London Marks 90th Anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street with East End March

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LONDON — Thousands are expected in East London on Sunday, October 4, 2026, for a march and rally marking the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, when local residents blocked a march by Oswald Mosley's fascist Blackshirts on October 4, 1936.

According to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), marchers will assemble at midday outside Tower Hamlets Town Hall (opposite Whitechapel Tube station, E1 1BY), move off at 13:00, and proceed to St George's Gardens, E1 0BH, where music, speeches and poetry are scheduled from 14:30. The TUC describes the event as a celebration and family event, and asks participants to bring trade union banners and flags.

Unite the union says it is participating in the major events this autumn marking the anniversary, calling the 1936 confrontation the country's biggest mobilisation against fascism: over 100,000 people took to the streets under the slogan "They Shall Not Pass," and the police ultimately redirected Mosley's Blackshirts, unable to march through the East End.

The RMT union is also supporting the march and rally, with a union representative scheduled to speak at the event. The TUC held a half-day conference on the historical lessons of Cable Street at Congress House on October 2.

The original 1936 march had been planned by Mosley to take his British Union of Fascists — modelled on Mussolini's Blackshirts and Hitler's SA — through London's largely Jewish East End; it was explicitly antisemitic in intent. The mass opposition on the day forced the fascists to turn back, in what organisers describe as a historic victory for antifascism.