A funny thing, nostalgia. It comes from the Greek “nostos”, for homecoming, and “algos”, for pain or longing. Many of us have it for the 60s, even if we weren’t close to being born. We feel we missed out on the all the proper parties and druggy fun.
Yet in the summer of 1962, a legally held, Nazi-inspired rally was held in Trafalgar Square in central London. It had a nostalgia all of its own. The National Socialist Movement (NSM) waved swastikas with slogans that screamed “Free Britain from Jewish control”. This far-right party, with its own paramilitary force called Spearhead, was led by the Cambridge-educated Colin Jordan, who deemed Oswald Mosley a “kosher fascist” for being too “soft” on Jewish people. Surrounding Trafalgar Square were police officers, paid to protect the Nazi rhetoric under the auspices of freedom of speech, warding off the chorus of boos. The boos were voiced by groups of anti-fascists, who, when such events got violent, as they often did, would usually be arrested.
I knew a bit about this fascist revival from my dad’s time as an Anti-Nazi League marcher, him having grown up as an Orthodox Jew in Stamford Hill, north London. But it wasn’t until I read Jo Bloom’s beautiful novel Ridley Road that I realised the extent of the threat and the power of the resistance. In order to defend themselves from not-that-neo-Nazi violence, a militant section of the Jewish community established the 62 Committee, which became famous as the 62 Group. Inspired by the anti-fascist resistance of Cable Street in the 30s and the 43 Group in the 40s, they met muscle with muscle.
As soon as I read about this history, and their ultimate success in pushing the far right to the fringes of British politics, I felt compelled to tell the story on screen. I went to the television producer Nicola Shindler to make it happen.
The more I researched, the more horrifying were the details of this NSM-organised campaign of terror. These included a spate of synagogue arsons, in one of which a young Jewish boy was killed. Despite witness reports that NSM members had been targeting the Jewish school on Cazenove Road, police reported finding a bottle of fizzy pop on the premises, concluded it was a house party gone wrong and made no formal investigation.
This was before the Race Relations Act or any hate speech legislation, so the targets of far-right groups did not have the luxury of police protection. The 62 Group – some of whom were ex-servicemen – were tough, as they had to be. They included Wally Levy, who owned London’s largest black cab firm – Eddie Marsan’s character in Ridley Road, Soly Malinovsky, is in part inspired by him – and Harry Bidney, who had been a leader in the 43 Group.
They raised money, gathered intelligence and had the support of Rabbi Leslie Hardman, who inspired Allan Corduner’s character, Rabbi Lehrer. Hardman was the first army chaplain to liberate Belsen and provide first-hand reports on the living dead inside the camps.
A few years later, they were joined by Monica Medicks, who helped to strategise intelligence from enemy groups. It was learning about female members of the 62 Group that inspired me to centre the story on Bloom’s Vivien Epstein, a young hairdresser from Manchester (played by the astonishing Agnes O’Casey), and to invent her entry into this dangerous underworld.
Jordan would have a short-lived marriage to the glamorous Françoise Dior, Christian Dior’s niece. They cut their fingers and mingled their blood as they made their vows over a copy of Mein Kampf. She wore a diamond swastika brooch and was said to have had an incestuous relationship with her daughter, who later killed herself.
The 62 Group used the anti-fascist newsletter Searchlight to print coded messaging on where to congregate and how to counterattack. They stormed meetings, protests and headquarters and used espionage techniques such as wire-tapping and infiltration.
The use of violence was not accepted by everyone in the Jewish community. The Board of Deputies – the community of Jewish leaders – particularly frowned upon their violent activities, taking a “they go low, we go high” position. But the 62 Group’s tenacity paid off. The NSM ran out of steam and fractured and Dior left Jordan. He was later found guilty of shoplifting three pairs of red knickers from Tesco and fined £50.
When I was writing the show, I asked my father if he had experienced any antisemitism when he was growing up around Ridley Road. He said: “No, not really. Only when I was a little boy and a group of boys roughed me up, took my yarmulke and called me a filthy Jew.” I was surprised I hadn’t heard him bring up this incident before; I asked him what he had done in response. “Nothing,” he said. “I couldn’t. I was on my own and they were a big group of thugs. I just ran home and told my dad.”
“How did he help you through it?” I said, shocked that he might have stored the trauma all this time without therapy, help or healing. “Well, he gave me a good telling off for losing my hat,” he said, laughing. Such is the Jewish way to cope in the face of fury.
Ridley Road begins at 9pm on 3 October on BBC One