Winter of the World

From outside the house came the sound of a loudspeaker. ‘Keep Mosley out of Stepney,’ said a man’s voice. ‘Assemble at Gardiner’s Corner at two o’clock.’

Lloyd drank his tea and stood up. His role today was to be a spy, checking the position of the Fascists and calling in updates to Bernie’s Jewish People’s Council. His pockets were heavy with big brown pennies for public phones. ‘I’d better get started,’ he said. ‘The Fascists are probably assembling already.’

His mother got up and followed him to the door. ‘Don’t get into a fight,’ she said. ‘Remember what happened in Berlin.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ Lloyd said.

She tried a light tone. ‘Your rich American girl won’t like you with no teeth.’

‘She doesn’t like me anyway.’

‘I don’t believe it. What girl could resist you?’

‘I’ll be all right, Mam,’ Lloyd said. ‘Really I will.’

‘I suppose I should be glad you’re not going to bloody Spain.’

‘Not today, anyway.’ Lloyd kissed his mother and went out.

It was a bright autumn morning, the sun unseasonably warm. In the middle of Nutley Street a temporary platform had been set up by a group of men, one of whom was speaking through a megaphone. ‘People of the East End, we do not have to stand quiet while a crowd of strutting anti-Semites insults us!’ Lloyd recognized the speaker as a local official of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. Because of the Depression there were thousands of unemployed Jewish tailors. They signed on every day at the Settle Street Labour Exchange.

Before Lloyd had gone ten yards, Bernie came after him and handed him a paper bag of the little glass balls that children called marbles. ‘I’ve been in a lot of demonstrations,’ he said. ‘If the mounted police charge the crowd, throw these under the horses’ hooves.’

Lloyd smiled. His stepfather was a peacemaker, almost all the time, but he was no softie.

All the same, Lloyd was dubious about the marbles. He had never had much to do with horses, but they seemed to him to be patient, harmless beasts, and he did not like the idea of causing them to crash to the ground.

Bernie read the look on his face and said: ‘Better a horse should fall than my boy should be trampled.’

Lloyd put the marbles in his pocket, thinking that it did not commit him to using them.

He was pleased to see many people already on the streets. He noted other encouraging signs. The slogan ‘They shall not pass’ in English and Spanish had been chalked on walls everywhere he looked. The Communists were out in force, handing out leaflets. Red flags draped many windowsills. A group of men wearing medals from the Great War carried a banner that read: ‘Jewish Ex-Servicemen’s Association.’ Fascists hated to be reminded how many Jews had fought for Britain. Five Jewish soldiers had won the country’s highest medal for bravery, the Victoria Cross.

Lloyd began to think that perhaps there would be enough people to stop the march after all.

Gardiner’s Corner was a broad five-way junction, named for the Scottish clothing store, Gardiner and Company, which occupied a corner building with a distinctive clock tower. When he got there, Lloyd saw that trouble was expected. There were several first aid stations and hundreds of St John Ambulance volunteers in their uniforms. Ambulances were parked in every side street. Lloyd hoped there would be no fighting; but better to risk violence, he thought, than to let the Fascists march unhindered.

He took a roundabout route and came towards the Tower of London from the north-west, in order not to be identified as an East Ender. Some minutes before he got there he could hear the brass bands.

The Tower was a riverside palace that had symbolized authority and repression for eight hundred years. It was surrounded by a long wall of pale old stone that looked as if the colour had been washed out of it by centuries of London rain. Outside the walls, on the landward side, was a park called Tower Gardens, and here the Fascists were assembling. He estimated that there were already a couple of thousand of them, in a line that stretched back westward into the financial district. Every now and again they broke into a rhythmic chant:

One, two, three, four,

We’re gonna get rid of the Yids!

The Yids! The Yids!

We’re gonna get rid of the Yids!

They carried Union Jack flags. Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?