In these times of terrific turmoil, let’s extend some praise & prospectus to the brilliant 43 Group (& also author Daniel Sonabend).

In a nutshell, the 43 Group were a movement of anti-fascist, ex-servicemen street fighting Jews (& other non-Jewish anti-fascists) who formed in the wake of World War 2 to combat the “unchecked” rise of Oswald Mosley & the other Hitler/fascist sympathetic pricks in Britain, who the state & government were not adequately annulling (ringing familiar today?).

Founded in London (other regional chapters would later emerge) & led by a dedicated & disciplined contingent of Jewish war veterans & boxers, the group also absorbed & deployed gangs of impoverished East London street toughs & a straggler’s gaggle of volunteer anti-fascists from an intriguing panoply of professions & social strata’s.

Although predominantly Jewish & “working class”, the group was keenly open to all, & operated under the principle of a unified anti-fascist front.

their commitment, effectiveness, presence & persistence clearly played a pivotal role in battering down Oswald Mosley’s advance in Britain, which ultimately resulted in the capsizing of his movement & his decrepitated exile from British shores.

Oddly, the organisation was controversial & even feuding with “the Jewish establishment” (such as the JDC & Board of Deputies etc) at the time, due to their direct approach, semi-para-military nature & willingness to administer swift violence against fascists (necessary, disciplined & righteous as it almost always was). They did however court considerable public support, which is all that counts, as the establishment always sucks crease.

Beside the famous & celebrated Battle of Cable Street, very little is aired about antifascist street fighting history in Britain (wouldn’t want to give the peasants any ideas, & the monarchy, landed gentry & Conservative Party have plenty to conceal).

this is both very important & very interesting history, & it is rather alarming that it has not been granted more attention & resurrection.

With fell effluent dross misappropriations today over the Atlantic such as the Proud Boys, that work in the other direction (now deputised under the Pricktator as pseudo-official brown shirts – ICE – to terrorise, harm, accost & mar US citizens en-masse), it is well worth re-examining a movement like the 43 Group.

Faecal dross like the UK’s EDL are also a piss-poor-parody – if not subversion – of the noble 43.

Sonabend has done an excellent & highly detailed job with this extensive documentation.

The immersive & trenchantly researched investigation is broad, thorough & sharp.

Some of the crossover or involvement with early Israel may have been minimised (it is covered, but sparsely), but it appears minor, & in this case, is ‘kind of’ a peripheral subject.

The overwhelming demeanour & drive of the 42 Group is of a dedicated, genuine & efficacious anti-fascist street movement.

The group was dissolved, somewhat fractiously, in 1950, after the threat of fascism in Britain was substantially subdued (thanks to this lot especially I would say).

The last stages of the group saw the admission of a much less disciplined & more violent demographic of “post-war youngsters” who were more interested in banging bones & slashing mugs (“very eager to mix it up whenever and wherever”). The new recruits were part of the motive for the 43 Groups liquidation, as the older ex-servicemen veterans that founded it were aghast at the new nihilism.

The successor to the 43 Group was the 62 Committee (frequently referred to as the 62 Group) which would run until 1975, & unlike the 42, was only open to Jewish members.

Sonabend’s reporting on 62 runs just a few pages, but the gist is that this modified version continued the fight against Mosley & other emerging fascist threats.

A spin-off subsidiary from the 62 Committee that has been appropriated by the mainstream mechanism is still running today, the Community Security Trust (CST).

As you can probably unfortunately surmise, many of these later organisations became increasingly subsumed or sympathetic to Israeli influence, to their absolute detriment obviously.

An incredibly important account of a rare history, penned with guile, rigour & panache. & considering the temperature of apprehension & threat emanating the earth right now, it’s more necessary & vital by the minute.

Daniel Sonabend, 2019, Verso, 326-pages.