Fwd: ¡No pasarán! - Party Like it's 1936 - OCTOBER 1ST

Mass Unemployment. A government that cuts spending in a recession. Far right groups seeking scapegoats. Any similarity to the present day is completely coincedental.........

In October 1936 Oswald Mosely's British Union of Fascists, a kindly bunch of chaps wearing fetching black shirts, sought to march through the East End, the most heavily immigrant area of London, before it became the home of people who wear floral prints and oversized glasses. While the police on horseback tried to clear the path for them, large numbers of people, a working class coalition of Irish and Jewish, bakers, dockers, socialist, anarchists and others blocked their way. The Board of Deputies and Jewish Chronicle had advised people to stay at ho,e. Wisely, they were ignored, which is always the best policy. Pretty much everyone's grandparent's were there, and if they weren't, they certainly said they were. With high tech weapons such as rotten food, marbles and chamber pots ranged against them the fascists were eventually force to give up, compelled to sing bad marching songs and practice synchronised salutes in private . Their 1937 slogan 'Fascism Next Time' was hardly a winner, and Mosely and chums faded in to obscurity.

The wider battle raged on, in Spain, and in Italy, and the rest is history. The forces of fascism took a beating while the forces of capital lived to party on. But as the economy tanks, the Euro seems set to disintegrate and the EDL manages to march in Tower Hamlets despite a government ban (when their leader hilariously disguised himself as a rabbi) our times don't seem too far from the 1930s. And it doesn't help when some Jews, instead of fighting fascists, appoint one as the foreign minister of Israel. But it won't do to get downhearted. In the 1936 words of the great songwriter born as Israel Isidore Baline: "Before the fiddlers have fled, Before they ask us to pay the bill and while we still have the chance. Let's face the music and dance"

Live Music from:

Klezmer Klub - songs of Yiddish London telling the story of the Jewish east end from 1900 to the 1930s, feat. David Rosenberg's stories of Cable Street
The Ruby Kid - Hip-hop and spoken-word poetry, influenced by the cinema of Woody Allen, the politics of Hal Draper and the music of Aesop Rock.
Daniel Kahn, radical anti fascist cabaret 'a mixture of Klezmer, radical Yiddish song, political cabaret and punk folk', accompanied by top UK Klezmer clarinettist Merlin Shepherd,
The Electric Swing Circus, electro swing sensation.Big band swing. Gypsy jazz. Thundering drum beats. Phat bass lines. A dazzling stage performance.

http://www.klezmerklub.co.uk/Klezmer_Klub/Klezmer_Klub.html
http://www.therubykid.com/
http://www.paintedbird.net/
http://www.merlinshepherd.co.uk/
http://www.electricswingcircus.com/

+ DJ Notarious spinning speeches, 30s swing and hard beats

Full film programme of riots, resistance and rabbles

Talks on Gandhian resistance, Spanish Civil War, Anti-fascist activism today as well as performance poetry.

+ Communist-Fascist Arm Wrestling, The Three Yentas, Live Guernica tribute painting, Cantorial Drag

Dress Code: 1930s chic. Fascist, Communist. Yiddish Musical Hall

Free entry for all who were there in 1936! For the rest of you its £7 on the door and £5 if you book in advance HERE
http://jewdasnopasaran-eorg.eventbrite.com/

October 1st
from 8.30pm
Cable Street Studios
566 Cable Street
London
E1W 3HB


www.jewdas.org

Supported by Bet Klal Yisrael
www.bky.org.uk