Born 115 years ago today: KINDER SCOUT HERO BENNY ROTHMAN ON FIGHTING FASCISM

 

 Born 115 years ago today

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 115^th 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.