Harry's Place

Oliver Kamm on John Platts-Mills

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/and-finally-ton.html

Oh the consistency of the “decent left”!

The 43s were taught never to strike a policeman. This was despite antisemitism in the police. Dalston Police Station was a centre of police racism – a number of officers there had served in the Palestine Police.

Can you substantiate this?

Incredulous, what’s your point? Marshall Zhukov was a vile defender of the Soviet dictatorship, he was also a brilliant general and i am bloody glad he was on “our” side at Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, Minsk and Berlin.

‘But it is hard to draw many other lessons for the fight against antisemitism today – because the circumstances are so different.’
How true.
‘Physically confronting’ white gentile jew bashers is one thing.Doing the same re brown or black jew bashers is a different proposition altogether, and has been ‘problematic’ for the left ever since Meir Kahane’s JDL tried it on in Brooklyn over 40 years ago.

Vidal Sassoon was a member of the 43 Group. Later he fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Fascinating post. I much regret the 43 Group burned their papers. An important piece of social history.

‘But Rabbi Leslie Hardman – who had been in Belsen when it was liberated – was a great ally.’

The Reverend Leslie Hardman – Obituary

‘On April 15 1945 the British unit to which Hardman was attached liberated Belsen. He was not present at this event, but on the following day he was called to see his commanding officer, who told him: “Keep a stiff upper lip. We’ve just been into Belsen concentration camp and it’s horrible; but you have got to go there – you’ll find a lot of your people.”

Hardman drove to Belsen on April 17, and he later described in his book The Survivors: the story of the Belsen Remnant (1958) the sight which greeted him as he entered the camp: “Towards me came what seemed to be the remnants of a holocaust – a staggering mass of blackened skin and bones, held together somehow with filthy rags. ‘My God, the dead walk,’ I cried aloud, but I did not recognise my voice.”

The vast majority of inmates Hardman saw on that day were seriously ill, and some 13,000 corpses still lay unburied around the camp.

The survivors crowded around Hardman, “[peering] at the double star, the emblem of Jewry on my tunice – one poor creature touched and then stroked the badge of my faith, and finding that it was real murmured, ‘Rabbiner, Rabbiner’.”

In the days that followed Hardman did his utmost to comfort, provide help and bolster morale. “I sat there for hours,” he later recalled, “smoking, talking, listening. I spoke to them of Jewish religion and Jewish life.”

On one occasion a survivor made a quavering attempt to sing a few lines of a Hebrew song: “The pathos of this attempt was so poignant that I put my head on the table and wept; and then they comforted me.”

A Belsen survivor later described Hardman as “our Messiah”, telling how Hardman “spoke to us in Yiddish and gave us tremendous hope [but while] thousands listened to him, all around inmates were dying”.

Despite the best efforts of the British to help the survivors, some 9,000 inmates died in April alone. By the end of June another 4,000 had perished.

Years after the event, Hardman told a correspondent from the BBC: “If all the trees in the world turned into pens, all the waters in the oceans turned into ink and the heavens turned into paper, it would still be insufficient material to describe the horrors these people suffered under the SS.” ‘

http://tinyurl.com/4b8hk9

“In 1962 the government allowed Colin Jordan to hold a rally in Trafalgar Square, with banners saying ‘Free Britain From Jewish Control’.”

In 2009 it was Tony Benn and Jenny Tonge.

No wonder they destroyed their papers.

All they seem to have done is beaten up a group of admittedly unpleasant people who were peacefully and legally exercising their political rights in a free society. Damn right the Home Secretary did nothing. We fought the war so that even Fascists would be free to speak in public. Not so that some self-appointed vigilantes could decide what was or was not acceptable politics in this country.

And for all the complaints about Dalston police station, clearly these thugs had some degree of political protection.

Shameful really.

“The vast majority of inmates Hardman saw on that day were seriously ill, and some 13,000 corpses still lay unburied around the camp.” – Joshua.

One of my father’s friends was at the liberation of Belsen. He said you could smell it from ten miles away. Even as a child I seemed to understand what that meant. And now? I am surrounded by types who doubt it ever happened or say if it did it had its origins in some other cause than pure evil.

I heard a story sometime ago that Richard Crossman asked that all ranks who went to Belsen were to to have their names recorded. Asked for why he is supposed to have replied “Because one day people will say this never happened.” Does anyone else on HP know anything of this?

