Putting the Cables back into Cable Street

Obviously it’s not just about being knitters. But being knitters somehow really mattered. At least that’s how I remember it.

It was at a particularly animated knit night in June 2018. Lots of us were feeling restless about what was going on in the world, and people were talking about joining the march in July. Someone said we needed a banner, and before the night was out, they’d come up with a plan for how to knit it. But even if you could knit a banner, could it be done in a month?

We put the call out on Instagram and within a week, knitted letters started to arrive in the shop by hand, by post and by international courier. The weeks passed and there were more packages every day: thick and thin, fairisle and intarsia, embroidered, stipey, kettle dyed and plain. With less than a week before the march, I counted 70 knitted rectangles and packed them into my panier and cycled them over to Knit with Attitude where May (Maya) Linn Bang organised a sewing-up party of knitters who turned them all into a huge blanket. Folded up carefully and back on the bike, the whole thing was then whizzed over to Fabrications where Barley Massey skillfully attached a fabric backing with clever sleeves on each side that broom stick poles could slot into.
Exactly 1 month later and the banner was ready..

The Trump banner was followed in 2020 by the NHS Workers’ banner, made with the same spirit of hope and collaboration but this time, under strict lock-down rules which meant that there was no scope to sew it up together. We grouped the letters into ‘columns’ which we dropped through the letterboxes of knitters who volunteered their matress stitching skills. Finally the sewists sent their work back and the last  bit of finishing happened in the shop. It was an incredibly moving tribute which somehow broke through the isolation of those months. We couldn’t be together but there was a way in which it brought knitters together that made perfect sense to all of us.

The banners were kept in the shops, and they raised smiles, pride and awe every time they were unfurled or displayed. And that was that. Or that’s what we thought.

The summer 0f 2024 arrived with a terrible surge in xenophobic attacks around the UK, led by the newly emboldened parties of the far-right. It was shocking but also horribly predictable given the way that refugees and migrants were being potrayed by politicians and the media. East Londoners began planning anti-racist marches in response. Of course the knitters wanted to take a stand too. Maya called Barley and me together with urgent text messages about it being time. ‘Are we ready to take this on?’ she asked.

By now we had a process of sorts. We knew how to swing into banner action, although this time felt slightly more frenzied. I was attempting to organise the letter allocation on my phone handset on a train from Bucharest to Istanbul and managed to get into several alpahbetic tangles. Eventually we wrangled the plan into shape, and once again the beautiful 10cm x 5cm knitted rectangles came in from far and wide. Extraordinary colorwork and imaculate embroidery. Each letter different, each one carrying a message of hope, love and solidarity.  The heroic sewer-uppers came back to put them altogether.

By now Barley’s knitted-banner-backing techniques were even more sophisticated, and included fancy loops to hang a pole through at the top. This time we had a new line on our banner: ¡No Pasarán! (They Shall Not Pass). This was a historical nod to the famous 1936 Battle of Cable Street in East London, when banners with the same slogan were held aloft, echoing the cry of the brigades fighting the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.

Today the banner is back in the shop window to properly link us with that important moment in East London’s anti-fascist history, when hundreds of thousands people fought to stop the British Union of Fascists marching through their streets. It was 90 years ago this weekend, but we still remember it as a powerful display of solidarity between the local community of Jewish residents, Irish dockers, Somali seamen, communists, socialists, and trade unionists. They all came out together. They erected barricades along Cable Street and the surrounding areas and fought back when the police tried to clear the route for the fascists.

We made our anti-fascist  banner to show how the yarn and stitches which connect us as knitters, can also become an act of solidarity with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. This weekend they also feel like a connection with the brave anti-fascist fighters of Cable street. The stitches which make up the banner tell a story of people from across East London and the rest of the world, all knitters who came together to knit a stand against islamophobia, anti-semitism, racism and hate. The banner is about everyone who knitted it and everyone who sees it. It’s about all of us and it says everyone is welcome here and everyone belongs.

With enormous, heartfelt thanks to all the knitters who contributed to all the banners.

!No Pasarán!