Ridley Road- surely the wrong time.

I thought that as well.

Franbern Great to know you are trying to make a true-life version. Do keep GN informed and if you could start a thread about direct action and post some photos it would be great.

I was a little worried about the "glamorisation" of Colin Jordan. As far as I can find out he had no children. His marriage to a neice of Dior only lasted a few months and it didn't happen until after his imprisonment. According to Wiki she left him because he was too "bourgeois". So why was he given a son and was he made more attractive?

I may be wrong, but I got the impression that they were going under cover to Germany to fight the fight over there.

A possible series 2?

ps
Merlotgran I think Vivien and Jack needed to take refuge in Israel because Colin Jordan's group would be looking for them to take revenge.

In those days there was a lot of communication between Israel and Germany. And other countries . About compensation to Jews for their family losses during the Holocaust.
We have a Jewish family name and around 2000 I had a phone call ( here in UK) asking if we had ever owned a house in Berlin which had been taken over by the Nazis in WW2. In which case we could claim compensation. I had to answer no. But there are still many Jews here who are refugees from Germany.
Germany still pays these elderly people a small pension.

Why did Vivien need a fake passport? Surely anyone could fly to Israel in the sixties and why would it be a long time before she could contact her parents?

What did I miss?

Ah …Thank you I love cheese

The passport belonged to Vivian's cousin, who was German.

* Atqui* - I think Vivien was going to fly to Israel. with Jack.
Don't know about the German passport - I never noticed that

Sorry , of course I meant facist behaviour

Although the tv series may have strayed from the facts ( thanks Franbern for your interesting account) , at least it highlighted the vile anti facist behaviour in the 60s of which I’m sure many of us were ignorant .
Can anyone explain why Vivian had to have a German passport at the end?

Just to say that I have now managed to find some photos that I took both at the Jordan Rally - and also of five us 'filibustering' in Ridley ROad, on the early morning of the day which would become known as the Battle of Ridley Road. As I have said in previous post. there was a very large anti-fascist gathering that Sunday in Totteham (a few miles away), as Mosley had widely advertised that he was speaking there. My YS group had recei ved informtion this was a scam, and he intended to hold a large meeting in Ridley Road. We received this information late on the Saturday night, and neither the 62 group or any of the other anti-fascist groups would believe us, so we started filibustering at about 6.00 am,.

It was nearly midday when Mosley's son, Max Mosley turned up in his sports car, with some mates, meaning to set things up for his father, and discovered that we had put the kybosh on that.
I am in touch with many people from that period, and we are trying to to put together a real-life version of what happened them. Would like to also mention Gerry Ross and his organisation of ex-war veterans, who was foremost in the battle against the re-insurgance of fascism in East London during this time. Far better response that the 62 group.

I’ve just watched the last episode of the excellent series. The old woman who rented out her room was the actress Rita Tushingham, I knew I recognised her.

Thanks from me too,*Franbern*. Much admiration for the part you and your friends played.
.I've just found this thread and I'm going to catch up on the series.
I was living and working in Hackney in the early 60s, in a Jewish neighbourhood probably just before all this blew up .

I was living in SE London as a young teenager in 1962 and I remember being very upset by a group that met in Lewisham in the street and shouted abuse against black people, mainly Jamaicans in those days. Being naive I attempted to defend them and ask why they were doing that and got abused , spat on and called a n..gger lover. I was 14 years old and it was my first inkling that such vile people existed. There was nothing said about Jewish people though.

Frabern, we are all becoming a part of history but yours is part of the countries history. You should write it all down, if only for your family.

I wasn't even in England in the early 1960s; so I knew nothing about these events. That makes it all the more wonderful to read your first-hand account. Thank you.

Just to add, that our meeting room in the Hackney Labour Party Rooms (just around the corner to Ridley Road), was a tall, narrow terraced property. On the ground floor, at the back was a kitchen.
A couple of our members were wandering back to their homes late one night, walked past and saw the front door was ajar. So they invesitgated. The local fascists, had broken in - piled a number of wooden kitchen chairs on top of the gas rings, piled up to the ceilng, and lit all the gas jets under the chairs. Also graffited the walls - so we knew exactly who ahd done it.
As I say, terraced property, three stories high. Houses each side with multi-occupied, and if this fire had taken hold would probably have caused many injuries and deaths - but only that of immigrant families - so I suppose the fascists felt this would have been an excellent outcome.
Fortunately, the lads managed to pull down the chairs, turn of the gas rings, etc before anything had taken hold.
No, never thought of writing it myself. But may give it a try.

Adding my thanks too, Franbern.

