Lessons for the left

Printed page 46

Out of the Ghetto: Joe Jacobs, Phoenix Press, £9 pbk

When you pick up this book, don't expect a literary masterpiece. This is the story of Joe Jacobs in his own words. It is overlong, often repetitive and sometimes rambling. It is also compulsive and exasperating at the same time.

Out of the Ghetto is the story of a young Jewish militant in the Stepney branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1930s. Through Joe's recollections, we relive the confusion he experienced being on the receiving end of the political betrayals of the Communist Party.

After a decade out of print, this new edition is timely. In a period of working class retreat this story of solidarity, courage and contempt for the bosses is salutary. The disdain for the forces of law and order should be read especially by those anti-racists today who spend their time appealing to the state to do something about fighting racism.

It has long been assumed on the left that the Communist Party organised the defence of the East End against Oswald Mosley's fascist blackshirts on 4 October 1936—in what has become known as 'The Battle of Cable Street'. Far from it. True, Joe and the young activists in Stepney were in the forefront. But half their energy was devoted to preventing their own leadership from organising a diversion.

The Central Committee wanted to hold a rally against fascism in Spain at the same time far away in Trafalgar Square! This craven tactic was better suited to keeping in with church leaders and parliamentarians than street fighting. Only at the last moment did the line change—and out of pragmatism rather than conviction, as the leadership sensed that the party could not be absent from what was going to be a popular struggle.

The most powerful episode in the book is the scene of the attempted eviction. In this terrible decade, thousands of families were dumped on the streets if they couldn't organise a moonlight flit first. Jacobs tells the story of how he and his comrades physically stopped the eviction by bailiffs of a known British Union of Fascists sympathiser. Jacobs says there was no sympathy for the fascist. His political outlook would be dealt with by the working class and the working class alone. The point was that no interference in the lives of working class people would be tolerated.

In the 1970s the British left went one better than the Communist Party in the 1930s. When called upon to defend the East End from the far right, it decided to boogie with bishops in Brixton's Brockwell Park. In the 1990s it makes no pretence of organising the working class to defend itself—but instead invites the state to pursue evictions and sackings. Well Joe, I should say that it's to this that we say 'never again!'

Alan Harding