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Lloyd Williams sat at the table in the kitchen of his mother's house in Aldgate, anxiously studying a map.
It was Sunday, October 4, 1936, and today there was going to be a riot.
The old Roman town of London, built on a hill beside the river Thames, was now the financial district, called the City. West of this hill were the palaces of the rich, and the theaters and shops and cathedrals that catered to them. The house in which Lloyd sat was to the east of the hill, near the docks and the slums. Here for centuries waves of immigrants had landed, determined to work their fingers to the bone so that their grandchildren could one day move from the East End to the West End.
The map Lloyd was looking at so intently was in a special edition of the Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper, and it showed the route of today's march by the British Union of Fascists. They planned to assemble outside the Tower of London, on the border between the City and the East End, then march east--
Straight into the overwhelmingly Jewish borough of Stepney.
Unless Lloyd and people who thought as he did could stop them.
There were 330,000 Jews in Britain, according to the newspaper, and half of them lived in the East End. Most were refugees from Russia, Poland, and Germany, where they had lived in fear that on any day the police, the army, or the Cossacks might ride into town, robbing families, beating old men and outraging young women, lining fathers and brothers up against the wall to be shot.
Here in the London slums those Jews had found a place where they had as much right to live as anyone else. How would they feel if they looked out of their windows to see, marching down their own streets, a gang of uniformed thugs sworn to wipe them all out? Lloyd felt that it just could not be allowed to happen.
The Worker pointed out that from the Tower there were really only two routes the marchers could take. One went through Gardiner's Corner, a five-way junction known as the Gateway to the East End; the other led along Royal Mint Street and the narrow Cable Street. There were a dozen other routes for an individual using side streets, but not for a march. St. George Street led to Catholic Wapping rather than Jewish Stepney, and was therefore no use to the Fascists.
The Worker called for a human wall to block Gardiner's Corner and Cable Street, and stop the march.
The paper often called for things that did not happen: strikes, revolutions, or--most recently--an alliance of all left parties to form a People's Front. The human wall might be just another fantasy. It would take many thousands of people to effectively close off the East End. Lloyd did not know whether enough would show up.
All he knew for sure was that there would be trouble.
At the table with Lloyd were his parents, Bernie and Ethel; his sister, Millie; and sixteen-year-old Lenny Griffiths from Aberowen, in his Sunday suit. Lenny was part of a small army of Welsh miners who had come to London to join the counterdemonstration.
Bernie looked up from his newspaper and said to Lenny: "The Fascists claim that the train fares for all you Welshmen to come to London have been paid by the big Jews."
Lenny swallowed a mouthful of fried egg. "I don't know any big Jews," he said. "Unless you count Mrs. Levy Sweetshop; she's quite big. Anyway, I came to London on the back of a lorry with sixty Welsh lambs going to Smithfield meat market."
Millie said: "That accounts for the smell."
Ethel said: "Millie! How rude."
Lenny was sharing Lloyd's bedroom, and he had confided that after the demonstration he was not planning to return to Aberowen. He and Dave Williams were going to Spain to join the International Brigades being formed to fight the Fascist insurrection.
"Did you get a passport?" Lloyd had asked. Getting a passport was not difficult, but the applicant did have to provide a reference from a clergyman, doctor, lawyer, or other person of status, so a young person could not easily keep it secret.
"No need," Lenny said. "We go to Victoria station and get a weekend return ticket to Paris. You can do that without a passport."
Lloyd had vaguely known that. It was a loophole intended for the convenience of the prosperous middle class. Now the anti-Fascists were taking advantage of it. "How much is the ticket?"
"Three pounds fifteen shillings."
Lloyd had raised his eyebrows. That was more money than an unemployed coal miner was likely to have.
Lenny had added: "But the Independent Labour Party is paying for my ticket, and the Communist Party for Dave's."
They must have lied about their ages. "Then what happens when you get to Paris?" Lloyd had asked.
"We'll be met by the French Communists at the Gare du Nord." He pronounced it gair duh nord. He did not speak a word of French. "From there we'll be escorted to the Spanish border."
Lloyd had delayed his own departure. He told people he wanted to soothe his parents' worries, but the truth was he could not give up on Daisy. He still dreamed of her throwing Boy over. It was hopeless--she did not even answer his letters--but he could not forget her.
Meanwhile Britain, France, and the USA had agreed with Germany and Italy to adopt a policy of nonintervention in Spain, which meant none of them would supply weapons to either side. This in itself was infuriating to Lloyd: surely the democracies should support the elected government? But what was worse, Germany and Italy were breaching the agreement every day, as Lloyd's mother and Uncle Billy pointed out at many public meetings held that autumn in Britain to discuss Spain. Earl Fitzherbert, as the government minister responsible, defended the policy stoutly, saying the Spanish government should not be armed for fear it would go Communist.
This was a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Ethel had argued in a scathing speech. The one nation willing to support the government of Spain was the Soviet Union, and the Spaniards would naturally gravitate toward the only country in the world that helped them.