Ask David T how bravely he confronted Lady Jane Birdwood at Southampton University that time. Oh, hang on…

Nitza Spiro points out that the hotel I mentioned was not in Brighton but in London SW1, near Victoria Station. They heard that the fascists were going to meet in room 44 so they asked for the room next door – number 43.

Also it is not certain that Mosley himself spoke at the “Battle of Ridley Road” – at that time he was speaking mainly indoors.

Joshua

Vidal Sassoon spoke (by recorded video from California) last night. He was just 17 wheh he joined the 43 Group. Someone is writing his biography.

I don’t deny the right of people to defend themselves. But I am not sure about putting illegal ethnic defence on a pedestal is the right approach.

Jihadis in the UK will love this. You can just hear them can’t you? “The Jews organise themselves and defend themselves with violence if necessary. If they can, then so can we. Why should we allow a Muslima to be insulted by some dirty drunken Kufr. We should go in hard and stop this kind of intimidation.”

Community exclusivism is always a bad thing. We should be upholding citizenship, democracy and observance of the law.

As for white people stabbing a black man, I think we can be pretty certain that in the last 20 years most violence on black people has been perpetrated by other black people and most stabbing victims of inter-racial violence have been white people stabbed by black people.

Please, let’s not have any bull about violence in inner London and its sources.

As for Vidal Sasoon, that raises an interesting question. I know he went to Israel-Palestine in the late 40s to fight. Who was he fighting? Was it just invading Arabs? Or was it British soldiers? If the latter then Jihadis will love that as well.

“We should be upholding citizenship, democracy and observance of the law”

All very sanctimonious, Field, but would you be the first to tell Jews who had spent six years fighting Hitler that they should just turn the other cheek when a bunch of Aryan-looking British aristocrats shouted at them ‘Hitler should have finished the job!’ ?

Well, I don’t often agree with Field, but I have to say here he is exactly right.

The rule of law is universally applicable – it’s the basis of a stable, democratic society. No special pleading, no special excuses should be allowed.

This sort of vigiliantism – whatever the circumstances and however odious the provocations – has no place WHATSOEVER – in a democratic society. And breaking the knees (or whatever) of people because they declare themselves to be, or are, fascists – is little different in essence from fascism. It’s gangsterism pure and simple, the law of the jungle. In a democratic society, like the UK of those times, they can be defeated by words and at the ballot box and by the law – - – not by setting up alternative forms of “street justice”, that, in fact, have nothing whatsover to do with justice, but which rather subvert and destroy the mechanisms of justice and law.

Telling the members of this group not to attack policemen? (But anyone else is fair game)? Then destroying all the documentation?

How morally questionable and dubious is that?

No, it is not right at all, what these people did.

It really is as simple as that.

yawn .. you guys have no idea what it was like then have you .. you sound like lawyers … or mild Asberger’s

Vidal is a legend, he gave us the bob and kicked fascist ass.

ven, this is below you:

“Telling the members of this group not to attack policemen? (But anyone else is fair game)?”

anyone else? NO, they opposed fascists, active fascists, those that would have transformed Britain into a fascist dictatorship (if they could)

so they should be congratulated

fine, if you don’t like their methods, then pray explain what your approach to halting fascism in the 1920s/30s would have been? talk them to death?

[remember that they had almost complete freedom of speech, and the ability to organise]

Edward –

You said:

“All very sanctimonious, Field, but would you be the first to tell Jews who had spent six years fighting Hitler that they should just turn the other cheek when a bunch of Aryan-looking British aristocrats shouted at them ‘Hitler should have finished the job!’ ?”

I think there is a difference to the morality of how one reacts in such circumstances and looking to officially memorialise certain types of behaviour.

I seem to recall defending myself against violent attack as a teenager. I am not expecting anyone to put up a memorial to me.

It is dangerous to praise illegal behaviour in a law-based democracy even when it is justified (and I am the first to admit that it can be).

modernityblog – “anyone else? NO, they opposed fascists, active fascists, those that would have transformed Britain into a fascist dictatorship (if they could)”

“so they should be congratulated”

So did Stalin. So did Pol Pot. Perhaps sensible people might say that the end does not always justify the end?

