Foreign News: Mosley Shall Not Pass!

Ignoring orders from the Labor Party and prominent British Labor leaders, half a million British proletarians liberally sprinkled with Jews went on an anti-Fascist rampage last week which turned out to be London’s biggest riot in years. Every provocation had been given the proletariat by No. 1 British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, who had announced weeks ahead that 5,000 of his Blackshirts would march through the tortuous streets of London’s Jewish quarter east of the Tower. This was interpreted by Jews and workers alike as a challenge to battle, the British Communist Party hurling its cohorts with the slogan “MOSLEY SHALL NOT PASS!”

The Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, strove to uphold British rights of freedom to demonstrate, but he thought it necessary to cancel all police leaves and send 10,000 Bobbies to keep order in East London. Too late to avert the riot, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police Sir Philip Game informed Sir Oswald that mobsters were getting out of hand and the 5,000 Fascists could not be allowed to march. In a closed car, the windshield of which was quickly smashed by a paving stone, the Fascist leader rushed to his lined-up Blackshirts, yelled “Sir Philip has banned the march!”

A free fight had meanwhile begun, with Communists and Jews strewing marbles in the street to make the horses of mounted police lose their footing. After two hours of fisticuffs, five Fascists and 95 antiFascists were arrested, 64 persons had to be hospitalized, 204 suffered lesser hurts and Sir Oswald Mosley’s ungrateful cohorts dispersed jeering: “Jewboy Simon’s got the wind up!” Sir Oswald’s canceled parade was described by Communists as “the most humiliating defeat ever suffered by any figure in British politics.”

At Edinburgh, where the British Labor Party in annual conference commended the Government’s policy of non-intervention in Spain, Leader Herbert Morrison of the London County Council attacked non-intervention at home, snorted: “Sir Oswald Mosley’s demonstration was consciously, deliberately and mischievously organized for the purpose of stimulating violence and racial strife in London. That was obvious to everybody long in advance and the Government had ample time and justification for preventing the thing. If the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, had been firm and clear, he would have acted in time.”