The Battle of Cable Street

LoveReading4Kids Says

June 2022 Book of the Month | Interest Age Teen Reading Age 8+

This is a story that we need to be told. A Carnegie Medal winner, Tanya Landman is one of our finest writers. She is particularly good at writing about historical events, picking out their relevance to our lives today with an unflinching honesty. This short novel is set in the decade before the second World War. Elsie and her family live in a packed, noisy tenement block just off Cable Street in the heart of Stepney. The family are poor, but so are all their neighbours and, despite the daily arguments between Mrs Smith and Mrs Rosenberg, they get along. Until the arrival of Oswald Mosley that is. Elsie’s story details the rise of Mosley and his party, and the impact it has in Stepney, turning neighbours into enemies, bringing friends into danger, and playing to the very worst in people. The story concludes with the famous Battle of Cable Street when ordinary East Enders – in defiance of the Home Secretary and the police – bravely barred Mosley’s Blackshirt bully boys from marching through their home. The events are as shocking now as they were in 1936 and truths about the reception Mosley received from the British establishment will make you feel ‘sweaty and awkward’ as Elsie says. The facts speak for themselves, but Elsie’s voice is clear, direct, full of anger at the injustice she sees.

Andrea Reece

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