“fine, if you don’t like their methods, then pray explain what your approach to halting fascism in the 1920s/30s would have been? talk them to death?”

Yes. Because the Left tried this approach – they took to the streets abd beat up Fascists. That got them Hitler. What they did not try was talking them to death.

“[remember that they had almost complete freedom of speech, and the ability to organise]”

And remember that wherever the English tradition of civil society, the rule of law, freedom to organise and speak, held sway, Fascism made no real inroads. Nor Communism. Where it did not exist, Fascism did well. So these people are the problem, not the solution. The MCB is their direct heir.

“remember that wherever the English tradition of civil society, the rule of law, freedom to organise and speak, held sway, Fascism made no real inroads.”

Sanctimonious twaddle. All those things pertained in Germany and Austria.

Would SMS, V and Field have criticised someone who tried to kill Hitler before he was elected? Or the Bielski brothers? Or the sufragettes?

“looking to officially memorialise certain types of behaviour”

For heaven’s sake – all they did was hold a reunion – no-one is trying to create a “43s Memorial Day”!

Ven:
This sort of vigiliantism – whatever the circumstances and however odious the provocations – has no place WHATSOEVER – in a democratic society. And breaking the knees (or whatever) of people because they declare themselves to be, or are, fascists – is little different in essence from fascism. It’s gangsterism pure and simple, the law of the jungle.

Bollocks. One of the principle strategies of fascism has always been to control the streets – to use demonstrations and marches to establish a visible presence that will rally supporters and intimidate opponents, to take control of territory from the street up. In white areas, they make sure their opponents are unable to organise and campaign; in multi-racial areas they pursue a strategy of creating inter-racial tension and then crowding out alternatives to deal with the conflicts they have created. The police have frequently been unable or unwilling to do anything about such tactics. The 43 Group was part of a long tradition of militant anti-fascism which prevented a myriad of fascists establishing that presence, that street control – up to and including the BNP, who only abandoned the strategy of the street after repeatedly getting their arses kicked by Red Action. It’s not gangsterism – it is a legitimate, necessary and measured response to gangsterism.

Regarding Vidal Sassoon and 1948, as far as I know, Sassoon was in the Palmach, who only went in for acts of resistance to the British authorities on three or four occasions, so he was fighting Arabs. There were other British Jews who fought in the IZL and Lehi, but the mighty barber wasn’t one of them.

Great post Jonathan. It sounds like it was a very interesting evening.

Edward – “Sanctimonious twaddle. All those things pertained in Germany and Austria.”

No they did not. And the German Hard Left did what these Leftists did – they tried to fight the Fascists in the streets. With the result that they destroyed democracy.

“Would SMS, V and Field have criticised someone who tried to kill Hitler before he was elected? Or the Bielski brothers? Or the sufragettes?”

Before he was elected? Hell yes. The Suffragettes? Of course.

The fascists were using democracy to destroy democracy and to incite violence against Jews. The 43 Group didn’t engage in gratuitous violence but developed a strategy for breaking up the meetings as quickly and with as little fuss as possible.

But this was also only part of the work they did. The rest was a massive non-violent propaganda effort through their regular publication “On Guard” (largely ghost-written interestingly by supporters on the Daily Worker) and lots of courageous intelligence work.

Read Beckman’s memoir of the group and you will find pride in what they did but no glorification of violence. Though you will find a graphic description of the violence they faced such as one fascist rally in Romford where a Maltese gang, hired by the fascists, suddenly pelted the 43 Group with razor blades lodged in potatoes.

There was a fantastic radio programme last year about the 43 Group (archive hour Radio 4 made by Alan Dein and Mark Burman ) – don’t know if there is any way people can get that. And there is a four-page interview with the programme makers about it in the last issue of Jewish Socialist.

More primary material on “Room 43″ and the “Battle of Ridley Road”:

The Duke of Bedford – an antisemite – organised a secret meeting at Kingsway Hall in Holborn [J - now the headquarters of the Food Standards Agency I think]. The 43 Group’s Intelligence found out about it. Members of the 43s went to the Hall, discovered which room they were using and asked to rent a room next door in order to disrupt the meeting. The next door room happened to be room 43! To make their claim for the room credible, they said it was needed for a meeting of “the 1943”, a football club formed in North Africa during the war in 1943.

