By Linda Wall?
A rent protest meeting outside Quinn Square in Bethnal Green, August 1938. IMAGO / United Archives International
Racist pogroms are happening in our streets. And what is the Labour Government doing? Arguing about how much extra money to spend on defence: spending that will cut even deeper into the services that our communities desperately need.
The Left meanwhile is desperately in search of strategies to halt the advance of the Far Right. It could do worse than to study some of the tactics used by the Communist Party in the 1930s.
In 1937 two families were to be evicted from Paragon Mansions in London’s East End. CP activists learned that both families were members of the BUF (British Union of Fascists), which had no intention of fighting the evictions.
Working through the tenants committee, the activists mobilised tenants to come together to defend their neighbours. Bailiffs and police were barred from entry and doused in mouldy flour and water from the balcony over the entrance. Victory soon followed.
Phil Piratin later wrote “The lessons did not require to be pressed home. BUF membership cards were destroyed voluntarily and in disgust … The kind of people who would never come to our meetings, and had strange ideas about Communists and Jews, learned the facts overnight and learned the real meaning of the class struggle.”
Read More
For Better Housing and Against Fascism – article by Sarah Glynn
East End Immigrants and the Battle For Housing – paper by Sarah Glynn
How Fed Up Londoners Dealt With the 1930s Rental Crisis – article by Sarah Ingram
Our Flag Stays Red – book by Phil Piratin
(Previously published in Connections Newsletter issue no. 4)
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