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The 62 Group, originally the 62 Committee,[1][2] was a militant broad-based coalition of anti-fascists in London, headed by Harry Bidney. Based on the earlier 43 Group, it was formed in 1962 largely in response to the resurgence of fascism in Britain at the time, and particularly Colin Jordan's National Socialist Movement (NSM).[3] It used violence against the remnants of Oswald Mosley's Union Movement, the original British National Party, and the emerging National Front, as well as the NSM.[4][5] The group was financed in part by the Jewish Aid Committee of Britain (JACOB).[6]

Key Information

Membership

[edit]

The Group was modelled after the earlier 43 Group, to which Bidney and other leadership had also belonged.[2][6] Another predecessor to the Group from which it drew its early membership was the Yellow Star Movement, founded in 1962 by the Reverend Bill Sargent and Harry Green, a member of AJEX.[5]. Though the YSM was decentralised, its supporters had experienced a split concerning whether the organisation should engage in violence. The more militant faction of the YSM were among the founders of the 62 Group.[7][6]

Formal membership was only open to those who were Jewish, but the Group worked with people from other anti-fascist organisations and immigrant communities, including Irish and Black-power activists.[8][2]

The Group was led by Harry Bidney, owner of Soho night club, The Limbo. It was managed day-to-day by hardman Paul Nathan who was "the toughest Jew around in those days, unlike the soft ones walking around today".[9] Another significant member was Gerry Gable, an intelligence officer for the 62 Group, who later founded the magazine Searchlight.[6][10][4]

Activities

[edit]

The Group's tactics consisted of direct action against those groups it believed were organising violence against minority groups, which sometimes resulted in violent confrontations. On one occasion in July 1962 this led to a riot in London's Trafalgar Square, when Colin Jordan tried to address a crowd while standing in front of a large banner which read: "Free Britain from Jewish Control".[11] It also used intelligence, including informers within the fascist groups.[10][4][12]

The Group frequently disrupted the meetings of Oswald Mosley's Union Movement, and this was a contributing factor to the Union Movement's demise.[6] Commenting on the activities of the 62 Group, the Board of Deputies of British Jews disapprovingly said that, "some of these anti-fascists are Jews who act as if throwing tomatoes at a British racialist speaker is somehow getting their own back on Hitler."[5]

The organisation attempted to expose connections between far-right groups in Britain and former members of the original Nazi Party. Two veterans of the 62 Group stated that they had encountered former members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) at a meeting held by the neo-Nazi Northern League in Brighton.[5]

In 1975, the 62 Group dissolved. Some former members of the Group formed the Community Security Trust.[2][3]

Ridley Road

[edit]

Author Jo Bloom researched the events and wrote a novel, Ridley Road, published in 2014, with the 62 Group and events in the summer of 1962 as a backdrop, named after a street in the East End of London known as a fascist meeting place,[13] around which battles took place.[14][15] A television drama of the same name based on the book, written and adapted for television by Sarah Solemani, was announced in 2019[16] and broadcast by BBC One in October 2021.[1]

See also

[edit]

References

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62 Group

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The 62 Group, formally the 1962 Committee, was a militant Jewish-led anti-fascist organization established in London in 1962 to confront the resurgence of fascist and neo-Nazi activities in the United Kingdom, including rallies by Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and Colin Jordan's National Socialist Movement.[1][2] Comprising around 200 to 250 members primarily from London's Jewish community, with additional affiliates in other UK cities, the group succeeded the post-World War II 43 Group and focused on direct action to safeguard Jewish interests amid perceived inadequate official responses to antisemitic threats.[2][1] Its tactics combined physical disruptions of fascist gatherings—such as street fights and interference at events like the July 1962 Trafalgar Square rally—with intelligence operations, including infiltration of far-right networks to gather evidence.[2][1] Under leaders like Cyril Paskin, the organization achieved notable successes, such as identifying perpetrators of arson attacks on Jewish properties in the mid-1960s, which contributed to their convictions, and systematically hindering the expansion of groups like the NSM through persistent opposition.[1] These efforts emphasized communal self-defense, reflecting a pragmatic response to fascist violence rather than reliance on institutional channels, though the group's street-level militancy occasionally led to clashes with law enforcement.[2] By the late 1960s, as fascist threats waned and internal dynamics shifted, the 62 Group disbanded, but its members, including figures like Gerald Ronson and Gerry Gable, influenced subsequent entities such as the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight and the Community Security Trust, which adopted more formalized intelligence-driven security practices.[1][2]

