Exhibition Opening:
Thursday 1 October, 6.30 - 8.30pm 

Friday 2 October - Saturday 31 October 
Four Corners, Bethnal Green 

Gallery Opening Times:
Wednesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm  

Opening on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, Solidarity on the Streets documents East Enders’ enduring resistance to racial hatred and intolerance. 

London’s East End has been a refuge for migrant communities fleeing poverty and persecution for over 500 years, from Irish migrants and French Huguenots to Eastern European Jews and South-Asian Bengalis. It has been a site of defiance against racist intimidation by local people for over a century. 

On 4th October 1936, the people of East London stopped Oswald Mosley’s fascist Blackshirts from marching through the streets of London’s East End. Jewish residents, Irish dockers, and anti-fascist activists united against hatred with the slogan 'They Shall Not Pass'!, in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street. Forty years later, young Bengali activists led a mass mobilisation against the racist violence of the National Front and institutional police racism. In the 1990s, residents fought against the racist housing policies of the then Liberal Party council, and the British National Party’s first elected local councillor. With the growth of a new, Islamophobic racism, the area has been targeted again by far-right, populist forces, from Tommy Robinson to the UK Independence Party. 

The exhibition explores these histories through archive press photographs and film footage from the Battle of Cable Street, set alongside dramatic images by photographers Paul Trevor, David Hoffman, Lloyd Gee, Mayar Akash, and others, alongside archival material. Images reveal lesser-known histories: the ‘Sari Squad’, who campaigned against the deportation of 19-year old Afia Begum in the 1980s; and Women Unite Against Racism, a local collective that opposed the electoral rise of the British National Party in 1993. Solidarity on the Streets includes short films, created in summer 2026 by five local residents?inspired by the Battle of Cable Street. 

On the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, this exhibition celebrates its history and seeks inspiration for our own troubled times.

Exhibition events 

Coming soon!