The 43 Group was a militant anti-fascist group composed mainly of Jewish veterans in the British Armed Forces from World War II, who fought fascist groups following Oswald Mosely in the late 1940s.
It would not be the last. This direct action sparked the formation in March 1946 of the 3 Group: a militant anti-fascist organization composed mainly, though not entirely, of Jewish British veterans dedicated to shutting down fascism through direct action and pursuing legislation against racist incitement. Later, militant anti-fascists would reject the legislative route because of their revolutionary anti-state politics. But the 43 Group was avowedly ecumenical. It was open to “anyone who wants to fight fascism and anti-Semitism.” Although the group was named after the number of original members, within a month membership increased to three hundred people, organized into “commando” units that attacked fascist events, an “intelligence” department that collected and organized information, and, later on, a propaganda department, social committee, and a team that published the 43 Group newspaper On Guard.139
The 43 Group commando units had several methods of disrupting outdoor fascist meetings. If a single member could get through the cordon of fascist stewards to tip over the speaker’s platform, the police had a policy of not allowing the fascists to set it up again. With that in mind, the Group organized units of about a dozen into wedge formations that, at an agreed time, would start far out in the crowd and build up steam so that they “could break through many times [their] number of muscular stewards” and get to the platform. If the platform was too well guarded, however, the commandos would disperse in the crowd and start arguments and fights all over, to the point where the disorder led the police to shut down the event. Another method was to “jump the pitch” by occupying the fascist meeting space well before they could set up.
By the summer of 1946, the 43 Group was attacking six to ten fascist meetings per week. Beckman estimates that about a third were disrupted by the Group, a third were ended by the police, and a third continued successfully. After a while, the 43 Group became so popular that locals would join them or even shut down fascist events on their own using similar tactics. With the emergence of the “fucking hard case East End Yids,” as the Blackshirts called them, “the keep-your-head-down and get-indoors-quickly mentality had gone for good.”140
In 1947 Oswald Mosley, who had been imprisoned as leader of the British Union of Fascists, formally returned to lead his followers. Given the disruption that the 43 Group and an assortment of communist, Trotskyist, anarchist, and unionist antifascists had unleashed on outdoor meetings, Mosley started holding his events indoors. When anti-fascists couldn’t break through to disrupt Mosley’s first indoor meeting, they hurled bricks and rocks at the fascist stewards guarding the building, though to no avail. After that, though, the 43 Group managed to forge tickets to gain entry to Mosley’s appearances, and once inside, they would start heated arguments with those who had the same seat numbers, thereby disrupting and, often enough, ending the proceedings. Thus were more than half of Mosley’s indoor meetings shut down. Even when Mosley’s new Union Movement held meetings under false names, infiltrators from the 43 Group tipped off the commandos, who would once again disrupt the rallies.141 A 43
“jump the pitch” by occupying the fascist meeting space well before they could set up.
By the summer of 1946, the 43 Group was attacking six to ten fascist meetings per week. Beckman estimates that about a third were disrupted by the Group, a third were ended by the police, and a third continued successfully. After a while, the 43 Group became so popular that locals would join them or even shut down fascist events on their own using similar tactics. With the emergence of the “fucking hard case East End Yids,” as the Blackshirts called them, “the keep-your-head-down and get-indoors-quickly mentality had gone for good.”140
In 1947 Oswald Mosley, who had been imprisoned as leader of the British Union of Fascists, formally returned to lead his followers. Given the disruption that the 43 Group and an assortment of communist, Trotskyist, anarchist, and unionist antifascists had unleashed on outdoor meetings, Mosley started holding his events indoors. When anti-fascists couldn’t break through to disrupt Mosley’s first indoor meeting, they hurled bricks and rocks at the fascist stewards guarding the building, though to no avail. After that, though, the 43 Group managed to forge tickets to gain entry to Mosley’s appearances, and once inside, they would start heated arguments with those who had the same seat numbers, thereby disrupting and, often enough, ending the proceedings. Thus were more than half of Mosley’s indoor meetings shut down. Even when Mosley’s new Union Movement held meetings under false names, infiltrators from the 43 Group tipped off the commandos, who would once again disrupt the rallies.141 A 43
Group infiltrator who became one of Mosley’s most trusted bodyguards once let a group of commandos into Mosley’s mansion, where they stole a trove of documents showing the close relations between the fascist leader and a number of MPs.142
The attacks took a heavy toll on the British fascists (who no longer publicly identified with the term “fascist,” given its unpopularity). As Morris Beckman recounted, “we were going to regard [the fascists] as much an enemy as those we had been fighting during the war…We were very disciplined. We had to be. Our job was to put as many fascists in hospital as we could.”143
The injuries inflicted upon Mosley’s right-hand man, Jeffrey Hamm, bear this out. He had his jaw broken at the “battle of Brighton”; he was knocked unconscious by a flying brick as he addressed a meeting in London; and 43 Group commandos, formerly of the Royal Marines and paratroops, assaulted him at his home even though he had a former Nazi SS paratrooper for a bodyguard.144
By 1949, the fascist threat had receded. A number of former Mosleyites had even become vocal anti-fascists. In part, this was because “the fierce aggression of the anti-fascists made them depressingly aware that every time they showed their faces they were going to be savagely attacked.” For many it was simply not worth it.145 In 1950, the 43 Group disbanded, believing that their goal of stamping out Mosleyite fascism had been achieved, at least for the time being.