Historical Context and Formation

Pre-1962 Anti-Fascist Efforts

In the years following World War II, fascist organizations in Britain, led by Oswald Mosley through his newly formed Union Movement in 1948, sought to revive pre-war ideologies by exploiting postwar economic hardships and influxes of immigrants from Commonwealth nations.[3] These groups held public meetings in East London's Jewish districts, such as Ridley Road market, where speakers disseminated antisemitic rhetoric that incited rank-and-file members to perpetrate street assaults on Jewish residents and vandalism against synagogues and communal properties.[4] Mosley's efforts targeted areas with high concentrations of Holocaust survivors and recent migrants, framing Jews and non-white immigrants as threats to British identity, which fueled sporadic but empirically documented incidents of physical violence and graffiti-daubed swastikas in neighborhoods like Stepney and Whitechapel.[5] Jewish communities, acutely aware of fascism's role in the Holocaust, responded with organized self-defense, most notably through the 43 Group, founded on April 10, 1946, by 43 demobilized Jewish servicemen at Maccabi House in north London.[6] Composed primarily of battle-hardened veterans from the Allied forces, the group adopted militant tactics rooted in direct confrontation, infiltrating fascist gatherings to disrupt proceedings, often clashing physically with Mosleyites and breaking police cordons to halt speeches.[4] Their actions, which included harassing fascist propagandists and preventing over 100 meetings from proceeding unmolested between 1946 and 1947, effectively marginalized public fascist displays by emphasizing physical deterrence over reliance on authorities, whom many viewed as insufficiently protective.[5] The 43 Group's model of proactive, community-led resistance persisted as a template into the late 1950s, even after its formal dissolution in 1950 amid declining fascist momentum.[7] By then, neo-Nazi figures like Colin Jordan were amplifying Mosley's playbook, organizing in East London locales such as Hackney and Stoke Newington, where fascist leaflets and rallies stoked racial animosities against Jewish and Caribbean immigrants through verifiable provocations like targeted harassment and property defacement.[8] These threats, including assaults on individuals in immigrant-heavy areas, underscored the causal link between unchecked fascist agitation and localized violence, prompting informal networks of Jewish activists to prepare for renewed organized countermeasures absent from official records but evident in community testimonies.[9]

Establishment in 1962

The 62 Group, formally the 1962 Committee, was founded in July 1962 by Jewish militants primarily based in London's Soho and East End districts as an immediate counter to the resurgence of organized neo-Nazism exemplified by the National Socialist Movement's (NSM) inaugural public rally in Trafalgar Square on July 1, 1962. Organized by Colin Jordan, the NSM's leader, the event drew several hundred participants who displayed swastikas, chanted anti-Semitic slogans, and erected banners reading "Free Britain from Jewish Control," while Jordan's speech endorsed Adolf Hitler's views and advocated racial separation enforced by violence. The rally devolved into clashes with counter-protesters, resulting in 20 arrests and underscoring the NSM's intent to revive street-level fascist agitation targeting Jewish communities, including threats to synagogues and individuals.[10][11][12] The group's creation was catalyzed by the perceived failure of police and legal authorities to neutralize these threats, with participants recognizing that passive protests alone could not deter coordinated fascist mobilizations reminiscent of pre-war violence. Led initially by Harry Bidney, a nightclub owner and veteran anti-fascist from the 1940s-era 43 Group, the 62 Group positioned itself for proactive self-defense, prioritizing disruption of fascist gatherings over reliance on institutional responses deemed ineffective against ideologically driven attacks.[6][7][13] Though framed at inception as a wider anti-fascist alliance, the organization was predominantly Jewish in composition and leadership, reflecting the direct targeting of Jewish sites and people by groups like the NSM, which had formed earlier that year on April 20—Adolf Hitler's birthday—and rapidly escalated public provocations. This formation marked a deliberate shift toward militant countermeasures, grounded in the empirical observation that unchecked fascist rhetoric had historically escalated to physical assaults without robust opposition.[14][15][9]