On the “Battle of Ridley Road”: An eye witness says Mosley and Jeffrey Hamm both spoke.

another interesting text from that period: http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1948/fascism.htm

“The struggle for the emancipation of the working class is not between races or religions. It is one of class against class. Every trace of anti-Semitism, or any form of race hatred cannot assist the oppressed, it can on the contrary only aid the exploiters. Workers of all nationality, religion or creed must stand together against the common enemy: capitalism.”

“In 1962 the government allowed Colin Jordan to hold a rally in Trafalgar Square, with banners saying ‘Free Britain From Jewish Control’.”

One of the reasons why I’ve still got time for Denis Healey is that he gave that scumbag Jordan a bunch of five. It was during the Leyton by-election (January 1965), and Colin Jordan got on the stage during a Labour Party meeting to harangue the candidate, Patrick Gordon Walker. Healey punched the bastard so hard he knocked him off the stage.

That’s the way to deal with fascists, white and brown.

Dave R, thanks for the info about the Radio Programme

can’t find a copy, but here’s the details:

“The Archive Hour – A Rage In Dalston
Saturday 19 April
8.00-9.00pm BBC RADIO 4

In 1945, Nazism had been defeated but across Britain the return of fascism to the streets of London and the South East provoked a series of vicious encounters. This was the war after the war.

For the next four years, London and the South East would witness brutal confrontations between the remnants of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and Jewish ex-serviceman enraged at the reappearance of fascist meetings and rhetoric. Alan Dein uncovers the true story of post-war conflict on British streets.

This time the battlefields were Ridley Road, Bethnal Green, Clapham Common, Hampstead, Kilburn and Brighton. The weapons were knuckle-dusters, coshes and razor-edged caps, and no one would die in the fighting.

But for four years the paramilitary, primarily Jewish, 43 Group infiltrated fascist organisations, regularly attacked their meetings, seized literature and created headlines. Their members were decorated soldiers, airmen and sailors with a sprinkling of East End toughs and youngsters, including trainee barber Vidal Sassoon.

They broke with the leaders of the Jewish community in their no-holds-barred, physical opposition to the return of fascism to Britain’s streets. They operated beyond the law and were fuelled by rage, guilt at the fate of Europe’s Jews and the tension of British policy in Palestine. Their goal was to drive fascism from the streets and silence its message of intolerance, anti-Semitism and racism.

Presenter/Alan Dein, Producer/Mark Burman ”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/radio/wk17/sat.shtml

it was from 19 April 2008.

Is not what the Islamic rioters in London were saying a few weeks ago identical to what Mosley and Colin Jordan said?
If so then since the BOD etc react in the same way as they did then, doesn’t the Jewish community now need another 43 group

David Rosenberg – “The fascists were using democracy to destroy democracy and to incite violence against Jews.”

No they were not using democracy. They were exercising their legitimate democratic rights in a free society. They may have been inciting violence against Jews, but unless they did so against a specific Jew, with real consequences, I do not see the problem. Again we see the misuse of language so beloved of groups like the MCB. Notice that Britain, with its long tradition of free speech, did not have a Fascist movement. Notice the Weimar Republic, that compromised on these issues, did.

“The 43 Group didn’t engage in gratuitous violence but developed a strategy for breaking up the meetings as quickly and with as little fuss as possible.”

So they were *efficient* thugs? So that’s all right then.

“I heard a story sometime ago that Richard Crossman asked that all ranks who went to Belsen were to to have their names recorded. Asked for why he is supposed to have replied “Because one day people will say this never happened.” Does anyone else on HP know anything of this?

No. But I have read and seen Eisenhower quoted as saying the same (I cannot find he exact words). The Teacher’s Guide to the Hollocaust has a number of quotes under Liberators Stories: *

I saw Eisenhower go to the opposite end of the road and vomit. From a distance I saw Patton bend over, holding his head with one hand and his abdomen with the other. And I soon became ill. I suggested to General Eisenhower that cables be sent immediately to President Roosevelt, Churchill, DeGaulle, urging people to come and see for themselves. The general nodded.

–Lewis H. Weinstein, Lieutenant Colonel and chief of the liaison section of General Eisenhower’s staff, April 1945

I have never felt able to describe my emotional reaction when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency…I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.

–General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, Europe, Letter to Chief of Staff George Marshall, April 12, 1945

*(This is not a recommendation of The Reader’s Guide, which was the first reference I could find on Google that had the information about Eisenhower listed).

‘So Much For Subtlety’ – you seem so out of touch with the contextual issues surrounding post-war Britain. The 43 Group was not some indiscriminate band of thugs who sought violence for the sake it.
Mosley’s Union Party, and it’s various affiliates, were not exercising democratic rights. They sanctioned violence and intimidation against the most vulnerable in the Jewish community, especially in London. Any reliable account of the East-End Jewish community between 1945-50 makes clear that life in areas such as Hackney were not only made dangerous by fascist ‘thugs’, but that homes, businesses, and synagogues were legitimate targets.
Leaders of fascist cells, such as Hamm, Burgess, Preen etc. were newly released ‘enemies of the state’ – under reg.18b. They were well known to be supporters of a fifth column in the event of a Nazi victory. These people proudly encouraged their members to ‘push the Jew into the gutter’, and that ‘not enough Jews were burned at Belsen’. They recruited ex-POW SS members as bodyguards, and sent bands of thugs out to desecrate Jewish property and to patrol streets at night in search of Jewish people. They were supremely undemocratic, employing indiscriminate violence at un-proportionate levels. Their ‘legal right’ to speak publicly and meet privately was not the depth of their activities.
They abused ‘democratic rights’ through exploiting post-war resentment. The events in Palestine were used to alienate and target Jews as anti-British. The terrorist activities of Irgun even succeeded in causing a Jewish boycott, and anti-Jewish riots, across Britain in August 1947. The fascists gained support by creating the illusion that British Jews supported Irgun, and were anti-British. British police in Palestine, on returning to London, were (for unknown reasons) often placed in G-division – Dalston HQ, a primarily Jewish area and target for the fascists. As a result, many policemen in the area were fascist sympathizers and would actively make life hard for Jews.

The founders of the 43 Group, after serving in WW2, were shocked to see Nazi supporters on the streets – especially as many local families had had whole portions of their family annihilated in mainland Europe. The majority of them were not religious, or even identified themselves as ‘Jews’. They were Londoners all their lives.
The 43 Group were not seeking revenge for the War. They were not a political , religious, or social group. They came from from all walks of life and all classes. They were supported by many local residents across London who were distraught at the violence and insulted by the political agenda of the fascists. They were supported by politicians (Platt Mills), police (Scotland Yard), and judges.

The 43 Group were not simply a vigilante group. They were a structured organisation that took a moral decision – that there was no way they could sit back and watch their families and friends be broken by intimidation and violence in their own homeland. They emphasised the role of ‘Intelligence’ – infiltrating fascist cells, Mosley’s inner circle, the Jewish Board of Deputies. They accumulated evidence that was passed onto police, they routed fascist meetings by arriving at them before many fascists even knew of the meeting, they policed the streets at night to ensure the protection of Jewish people and property. They never ’subverted’ the law, if they were arrested for brawling then they went along to the station. Police would sometimes let them go there and then, sometimes beat them for being ‘Jew bastards’.

The point is, a thug is a mindless, aggressive and provocative agent. Even the most undisciplined in the 43 Group were discriminate (vs. fascists), and goal-orientated (to close meetings, reduce fascist support).

However, to focus on the violence endorsed by the 43 Group is to fail to see the bigger picture.

When someone states that Mosley’s fascist movement in the 1940’s was a free expression of democratic rights, this equally fails to see the bigger picture.

The current of liberal political thought has always defended free expression under the core condition that it does not threaten any individual. Mosley’s fascism (inspired by his vist to Mussolini’s Italy in the early 30’s, and solidified during his private marriage witnessed only by Goebbels and Hitler in Germany) – was entirely illeberal, primarily violent, and essentailly exploitative of post-war depression in Britain.

If you have a genuine, constructive, interest in the debate – look into Graham Macklin ‘Deeply Dyed in Black’, Stephen Dorrell’s ‘Blackshirts’, David Renton’s work (online), and even Nicholas Mosley’s ‘Beyond the Pale’.

I’m not having a dig – but it’s shocking that when evil is clear and present, good people are willing to sit back and do nothing under the assumption of ‘democracy protects and preserves’ us all.

Absolutely, Oliver! (my shortest ever post on HP)

no disagreement from me either, good post Oliver :)