October 4 2011 will see the 75th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street. Three Five Leaves writers took part in the battle, Bill Fishman, Bernard Kops and the late Harold Rosen. I spoke to Bernard a few days ago and he is - as always - looking forward to the next stage of his writing career with three sessions at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Bill's health has not been great but he is hoping to return to giving talks at U3A on East End history. A couple of weeks ago he was telling me about meeting Gandhi when he was stationed in India. Bill was a supporter of the Indian independence movement. He sometimes surprises local Indians by starting chatting to them in Hindi.Five Leaves is looking ahead to the five books we are publishing for the anniversary. We are republishing Alan Gibbons' children's book Street of Tall People; the forgotten novel October Day by Frank Griffin; the Cable Street Group's booklet on the Battle; an as yet un-named book on Jewish responses to fascism by David Rosenberg; and Everything Happens on Cable Street, about everything else that happened there. The latter will include everything from the Maltese gangs, the modern day S & M club through to the famous film, To Sir, With Love. Roger Mills, a local resident will be putting that together. Meantime, here's The Men They Could Not Hang with The Ghosts of Cable Street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKv5gjOzTA