Organization and Operations

Leadership and Structure

The 62 Group was primarily led by Harry Bidney, a Jewish nightclub owner and former member of the wartime 43 Group, who coordinated intelligence gathering, ran undercover informers within fascist organizations, and directed operational responses to neo-Nazi activities in London during the 1960s.[16][17][15] Other prominent figures included founder Cyril Paskin and activists such as Monty Goldman and Jules Konopinski, both veterans of the 43 Group, who contributed to organizing and fieldwork alongside ex-servicemen and community volunteers.[15] Bidney's role emphasized practical leadership drawn from his experience in post-war anti-fascist efforts, focusing on disrupting fascist logistics rather than formal titles or centralized command.[7] The group's structure was informal and ad-hoc, lacking a rigid hierarchy or public membership rolls to preserve operational secrecy amid threats of infiltration and retaliation.[15] It originated as the 62 Committee from spontaneous meetings of Jewish activists, communists, and left-wing sympathizers, evolving into clandestine networks for intelligence and action without bureaucratic layers that could slow mobilization.[15] This model, influenced by wartime resistance tactics, prioritized small, flexible units over large-scale organization, enabling quick assembly for targeted interventions based on real-time fascist movements.[7] Decision-making centered on collective assessments at informal gatherings, guided by verified intelligence on imminent threats like Oswald Mosley's Union Movement rallies, rather than protracted ideological discussions or top-down directives.[15] By 1963, a dedicated intelligence department had formalized some coordination, but the overall approach remained decentralized to mitigate risks from arrests or betrayals.[15] The absence of ties to mainstream Jewish bodies, such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews, reinforced this autonomous stance, allowing unfiltered pursuit of direct countermeasures while fostering isolation from institutional oversight.[15]

Membership and Recruitment

The 62 Group primarily comprised Jewish men drawn from London's East End and Soho districts, reflecting the areas most affected by post-war fascist resurgence targeting Jewish communities.[14][9] Membership included Holocaust survivors who had lost family to Nazi persecution, World War II ex-servicemen with frontline combat experience, and younger Jewish militants motivated by intergenerational memories of anti-Semitic violence.[9][14] These backgrounds underscored the group's emphasis on direct self-defense rooted in personal vulnerability to fascist aggression rather than abstract ideology.[9] Active membership numbered in the dozens at peak operational periods, though broader participation through affiliates and supporters likely reached into the low hundreds via informal community ties.[9] The core remained tightly knit, prioritizing recruits with verifiable fighting skills or lived stakes in countering anti-Semitic threats, such as those who had served in the military or endured prior fascist attacks.[14] Recruitment relied on discreet word-of-mouth dissemination within Jewish enclaves, leveraging trusted venues like synagogues—such as meetings held at Ephra Road Synagogue—and local pubs where community elders and veterans identified committed individuals.[9][14] This method ensured loyalty and operational security, drawing from networks inspired by earlier Jewish defense efforts like the 43 Group, while filtering for those willing to engage physically against targeted violence.[9] Although predominantly Jewish to maintain focus on communal self-preservation, the group incorporated a limited number of non-Jewish allies, forming a loose coalition that extended beyond ethnic lines without diluting its primary defensive imperative.[14]

