Harry Kaufman demonstrates how to turn a copy of the Guardian into a useful cosh. A tap across the palm gives a hint of the damage it would cause if it were swung in anger.
"This of course was only for self-defence," he smiles. "If you were arrested, you simply dropped it on the floor and it was just a newspaper. Others carried bits of lead piping, iron bars and things."
Kaufman, 77, stocky and full of life, is one of the younger survivors of a violent guerrilla army of British Jews who for five years waged war against Oswald Mosley's fascists on the streets of London and other big cities. Tonight, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Kaufman will be reunited with former comrades at a special event to commemorate the 43 Group.*
Morris Beckman, 88, one of the founder members, explains why it was set up. "I had been in the merchant navy, survived two torpedo attacks on the Atlantic convoys, and I came back home to Amhurst Road, Hackney to hugs and kisses. My mother went out to make some tea and my dad said, ' The bastards are back – Mosley and his Blackshirts'."
He, like thousands of British Jews, came home from the war thinking fascism was buried. Each week they saw fresh newsreel evidence of the Nazi genocide. But they were sickened to find Mosley released from internment and reviving the British Union of Fascists, which had flourished in Jewish areas such as the East End before the war. He says:
"The Talmud Torah (religious school) in Dalston had its windows smashed. Jewish shops were daubed 'PJ' (Perish Judah). You heard, 'We have got to get rid of the Yids' and 'They didn't burn enough of them in Belsen'."
With the Labour home secretary James Chuter Ede refusing to take action and the Jewish establishment urging peaceful protest, the demobbed Jews had had enough.
In April 1946, Beckman was one of 43 people (38 men and five women) who met at Maccabi House, a Jewish sports club in south Hampstead, and the 43 Group was born. "We wanted revenge – the Holocaust was in our minds. We decided we had to out-fascist the fascists," he says.
By 1947, the group had over 1,000 members – all war veterans — in London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Newcastle, including 100 women and a network of gentile spies who infiltrated fascist organisations.
The toughest – former Royal Marines, paratroops and Guards – became the commandos, on call day and night to disrupt meetings and carry out raids. A network of London black-cab drivers provided eyes, ears and transport.
Ridley Road market in Hackney drew crowds of 700 to hear Mosley and junior demagogues rage against the "alien" menace. Beckman says the 43 Group would "salt" the crowd with infiltrators who would distract the police by fighting among themselves. Then two flying wedges of commandos would drive through from either side aiming to overturn the platform. If the meeting was disrupted the police were forced to close it down."
He estimates more than 2000 meetings were disrupted in this way. "They saw us as stereotypes, the nervous Jewish tailor clutching a bag of money, when we were young men, trained to fight. I interviewed some fascists years later and they said they left Mosley because they didn't want to get a beating. We made a lot of people A&E cases."
Money flooded in from prominent Jews such as the boxing promoter Jack Solomons and the businessman Sir Charles Clore. Every month Bud Flanagan (born Reuben Weintrop and a member of the Crazy Gang comedy quartet) sent a £30 cheque with a note saying "Good work, boys".
Kaufman signed up for the 43 Group after seeing a newspaper headline: "Jewish war heroes arrested after Mosley protest".
The group's team of forgers may have saved him from prison. "I was on top of somebody whacking him and a police officer grabbed me and said sort of 'You're nicked'. Behind me, Reggie Morris, a big bloke in a white mac, showed the officer a card: "Special branch. I'll take this one.
He marched me around the corner and said 'Now fuck off'."
He was arrested again in Tottenham and says he was only spared jail because he had been called up for national service in the RAF.
Jules Konopinski, 79, was a commando veteran of Ridley Road. He came to Hackney from Poland with his family in 1939. His mother's nine brothers and sisters died in the extermination camps. In 1946, his uncle, a survivor of Auschwitz, moved in. "I had eyewitness evidence of the Holocaust and there were these Nazis walking around saying the Jews are like rats."
When asked if he seriously injured anyone he will only say "Yes". He took part in raids on fascist homes, staked out cemeteries that had been the target of fascist daubings. "We visited one fascist at home after an attack and severely reprimanded him. We said if any one of ours is hurt again we will come back to find 10 of you."
Today, amid denunciations of Israeli aggression in Gaza, Beckman, Kaufman and Konopinski have no regrets and say they are proud of fighting fascism. Beckman concludes: "We defended the community by making it impossible for the fascists to terrorise us."
* Stand Up to Hatred, Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, London E2, 7pm, Tuesday 27 January
