“Holbeck Moor was part of a wider refusal by working-class communities to allow fascists to use economic hardship as a licence for racism and violence.”
Jon Trickett MP remembers the Battle of Holbeck Moor, when Leeds stood up to Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts — and asks what lessons that day holds for us now.
The chilling sight of men in black shirts, black hoodies and balaclavas in Dover this month reminds me of the times when in England there were thugs in blackshirts. 90 years ago this month they marched into the East End and slunk out defeated.
Cable Street is rightly remembered. It was a great popular stand against fascism, and its place in our history is secure. But we shouldn’t imagine that the resistance to the fascists only occurred in London. My home city, Leeds should remember its own battle too. One week before Cable Street, on Sunday 27 September 1936, Oswald Mosley brought his Blackshirts to Holbeck Moor. They came to make a display of strength. They left having learned that Leeds would not be cowed.
Their black rally was broken up by a mass anti-fascist crowd. Mosley was shouted down. The fascists were forced away under police protection. This was the Battle of Holbeck Moor: a proud moment when ordinary people in an industrial northern city decided that fascism would not go unchallenged.
It wasn’t just a historical footnote. It was part of a national movement against Mosley, rooted in the streets, workplaces and communities of this country.
Mosley’s Road to Fascism
Mosley did not begin his political life as a fascist. In 1929 capitalism went into a crisis and the effects are remembered still. He was a rising Labour politician and a minister in Ramsay MacDonald’s government, given responsibility for tackling unemployment. He produced an ambitious programme of public works, protection for industry and state intervention, but it was rejected by the Labour Cabinet and the Treasury who clung on to fiscal orthodoxy even in the face of growing poverty and unemployment. He resigned from the government in May 1930, impatient with Labour’s caution and convinced that the parliamentary system could not meet the crisis.
Mosley then formed the New Party in 1931. It performed badly at the general election, lost its momentum and moved rapidly to the authoritarian right. After visiting Mussolini’s Italy, Mosley embraced fascism and in 1932 launched the British Union of Fascists. The movement adopted uniforms, staged marches and rallies, and increasingly made antisemitism central to its politics. The result was not a solution to unemployment or national decline. It was a politics of scapegoating and intimidation.
So, Why Leeds?
Leeds was a major industrial city, sustained by textiles, clothing, engineering and many other trades. It was also a city marked by the hardship of the Depression: unemployment, insecurity and the daily struggle to make ends meet.
Those conditions created anger. The question was what to do with it.
Mosley’s answer was to direct it at Jews, migrants and other supposed enemies within. The anti-fascist answer was very different: that working people had more in common with one another than with the wealthy interests and political establishment which had failed them.
Leeds had a substantial Jewish community, including members of my own family. Many families had roots in Eastern Europe, just as we did. That was one reason the city became a target. The Blackshirts originally intended to march through the Leylands, the neighbourhood most strongly associated with Jewish Leeds. Fearing trouble, the city authorities ordered that Mosely could not lead his followers through the Jewish area so they decided to rally in south Leeds, on Holbeck Moor.
Even before Mosley arrived, the purpose of the visit was clear. They emulated Hitler’s stormtroopers in Germany. Swastikas and antisemitic slogans were daubed on Jewish homes and businesses, and Jewish people were assaulted in the streets. This was not simply another political meeting. It was an attempt to frighten a whole community.
Leeds Organises
The response was broad. Opposition was organised by groups among socialists, trades unionists, communists, Jewish groups and many others. Mass distribution of leaflets, meetings and workplace networks were mobilised. The activists did not agree about everything; the divisions on the left, for example, were real. But on this question, many people understood that division and passivity would only help Mosley.
They turned out in their thousands on Holbeck. The precise total of antifascists on the Moor that day has often been estimated at 30,000. But the precise number matters less than the scale of what happened. The Blackshirts, around 1,000 strong, were vastly outnumbered. And this was not the only such mobilisation in the North. Across the decade, Mosley’s movement met determined opposition in northern towns and cities, including Manchester, Midlesborough, Newcastle and Liverpool. Holbeck Moor was part of a wider refusal by working-class communities to allow fascists to use economic hardship as a licence for racism and violence.
The Battle on the Moor
The Blackshirts gathered in Leeds city centre and marched towards Holbeck Moor, with Mosley joining them at the end. Waiting on the Moor was a vast crowd. Mosley attempted to speak from a van. He could not make himself heard. The crowd sang “The Red Flag” and shouted him down. Police formed a protective cordon around the fascist leader and his followers, but stones were thrown and Mosley was struck, receiving a cut near his eye.
The rally collapsed. As the Blackshirts withdrew, further clashes followed. Around forty fascists were reported injured, some requiring hospital treatment. Mosley had come to Leeds to demonstrate that fascism was advancing. Instead, Leeds demonstrated that fascism could be stopped.
That is the central lesson. Nothing about this was inevitable. It happened because people were organised: in their communities, in workplaces, in trade unions and political organisations. The people on Holbeck Moor did not wait for someone else to defend them. They did it themselves.
From Leeds to a Wider Struggle
Holbeck Moor came a week before Cable Street. The two events should not be mechanically compared. Cable Street involved a larger area and its crowd estimates vary wildly. But both confrontations formed part of the same national anti-fascist struggle.
They also fed a wider argument on the left. In 1937, the Socialist League, the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party issued a Unity Manifesto and launched the Unity Campaign, calling for a common front against fascism, reaction and war. Leading members of the Left inside the Labour Party also argued for the Unity Campaign. It was controversial, and it did not overcome the deep divisions inside the Labour movement. Yet the case it made was clear: no single organisation could defeat fascism alone.
Not much later the voices of anti fascism were heard from across the continent in Spain. These voices made the argument still more urgent. Franco’s uprising against the Spanish Republic in 1936 was backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Across Britain, people organised collections, demonstrations, medical aid and political campaigns in support of the Republic. More than 35,000 volunteers from over 50 countries joined the Republican forces through the International Brigades, including many from Britain including convinced anti fascists from Leeds. I had the great honour of meeting two of the Leeds veterans from the International Brigade.
It’s hard to imagine now in light of the behaviours of some recent Labour leaders, but In December 1937, Labour leader Clement Attlee visited the British Battalion at Mondéjar in Republican Spain. His visit mattered because it linked parliamentary Labour to the men and women who had travelled to Spain to fight fascism directly. The defence of the Spanish Republic connected the struggle against Mosley in Leeds and London with the wider European fight against fascism.
Leeds Must Remember
Holbeck Moor was about far more than one disrupted rally. It was a struggle over who had the right to speak for working-class Leeds.
Mosley said that insecurity should be met with hatred and division. Leeds gave another answer. Poverty should not be blamed on Jewish people. Fascists should not be allowed to intimidate communities. And when working people stand together, they are stronger than those who seek to divide them.
That is why Cable Street matters. And that is why Holbeck Moor matters too. On 27 September 1936, Leeds joined communities throughout the land and stood up to Mosley. It is a history of which the city should be proud.
- Jon Trickett is the MP for Hemsworth and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
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