Tactics and Activities

Intelligence Gathering and Infiltration

The 62 Group systematically infiltrated fascist organizations, including Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and Colin Jordan's National Socialist Movement, by recruiting and embedding informants to collect intelligence on rally schedules, internal membership rosters, and planned violent operations.[16][1] These moles provided actionable details that allowed the group to anticipate and counter fascist mobilizations before they escalated, creating an informational advantage rooted in direct access to enemy communications and strategies.[18] In parallel, the 62 Group conducted on-the-ground reconnaissance to identify and monitor fascist hotspots, particularly in areas like Ridley Road market in Hackney, where neo-Nazi gatherings and propaganda distributions were frequent.[14] Informants and spotters mapped recruitment patterns and assembly points, enabling the compilation of dossiers on key agitators and their networks, which informed targeted disruptions without relying solely on public announcements or police reports.[7] This approach emphasized empirical verification through sustained observation, prioritizing locations with documented histories of anti-Semitic leafleting and intimidation. Notable outcomes included the exposure of specific threats, such as arson schemes targeting Jewish-owned properties and synagogues, where informant tips led to the identification and apprehension of perpetrators intent on incendiary attacks.[19] For instance, in the early 1960s, intelligence from embedded sources revealed hideouts and plans involving foreign extremists, including a French OAS assassin evading capture, whose details were relayed to authorities for interception.[20] These interventions demonstrated the causal efficacy of infiltration in neutralizing plots through preemptive exposure, reducing the incidence of realized attacks by disrupting operational secrecy.[1]

Direct Confrontations and Violence

The 62 Group conducted physical interventions to disrupt fascist public gatherings, frequently escalating into hand-to-hand brawls where members used fists and physical force against opponents who were sometimes numerically superior or equipped with makeshift defenses. These actions targeted Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and other far-right groups holding street meetings in Jewish and immigrant neighborhoods, responding to prior fascist-initiated assaults, including attacks on synagogues and minorities that had intensified in early 1962.[21][1] A pivotal confrontation occurred on July 31, 1962, at a Mosley rally in London's East End, where 62 Group members and supporters assaulted Mosley and his Blackshirt followers amid chaotic street fighting, resulting in Mosley's injury and the arrest of approximately 50 individuals from both sides.[21][22] Similar violence erupted at Ridley Road Market in Hackney, a frequent site of fascist propaganda pitches, where group members broke up meetings through direct physical engagement; during one such disruption against a Nazi rally, a 62 Group participant was stabbed in the abdomen.[23][19] By September 1962, these tactics had expanded, with 62 Group forces driving British National Party speakers from Balls Pond Road in East London and prompting a march of 400 anti-fascists from Ridley Road to Whitehall, amid ongoing skirmishes that scattered Mosleyite assemblies.[7] Between 1962 and 1965, repeated clashes in areas like Hackney Town Hall vicinity involved individual charges and group melees, such as one member's takedown of a larger fascist opponent, leading to arrests but empirically curtailing open fascist momentum as public meetings became untenable and incidents of organized far-right agitation in East London declined.[23][7][1]

Controversies and Criticisms

Internal Jewish Community Debates

The Board of Deputies of British Jews criticized the 62 Group's militant tactics as counterproductive, arguing that direct confrontations undermined diplomatic efforts to combat antisemitism and risked provoking greater backlash against the Jewish community.[24][5] The Board's Jewish Defence Committee viewed such vigilantism as unrepresentative of mainstream Jewish interests, favoring institutional advocacy over physical disruption of fascist activities, which they deemed damaging to communal relations with authorities.[7] Supporters of the 62 Group, including the Jewish Aid Committee of Britain (JACOB)—formed by group members in the mid-1960s—countered that non-violent approaches had empirically failed, citing ignored petitions and rising incidents like synagogue arsons amid the 1962 fascist revival led by figures such as Colin Jordan.[25][7] JACOB's 1966 publication With a Strong Hand invoked Holocaust-era lessons to advocate active resistance, rejecting the Board's perceived timidity as akin to pre-war passivity that enabled escalation, and emphasizing self-defense as necessary given the ineffectiveness of establishment petitions against organized neo-Nazi provocations.[25] This divide reflected broader tensions between assimilationist caution and confrontational realism rooted in European Jewish history, with no full consensus emerging; while some leaders initially labeled 62 Group members as "thugs," a 1965 Jewish Chronicle editorial acknowledged their role in halting arson gangs, and certain rabbis and figures quietly endorsed self-defense amid persistent threats, highlighting the group's grassroots appeal among ordinary Jews over elite institutional preferences.[7][5]

