Narbi Price

On Sunday 4 October 1936, Oswald Mosley, attempted to lead a march of his British Union of Fascists or Blackshirts through the then largely Jewish community of Whitechapel in London. This was met with resistance from the local community, bolstered with anti-fascists, socialists, and other demonstrators who despite the ranks of fascists being backed by the police, stopped the march, to rallying cries of ‘¡No Pasarán!’ (‘They shall not pass!’) a phrase adopted from the Spanish Civil War.

This culminated in The Battle of Cable Street. The first line of resistance however, was the nearby Gardiner's Corner, a few streets over, in Whitechapel, where a large Jewish-owned department store stood. This is at the busy junction of Whitechapel High Street, Commercial Road and Leman Street, near Aldgate East tube station. The lithograph puts the viewer in the place of the resistance, looking at the site as it stands in 2020, bearing no witness to the events of 84 years previous.


Narbi Price, March 2020