KINDER
SCOUT HERO BENNY ROTHMAN – FIGHTING FASCISM
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Born on 1 June 1911, Benny Rothman is best known for his
major role in the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass of April 1932 that paved the way
for the 1949 National Parks & Access to the Countryside Act that ultimately
led to the ‘Right to Roam’ Countryside and Rights of Way Act of 2000.
For more on this watch https://markwrite.co.uk/2018/11/29/mass-trespass/
Benny though was much more than just the Trespass.
So on the 115th anniversary of his birth then on
my blog at https://writemark.blogspot.com
there will be a number of articles from
my 2016 booklet on Benny and which will be republished later this year in a new
format. It can be read at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/6328-benny-rothman.pdf
Readers can listen to the book at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/benny-rothman.mp3
We start with his fight against fascism across Manchester
in the 1930s when he particularly successfully organised Jewish working class
youth.
Blacklisted
When Benny came out of prison in 1933 following the Kinder
Scout Trespass the continuing high levels of unemployment meant he could not
find work locally as the negative publicity also meant he was blacklisted. The
Young Communist League (YCL) proposed and he agreed to go to Burnley with Ernie
Regan, an Openshaw lad of Irish extraction, where the pair would be involved in
the struggle across North East Lancashire by clothing workers who were on a
prolonged strike against the “more-loom system.” The aim was to build a YCL
group but this proved almost impossible as any previous organisation had become
defunct.
Benny found the poverty in Burnley to be much worse than in
the Manchester area. Interviewed years later he recalled a young married man in
his early 20s. The couple were living in a little terraced house and had a
table but only one chair and a couple of boxes to sit on. They may have had one
or two cups, but they were living in abject poverty. His wife was expecting a
baby and he went to the hospital to arrange for her to go into hospital to have
the baby. He was told she could only go in when she went into labour. At one
point they thought she was going into labour and they rang for an ambulance but
were told they had to make their way to hospital on their own. They set off to
the hospital which was at the top of a long hill and as they were walking the
last lap she collapsed on the pavement. A tram driver stopped his tram and took
the couple as near as possible to the hospital. The baby was lost and the tram
driver got into very serious trouble for doing what he did because he had
breached regulations. “That was an indication of the atmosphere at the
time," said Benny.
A sporting breakthrough
Attempts to get young people from the mills into a political
movement floundered as meetings were very poorly attended. More successful was
the establishment of a Sunday Football League but when the football authorities
said they would exclude any football team who played in it from the ordinary
normal competitions then this broke up. It was also possible to get a small
rambling club started. But these were no consolation for the failure to build a
political organisation. Benny returned to Cheetham after 4 to 5 months away,
stating later “I wasn’t cut out for what I had been asked to do as I wasn’t
previously that much involved directly in politics.”
Communist Branch revived
On his return home, he helped resurrect the Cheetham YCL
branch in 1933 and became its first secretary. This was to become one of the
two largest YCL branches in the country – the other being in another large
Jewish area, Stepney. Later in the year, Benny helped set up the Challenge Club
on Herbert Street, Cheetham. Challenge was the name of the YCL paper. The club,
which eventually shared a healthy number of its 400-plus members and facilities
with Cheetham YCL branch, offered an impressive range of activities including
rambling, cycling, a boxing club, gymnastics and even Sunday evening dances
that because of its amplified music became very popular with local young
people. The club was to become the hub of anti-fascist activities in Manchester
over the next few years.
Meanwhile the act of combining social with political
activity meant the YCL branch grew to over 200 dwarfing the local CPGB
membership itself which was less than double figures. Such growth failed to
prevent Benny being criticised with his opponents fiercely arguing he was not
engaging in political but social activity. Benny in 1933 at High Tor, Matlock.
He was returning from the Clarion Cycling Club AGM in Nottingham.
Fighting MOSLEY
A former Conservative MP, Sir Oswald Mosley had been a
minister in the Labour Government of 1929-31 but, inspired by Benito Mussolini
in Italy, he helped found the BUF in October 1932. Taking advantage of the
desperate economic climate right across Lancashire, Mosley aimed to make
Manchester an important centre of his activities. He blamed the Depression on
minorities, including Jews, and left-wing and communist movements, rather than
on the capitalist system. Mosley was successful in obtaining the backing of
the Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and at one point the BUF claimed to
have 50,000 members, including a corps of black shirted paramilitary stewards,
nicknamed the Blackshirts.
Fascism became visible in Britain at the same time as Adolf
Hitler began to consolidate power in Germany after he became Chancellor on 30
January 1933. He then eliminated all political opposition prior to becoming
dictator of Germany. Daily Worker reports on the battle against Nazi terror in
Germany. In Manchester the BUF set up its headquarters in the Northumberland
Street and Tyson Street areas where many Jewish people lived.
According to Benny
the BUF drew their membership from "lots of unemployed people who got a
uniform and a club where they could box...there was a lot of antisemitism at
the time." According to Manchester Chief Constable John Maxwell, the
fascists adopted a "policy of deliberate provocation of the
Jews...visiting the Jewish quarter to make insulting remarks which lead to
outbreaks of disorder." The Jewish Chronicle of 24 July 1936 reported how
fascists had appeared outside a Cheetham cinema that was frequented by many
Jewish people and began selling their newspaper, Action, whilst shouting out
“the only paper in the country not financed by Jews.”
Faced with such intimidation, Benny helped organise local
opposition.