Legal and Ethical Concerns

Members of the 62 Group faced frequent arrests on charges of affray and common assault stemming from physical clashes with fascist groups during the mid-1960s.[7] These incidents often occurred at or en route to fascist meetings, where anti-fascists intervened to disrupt proceedings, leading to charges against Group participants for public order offenses.[1] Police responses to such confrontations drew accusations of partiality, with historical analyses documenting claims that authorities exhibited tolerance toward fascist instigators while applying disproportionate force or fabricated evidence against anti-fascists, as in complaints lodged over East End policing practices.[26] The Group's militant approach raised ethical questions about vigilantism's compatibility with democratic norms, particularly its bypass of formal legal channels in favor of direct intervention. While no documented instances exist of 62 Group-initiated unprovoked assaults, actions were consistently linked to imminent fascist threats, such as planned marches or recruitment drives inciting violence against Jewish communities.[1] Critics contended that such tactics risked undermining the rule of law by normalizing extralegal retribution, potentially inviting unchecked escalation or reciprocal attacks, even as empirical outcomes showed fascist street presence diminishing post-confrontations due to deterrence effects.[27] In context, these concerns were weighed against fascists' routine evasion of judicial accountability, as UK laws in the early 1960s offered limited recourse for hate speech or incitement, with prosecutions rare despite overt threats.[26] Ethical defenses of the Group's methods emphasized causal realism in preventing violence through preemptive disruption, arguing that reliance on courts alone failed to address immediate perils where institutional enforcement lagged.[28] Nonetheless, the potential for vigilante overreach highlighted tensions between short-term security gains and long-term adherence to legal precedents.

Decline and Legacy

Factors Leading to Dissolution

By the mid-1960s, the influence of key fascist leaders Oswald Mosley and Colin Jordan had significantly waned, diminishing the organized street threats that the 62 Group was formed to counter. Mosley's Union Movement, disrupted by repeated anti-fascist interventions including major clashes at Ridley Road in July 1962, faced sustained public backlash and failed to regain momentum, leading to its marginalization as smaller splinter groups emerged without comparable mobilizational power.[15] Similarly, Jordan's National Socialist Movement experienced internal divisions, notably John Tyndall's split in 1964 to form the Greater Britain Movement, compounded by Jordan's January 1965 conviction and 18-month imprisonment for fraudulently soliciting donations under false pretenses, which fragmented leadership and reduced operational capacity.[7] These empirical shifts in fascist organization—driven by legal repercussions, infighting, and loss of public tolerance—lowered the demand for the 62 Group's direct militant responses, as threats transitioned from mass rallies to diffuse, low-profile activities.[29] The group's activities tapered without a formal dissolution date, effectively ceasing overt confrontations by the late 1960s into the 1970s as core members aged into their 40s and 50s and redirected efforts toward intelligence and monitoring rather than physical disruption.[15] Short-term successes in breaking up fascist meetings and infiltrating networks had neutralized immediate dangers, but sustained police scrutiny—including arrests during operations—encouraged a pivot to less visible roles, such as contributing to the Searchlight magazine founded around 1963 from 62 Group intelligence units.[7] Within the Jewish community, preferences shifted toward institutionalized security via the Board of Deputies' Jewish Defence Committee, which favored legal advocacy and liaison with authorities over extralegal militancy, reflecting debates over sustainable defense strategies amid declining fascist cohesion.[7] This confluence of reduced external threats, internal maturation, and strategic realignment rendered the 62 Group's original model obsolete by the early 1970s.[15]

