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.Whilst their more extreme suggestions were disregarded, thedegree of concern was duly communicated to the government.Herbert Morrison was extremely unhappy about the degree of ethnicstrife and fascist propaganda to be found even in the schools of theEast End of London, and he suggested there should be non-partisanagreement between all other political parties in the area that fascistpolitical activities should be banned.68The Battle of Cable Street had led to further hostilities betweenfascists and militant communists, Jewish and working-class ele-ments in the East End.A week afterwards fascist youths instigatedthe so-called Mile End Road Pogrom , when despite the presence66PRO HO 144/21061/92 101.67PRO HO 144/21062/259.68PRO HO 144/21062/10 45. THE BUF AND BRITISH SOCIETY82of 2,000 special constables at a nearby communist victory rally, agang of hooligans smashed windows of Jewish shops and housesand assaulted all those designated as Jews that they could lay theirhands on.69 As a result of the serious increase in the level of politi-cal violence the government rushed through the Public Order Act,which became law on 1 January 1937, in an attempt to containthe situation.The Public Order Act represented the culmination of a longdebate within the government about how increased civil disordershould be controlled.It was seen as necessary to increase policepowers to ban and control demonstrations and marches and toremove ambiguities in the existing law.The Act was passed inresponse to the situation of conflict which had developed betweenfascists and anti-fascists in the East End, but had a wider purpose to exert greater social control through increased police powersand the threat to public order posed by political extremism ingeneral.In this sense it was aimed at the problems highlighted bythe National Unemployed Workers Movement demonstration in1932 as well as the fascist disturbances.Existing case law in Beattyv.Gilbanks (1882) and Wise v.Dunning (1901) left it unclearwhether fascist demonstrations could be construed as a genuineattempt to convert people to a point of view or to provoke byinsult.70 The Public Order Act reflected the police concern aboutthe use of uniformed paramilitary groups which might challengetheir monopoly of law enforcement and maintenance of publicorder, together with more general worries about the necessity ofmaintaining social control and of preventing provocativebehaviour against law-abiding citizens.71Recently de-classified Home Office papers do, however, showthat there was a fluid situation within the agencies of state on thisquestion.In general the Home Office was more concerned withthe issue of protecting civil liberty and public order, while the69Cross, The Fascists in Britain, p.161; PRO Mepo 2/3098.70Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley, pp.418 21.71R.Benewick, Fascist Movement in Britain (London, 1972), pp.235 62; J.Stevenson, The BUF, the Metropolitan Police and public order , in Lunn and Thurlow, British Fascism,pp.135 65, R.Thurlow, The Secret State (Oxford, 1994), pp.173 213, R.Thurlow, Blaming the Blackshirts: The Authorities and the Anti-Jewish Disturbances in the 1930sin Racial Violence in Britain 1840-1940 ed.P.Panayi (Leicester, 1993), pp.112-129,D.S.Lewis, Illusions of Grandeur (Manchester, 1987), pp.145-180. THE BUF AND BRITISH SOCIETY83police wished to ban the fascist movement.In 1934 LordTrenchard, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had written tothe Home Secretary complaining that the BUF had passed falseinformation with regard to a communist plot to attack theHolloway branch and an alleged IFL plan to attack the Chelseaheadquarters, and suggested that this mischievous nonsense wouldbest be dealt with by outlawing the fascist movement.72The Home Office responded by stating that the same argumentswhich pertained ten years ago when General Horwood wished toban the Communist party still stood today.While such move-ments should be closely watched, there was no argument for ban-ning them.To do otherwise would be to break the long-established political tradition of allowing people to hold whateverviews they liked, so long as they did not break the law or urgeothers to do so.Only if public order appeared to be on the vergeof breaking down would the government contemplate restrictingpolitical liberty.Provided that people in this country believed theyhad an honest system of government which dispensed even-handed justice, then there was no need to tamper with the lawunless public order was threatened.To do otherwise was to riskdriving underground legitimate political expression, which wouldcreate worse problems in the long run.73Nevertheless, despite this classic defence of the traditional liberalposition of the Home Office, the Secretary of State was prepared toexamine whether several aspects of the problem which worried thepolice could be dealt with piecemeal.Emphasis was give by the HomeOffice and Cabinet to the desirability of laws which banned the useof political uniforms and the establishment of paramilitary organiza-tions, and research was concluded to see how other nations dealtwith the problem.74 In 1934 the Home Office twice re-drafted a billbanning political uniforms, but concluded that the difficultiesinvolved in definition, and the need to protect the civil liberties ofother groups who wore distinctive clothing, together with theexpected nit-picking objections of MPs like A.P.Herbert who wereconcerned to protect civil liberties, outweighed any advantages tobe gained from such legislation.The failure to gain the consent of72PRO HO 144/20158/107.73PRO HO 144/20158/102 3.74PRO HO 144/20158/310
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