitism.