‘History is repeating itself’: fight against far-right in London’s East End goes on

Eighty-nine years after residents drove Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts from Tower Hamlets, anti-far right coalition is still vital in borough

The East End of London is the far right's prime target - the essence of everything they don't like. They feel if they can march through our borough with impunity, they can go anywhere. For them, it's like Wembley (stadium), it's the ultimate goal," said Glyn Robbins, co-founder of United East End, an anti-far right coalition of community organisations.

In the East End, the historically working-class neighbourhoods in the shadow of the City of London, there's a feeling that history is repeating itself. It was 89 years ago this month that local people, many of them British Jews, drove out Oswald Mosley's Blackshirt militia from Whitechapel in the East End, in what has become known as the Battle of Cable Street.