Long-Term Impact

The 62 Group's pioneering use of intelligence to monitor and disrupt fascist organizing laid foundational practices for subsequent Jewish community security efforts, notably influencing the Community Security Trust (CST), established in 1994 as a professional body focused on threat assessment, training, and liaison with authorities rather than street-level confrontations.[1] Veterans of the group contributed to CST's early development, crediting the 62 Group's determination in threat identification as a precursor to institutionalized defenses against extremism.[30] This shift underscored a long-term preference for sustainable, non-violent deterrence over the risks of physical escalation inherent in the 62 Group's approach. The group's tactics exemplified the short-term efficacy of direct intervention in suppressing fascist propaganda and rallies, providing a deterrent model that informed broader anti-fascist strategies in the UK, including the 1970s Anti-Nazi League's mass mobilizations, while simultaneously highlighting the perils of vigilante methods that could perpetuate retaliatory violence or legal vulnerabilities.[31] Critics within antifascist historiography have noted these methods as inspiring fringe elements prone to extremism, cautioning against their emulation in favor of coordinated, lawful opposition.[32] Cultural depictions have sustained awareness of the 62 Group's role in Jewish self-defense, as seen in the 2021 BBC series Ridley Road, which dramatized its infiltration and confrontation efforts against neo-Nazis, emphasizing heroism amid 1960s threats while downplaying operational controversies.[1] The series aired against a backdrop of escalating antisemitic incidents—CST documented 3,528 cases in 2024 alone, the second-highest annual total—prompting references to the group in contemporary debates on proactive community protection without endorsing revivals of its extralegal tactics. No organized successor movements have emerged, reflecting a consensus prioritizing institutional over militant responses to extremism.

References

  1. Ridley Road, The 62 Group and CST – Blog
  2. BBC puts dramatic twist on true story of brawling Jews vs. fascists in ...
  3. The Postwar Revival of British Fascism - New Lines Magazine
  4. The British Jews who fought postwar fascism on London's streets
  5. Punching Postwar Nazis - Jewish Currents
  6. What We Can Learn From the 43 Group, the British Jewish Anti ...
  7. [PDF] BEFORE AFTER - Libcom.org
  8. Ridley Road: Episode 1 History & Images | MASTERPIECE - PBS
  9. Ridley Road: The Real Story of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Group in ...
  10. From the archive, 2 July 1962: First public meeting of 'Nazis' ends in ...
  11. Neo-Nazi leader Colin Jordan's legacy - The Jewish Chronicle
  12. https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/9/1-2/article-p121_121.xml
  13. Today in London's radical history: nazi rally disrupted by anti-fascists ...
  14. A history of the 62 Group - Libcom.org
  15. 62 Group - Powerbase.info
  16. The Real Ridley Road - BBC
  17. What is the 62 Group? Jewish anti-fascism group featured in Ridley ...
  18. The True History of 'Ridley Road' | WTTW Chicago
  19. Truth behind BBC drama Ridley Road as resistance founder reveals ...
  20. A real 'Day of the Jackal' - how a Searchlight mole helped catch a ...
  21. BBC ON THIS DAY | 31 | 1962: Violence flares at Mosley rally
  22. Riot at Mosleyite Meeting in London's East End; 50 Persons Arrested
  23. The 62 Group fought fascists in Hackney – now in a BBC drama
  24. Ridley Road: how Britain's heinous Nazi horrors inspired my TV thriller
  25. Jewish Aid Committee of Britain - Powerbase.info
  26. [PDF] Janet Clark BA(Hons. ), MA(Hist. ) Doctor of Philosophy History The ...
  27. Militant Anti-Fascism | The Anarchist Library
  28. For These Jewish Vigilantes, the War Against Fascism Didn't End in ...
  29. Colin Jordan | Politics past - The Guardian
  30. The Spirit of Cable Street – Blog - CST
  31. Full article: British Antifascist Communities of Activism Since 1945
  32. Review of Militant Anti-Fascism: A Hundred Years of Resistance
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