For instance, after what become known as the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ on 4 October 1936 – where Oswald Mosley’s ‘blackshirts’ were intercepted by anti-fascist demonstrators as they attempted to march through the East End of London – the Labour party was instrumental in urging parliament to rush through Public Order legislation to stop further uprisings by the far right. Yet since their inception, these measures have mostly been used to clamp down on left-wing activism, and formed the basis of the Government’s justification to arrest striking miners in the mid-1980s. By granting the state the
...more