This a light-weight romantic novel adapted by a comedy-actor-writer into a drama with clichéd characters and dialogue and clumsy unbelievable plotting that bears next to no resemblance to the book.

The upside is that it draws renewed attention to these important events in the history of the persection of Jewish (and black) people in 1960s London. I hope it encourages people to read about and research the real events rather than waste money on the novel.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Solemani

www.theguardian.com/film/2016/sep/24/sarah-solemani-had-to-hide-pregnancy-worked-until-due

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/02/ridley-road-how-britains-heinous-nazi-horrors-inspired-my-tv-thriller

Thank you too trisher for starting his discusson which has, perhaps, taken off in a direction that you hadn’t anticipated and which I am certainly learning from.

Thanks for that fascinating account Franbern. Besides being factual it sounds actually more interesting and exciting than this fictional drama. Thank goodness for people like you.

That's fascinating, Franbern.

Have you thought about writing a book of your own, or at least an article from the point of view of someone who was there, so that the truth about what happened doesn't get lost, or believed to be what happened in the drama?

What a great post Fanbern, thank you.

That's so interesting, Franbern and a shame there have been so many changes in the adaptation.

Thank you, Early. I remember taking part in the Q&A with Jo Bloom but couldn't remember what I'd written because the book is so unrecognisable I think I may have to read it again.

Very loosely based on real events. It is based on a romantic novel written by someone who was not present at these events. I WAS.......and very active in the Dalson area which included Ridley Road during those years. Never part of the 62 group, although always an active ant-fascist.

I was at the Colin Jordan Trafalgar Square rally which was extremely crowded with all types of anti-fascists. Jorden was trying to revive anti-jewish reactions. But the real fascist dangers of that period in the early 1960's was the Mosley movement. And, this concentrated far more on being anti-immigrant (ie anti=black), than anti-semetic. So, Yes correctly in Black History month.

They advertised (widely) a meeting in Tottenham, at which Oswald Mosley would speak - and the 62 group and other anti-fascist groups all saw it as the new Cable Street, and rallied people to go there to prevent it from all parts of the UK.

The night before this meeting was due, my local Young Socialist group had a phone call from one of our members (who unknown to us had infiltrated the local Moseleyite branch), informing us that Moseley was actually intending to speak at Ridley Road - NOT Tottenham. We informed the 62 group who did not believe us. So five of us went at 6.00 am with a soapbox to filibust in Ridley Road, Informed local constabulary - who were also convinced all the trouble would be at Tottenham, not Dalston. We kept that 'meeting' going, just reading from Sunday papers until midday, when a red sports car with Max Mosely and three others drove past us - showing total fury that we were there and thus, preventing their plans.

Oswald M arrived = could not use Ridley Rd, (because we were there - and law those days was any street meeting with at least five people attending was lawful), advised by local police to use somewhere else in Dalston - which did not fit in with their carefully laid plans to hold that meeting in the iconic Ridley Road Market area. A few hundred of his fascist supporters decided to take our pitch by force -fortunately we had managed, finally to get a message to the 62 group and other anti-fascists up in Tottenham and they just about arrived in time to prevent me and my comrades from being attacked by the fascists. Then the resultant melee lasted for some time and became know as the Battle of Ridley Road.
Such a pity that the writers of the TV series or the book, never bothered actually to talk to those of us who really were there in that area during that time.

Look what I found in the GN archives from 2015:

www.gransnet.com/forums/books_book_club/1218599-September-book-club-Ridley-Road

First episode watched - nothing like the book but plodding on as it features two favourite actors Rory Kinnear and Eddie Marsan. Agnes O'Casey is impressive as Vivien.

Thank you Doodledog for that explanation, it puts things into a bit more perspective.

I think the drama was (rather heavy-handedly) making the point that 'ordinary people' need to speak out against fascism, not just those who are being targeted.

There were several set-piece speeches saying just that - 'it's not enough to be not a fascist, you need to act' etc.

The landlady represents people who turn a blind eye to things that don't directly affect them, and don't 'join the dots'. She is scared at the thought of change (eg the tower blocks that are replacing the terraces where she has lived all her life), is alone as her sons were killed in the war, and susceptible to people with a simple message that gives here someone to blame. She hasn't made the connection between the message of the councillor bloke and the reason that her sons died.

The hairdresser is clearly not racist - her son is mixed race - and she has seen racism first-hand as a result. She is busy getting on with making a living, but when called to action she is happy to get involved (although, by that time in the drama I was losing interest, as the escape scenes were so silly).

If they had been cast as Jewish, it would have been more difficult to make the point that everyone needs to be alert to fascism (not just jews and other victims), and that we all need to be prepared to fight against it. It is dramatic licence, and I don't see any anti-semitism there.