A forgotten battle between British fascists and their Jewish opponents prefigured modern debates about free speech and democracy
along the seafront in Brighton, waving flags and heralded by drummers. As they reached the pier and turned inland, towards a park known as The Level, they were set upon by a gang of toughs. Dazed and cut off from the ranks behind them, the men at the front were promptly assailed by another gang barrelling down to the beach. For the rest of that summer day, June 5th 1948, the attackers thrashed their quarry all over town. A leader of the march, Jeffrey Hamm, was hospitalised with a broken jaw.
Dingy, battered post-war Britain was in some ways fertile territory for political insurgents. Parts of London and other cities were bombed-out wastelands. Housing was short; food rationing grew even tighter than during the conflict; crime spiked. The winter of 1946 was severe. “As economic conditions decline, manifestations of anti-Semitism will increase,” predicted a bulletin of the 43 Group, now held in the archive of the Jewish Museum in London. “And we all know what that will mean.
In the only book about the 43 Group before Mr Sonabend’s, one of its founders, Morris Beckman, writes that “The keep-your-head-down and get-indoors-quickly mentality”, which much of Anglo-Jewry had adopted when the Mosleyites harassed them in the 1930s, “had gone for good.” It hadn’t entirely. Older people and established community organs still thought restraining the fascists was the government’s job. “My parents’ attitude was, ‘Keep out of it’,” says Mr Konopinski.
As “We Fight Fascists” entertainingly documents, however, fighting was only part of the technicolour story. The 43 Group published and distributed pamphlets and a newspaper, and raised funds to cover hospital bills and legal expenses. When fascists framed Flamberg for attempted murder, he was defended by one of the Nuremberg prosecutors. There was a headquarters in Bayswater and later near Leicester Square, and training in unarmed combat at a Soho gym.
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