Image credit: Royal Albert Dock, East London, 1914. The Newham Archives

Cable Street: Across Borders

Thursday 8th October 2026 at 6:30 PM

See here for tickets

Alan Kunna, Asif Shakoor, and Georgie Wemyss will discuss the interconnected histories of Lascars, Cable Street and anti-racist resistance in the East End in this Q&A event with a special screening of Limestone and Jute by Tosin (GOKE Studio)

As part of our Solidarity on the Streets  exhibition (2 Oct - 31 Oct 2026) Four Corners is hosting events to discuss the legacy of the Battle of Cable Street and activism against racism, fascism and exclusion.

Speaker Biographies:

Alan Kunna was born and grew up in Whitechapel. At university he studied history, focusing on the role and impact of colonial government in Africa. He became a teacher, and taught English in Sudan, Italy, and history in a variety of London colleges. His mother’s family lived on Cable Street from the late 1920’s until 1970. He credits his mother with being his first and most inspiring history teacher, as her vivid recollections of the difficult conditions of her early life and her eyewitness accounts of the Battle of Cable Street and the Blitz gave him a life long interest in the subject. 

Asif Shakoor is a scholar and authority on Lascar heritage, and the author of a forthcoming book, Unearthing Invisible Seafaring Histories of Empire. He writes for the Port Towns & Urban Cultures website, University of Portsmouth. Asif has also contributed to the Maritime Archaeology Trust's booklet on BAME seafarers in WWI, The Lascar Research Project, Our Shared Cultural Heritage programme at Glasgow Life Museums, and a digitisation project on Cooks Certificates for Indian seamen at the National Maritime Museum. He is a former Advisory Board member of the Mariners: Religion, race and empire in British ports, 1801-1914 project at the University of Bristol.  

Georgie Wemyss co-directs the research Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London. She has been facilitating walks and conversations focusing on the invisible histories of the East India Docks and South Asian seafarer histories with community groups and students for over two decades. 

There will also be the opportunity to view the current exhibition Londoni Memoirs, in the main gallery.