On this day, 27 September 1936 in Leeds, following a week of tension during which the British Union of Fascists was forbidden by the city’s Watch Committee to march through the largely Jewish Leylands quarter, Oswald Mosley paraded over 1,000 uniformed Blackshirts in Calverley Street, and marched them to Holbeck.
Press reports suggest very few of them were Leeds natives. Nevertheless, the Leylands was targeted during the previous night with swastikas and slogans daubed on windows and doors. Opposition to the event had been organised and publicised some days previously, with the Communist Party taking the lead.
The anti-fascists chose not to confront them on the streets but at the site of the rally, on Holbeck Moor. The newspapers reported a crowd of 30,000 on the moor, against around a thousand blackshirts.
As Mosley spoke, the Red Flag was sung repeatedly to drown him out and he was unable to finish his speech as stones rained down on him and his fascist crowd, with Mosley sustaining a gash under one eye. “It wasn’t a battle, it was a rout. A complete bloody rout,” said one participant. As the fascists scuttled away, the Blackshirts were ambushed by anti-fascists, resulting in 40 fascists receiving injuries.
Learn more about struggles against Mosley in our podcast episodes 35-37: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/02/17/e35-37-the-43-group/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2092532420931897/?type=3
This man took shotgun pellets for women protesting the wearing of hijabs after the suspicious death of a twenty-two year old woman arrested by morality police in Iran for wearing her hijab “improperly” (some strands of her hair had escaped from under it). Women have taken to the streets to protest by burning their hijabs and cutting their hair short. Currently internet access in Iran is cut off and Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram are removing posts about the protests.