“The battles with Mosley’s Blackshirts started when they
tried to go into Cheetham and were driven out by the YCL. We eventually made it
impossible for them to hold an event. At one meeting we turned their van over
and at any event they organised we turned up and heckled. On one occasion I was
arrested but the charge was later dropped.”
However the fascists were able to hold weekly meetings in
other parts of Manchester and they distributed literature door-to-door that
sought to divide the working class on religious and ethnic lines. Eighteen new
BUF branches were established locally in 1933 and 1934. The largest BUF
activities were mass meetings and rallies, which were designed to demonstrate
its invincibility to its opponents and potential supporters.
A large rally was held on 12 March 1933 at the Manchester
Free Trade Hall and a further Manchester city centre BUF meeting was held on 29
October 1933. Benny Rothman was amongst the anti-fascists who physically
opposed both meetings. At the former he was very fortunate when the event
erupted into fighting between the fascist and anti-fascists, who were mainly
Communists, and he was shoved over a balcony, only escaping serious injury when
his fall was broken by a fascist sitting below.
Daily Mirror praises Mussolini & fascism
Fascism was meanwhile gaining significant political support
and interest. The following day the Daily Mirror editorial was headed Eleven
Years of (Italian) Fascism. It concluded “Rome was not built in a day, and
Fascism, though nominally eleven years old, has its roots in the best of
Italian civilisation. It is interesting that the Duce, (Benito Mussolini) in
his message on Saturday emphasised the severity of his task before Fascism.
Whether this revolution is the "world's word of command and hope "
has yet to be proved. What will Europe be like at the end of the century?”
Then on 31 October 1933 the Daily Mirror carried an
article reporting the comments of the Nottingham Lord Mayor Mr H Seeley Whitby
headed “We need a Hitler” in which the Lord Mayor hoped for a man with “the
energy and initiative” of Hitler and Mussolini.
At Belle Vue on 29 September 1934 Mosley picked up on
Hitler's attacks on Jews by telling the audience that his opposition was
"financed by Jewish financiers" who "had stabbed our men in the
back when they were fighting in the last war." This event though proved to
be a failure for the BUF.
‘Bye Bye Blackshirt: Oswald Mosley defeated at Belle Vue
– Michael Wolf.
Reproduced thanks to Searchlight magazine.
After the notorious
brutality of the fascist meeting earlier in 1934 Mosley thought he would have a
repeat performance in Manchester. To combat this threat an anti-fascist
co-ordinating committee was created to counter the fascist thugs. A dynamic
campaign of leafleting, fly posting and public meetings were organised to
mobilise the opposition. Deputations were organised representing the broadest
possible democratic coalition to demand the banning of the fascist meeting. In
the face of all the protests the meeting was allowed, and to add insult to
injury the Chief Constable banned all marches, a decision clearly taken to make
anti fascist mobilisation more difficult.
However, the anti-fascists were determined that there would
be no repeat of fascist violence and intimidation. Saturday 29th September the
opposition mobilised.
Three marches from Openshaw, Miles Platting, and Cheetham
marched to meet the hundreds already waiting to meet them at Ardwick Green to
form a united demonstration of over 3,000 who would march along Hyde road to
join the protest meeting outside Belle Vue. The contingent from Cheetham
comprised in the main young working class Jewish activists from the Challenge
Club, the Youth Front Against War & Fascism and the Young Communist League.
Together they formed the backbone of the group that was to rout the fascists
later in the day.
When the marchers arrived at Belle Vue they were greeted by
the hundreds assembled for the protest meeting. The marchers however had not
come to listen to speeches. They had come to stop Mosley.
At the agreed time they left the meeting, crossed the road
and in orderly fashion queued up to pay their entrance fee for Belle Vue. Once
inside the amusement park scouting parties tried to find the fascists. They had
no success, as these examples of the “master race” were hiding in the halls
hired for them.
Mosley was to speak from The Gallery which was protected by
the lake, his supporters were to assemble on the open-air dance floor which was
in front of the lake. Even so the fascist leader did not feel safe and in
addition to the gang of thugs he called his bodyguard, there were wooden
barriers and the police. In case this was not enough searchlights were
available to be directed against the anti-fascists and fire engines with water
cannon at the ready. The scene was set. 500 Blackshirts marched from a hall
under The Gallery and formed up military style.
Mosley, aping Mussolini stepped forward to the microphone to
speak. He was greeted by a wall of sound that completely drowned his speech.
“Down with fascism”, “Down with the Blackshirt thugs!”, “The rats the rats
clear out the rats!”, “One two three four five we want Mosley, dead or alive!”
There were anti fascist songs, the Red Flag, and the Internationale. The sound
never stopped for over an hour. In spite of the powerful amplifiers turned up
to maximum Mosley could not be heard To quote The Manchester Guardian, “Sitting
in the midst of Sir Oswald’s personal bodyguard within three yards of where he
was speaking you could barely catch two consecutive sentences.”
Mosley tried all the theatrical tricks he knew to try and
make an impression but without any effective sound he appeared like a demented
marionette. Defeat stared him in the face and he knew it, as did his audience
which slunk away as soon as the police bodyguard was removed. The humiliation
of the fascists was complete. The only sound they could now hear was the
singing of ‘bye bye Blackshirt’ to the tune ‘bye ’bye blackbird’, a popular
song of the time.
With the fascists defeated and demoralised, the protesters
raised their banners and posters high and proudly rejoined the meeting outside
Bele Vue.
Mosley’s humiliation was complete, what was supposed to have been his most important meeting since Olympia was in fact the first of a series of defeats he was to suffer in Manchester.
DEATH TO FASCISM.
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