William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘Why so secretive?’

‘They’ve got bigger marches in October. This is a trial run. If someone spots you taking photos just pocket the camera and move on.’

‘You’re the boss, Amory.’

We made arrangements to keep as separate from each other as possible so as not to reproduce the same photographs and to meet back at the office at the end of the day. We’d then go straight to a darkroom, develop, print and select the images we liked and send them straight off to America.

We wandered down to Trinity Square, opposite the Tower, where we could see a crowd had gathered — about 200 marchers, I calculated and, also, some thirty blackshirts, young burly men in their pseudo-uniforms, peaked caps and jackboots, giving off an air of pre-emptive menace and self-importance as they organised the marchers (BUF members, I assumed) into a column. I spotted Faith amongst them, wearing no hat, just a violet scarf tied over her hair.

At eleven o’clock a large banner was unfurled that read ‘BRITISH UNION OF FASCISTS AND NATIONAL SOCIALISTS’ and four mounted policemen appeared on their magnificent chargers.

There was a series of blasts on a whistle and the march moved off sedately, led by the blackshirts, heading north up Minories then turning right into Whitechapel High Street, and then everyone was diverted once more on to Commercial Road. Traffic was stopped by the police on their horses and passers-by looked on in mildly amused curiosity, it seemed to me. There was no sense of a fascist threat overwhelming the nation’s capital.

I walked briskly ahead and overtook the front of the march and then, hiding in doorways and lurking behind parked cars and vans, started taking photographs. I looked around but could see no sign of Lockwood.

As the march moved on in orderly fashion down Commercial Road I became aware of small groups of young men standing watching on street corners, but watching in a nervy, fidgety way, chatting amongst themselves in lowered voices. Then the odd unlocatable shout could be heard — ‘Fascists!’ and ‘Fascists go home!’ These shouts were answered in turn by the blackshirts, raising their hands in a Roman ‘hail’ salute and shouting back in unison, ‘Aliens! Aliens! Aliens!’ As soon as any of the blackshirt stewards approached the groups of spectators, the young men split up and drifted away. However, it was evident that the mood had intensified. The march was evidently no surprise; intelligence had been leaked. The marchers closed ranks and the blackshirt stewards spread out to cover the column’s flanks.

I felt a premonition that this was going to turn nasty and I noticed that, mysteriously, the number of blackshirt stewards was increasing as more young, uniformed men joined the march, inconspicuously. I managed to take a photograph of twenty or so blackshirts coming out of Stepney station in a kind of phalanx as the whole march now veered left up White Horse Street, heading for the meeting hall at St Dunstan’s.

And here I saw the absolute proof that the secret march had never been secret. At the junction of Matlock Street a lorry had been turned over on its side and rudimentary barricades flanked it — barrows, packing cases, bits of old furniture. The police horses stopped, more whistles were blown and the march slowed and halted. The groups of young men standing in the alleys and side streets were much larger, now, and I saw there were women with them, also. Stepney wasn’t prepared to let this march happen. They began to chant: ‘You shall not pass! You shall not pass!’

I took a photograph of a young woman holding a frying pan behind her back — as a potential weapon, I supposed. Then across the street I saw Lockwood hovering around a gaggle of police officers, one of them an inspector holding a megaphone.

The inspector stepped forward and shouted through the megaphone, apparently addressing the upended lorry itself, as if it were intentionally responsible for the obstruction it posed.

‘I order you to remove these barricades!’ his amplified voice boomed out. ‘This is a legal procession. You have no right to stop it!’

The reply came in the form of a roar of abuse and a hail of stones and vegetables, mainly potatoes. The marchers recoiled instinctively and backed away a few yards down White Horse Street.

I heard the sound of running feet and turned to see more blackshirts streaming out of an alleyway. There were many more policemen as well — clearly everyone had been expecting trouble — and they began to back the march further away from the Matlock Street barricade and then turned left up Salmon Lane. I looked at my map, torn from my gazetteer. The aim was to outflank the barricade and march everyone down Maroon Street to St Dunstan’s Hall. So Maroon Street was the place to be, I thought, and decided to make my own roundabout way there so I could see the march approach down it. I ran into Belgrave Street to find people — men and women — streaming out of the houses carrying rudimentary clubs — chair legs and pickaxe handles, spindles from banisters — all racing for Maroon Street to stop the marchers before they could progress down it. I snapped a photograph of a young man in a singlet with a slingshot and a bag of marbles — no one spotted me — and ran on to St Dunstan’s.

Astonishingly, Maroon Street was already blocked by a requisitioned tram and kerbstones were being dug up and hammered to pieces to provide potential missiles. Furniture was being hurled from the upper windows of the terraced houses as impromptu barricades were built. However, it was clear that the anti-fascist Stepneyites were now going to have to fight the police, not the blackshirt stewards. Huge reinforcements had appeared from somewhere — and there were now dozens and dozens of police constables, a thick dark-blue line of them, at the head of the march. The BUF banner had disappeared and I hoped that Faith had made herself scarce.

The march began to move forward steadily down Maroon Street and the police constables in the front line linked arms. In the row behind them truncheons were ostentatiously raised. Heads were going to be broken. The strange thing was, I realised, as I took my photos of the police line, that all the blackshirt stewards had suddenly disappeared.

I assumed there was going to be another flanking movement. The blackshirts were going to secure and surround the meeting hall before the march arrived, I reasoned. I ran up Ocean Street to Ben Jonson Road, paused at the junction and peered round the corner.

About fifty blackshirts carrying leather whips and clubs were being spoken to urgently by a man in a pale grey suit. He was issuing instructions, pointing up streets, gesticulating.

I eased myself round the corner, raised my camera and took, in quick succession, five photographs. Then one of the blackshirts saw me — shouted and pointed.

‘Get her!’ the man in the pale grey suit yelled hoarsely, furious. ‘Get her, now!’

I didn’t stop to see how many came after me, I turned and fled away round the back of St Dunstan’s and into a little quadrangle of sooty streets called Spring Garden Square.

That was my mistake. Or rather: that was my bad luck.

I think I would have escaped but, in Spring Garden Square, about thirty blackshirts were standing around waiting for orders. I ran right into them, camera still in my hand, and stopped. They all turned as one to stare at me. I slipped my camera into my bag.

‘She’s Red press!’ somebody shouted from behind.

‘No, I’m not!’ I shouted back as the blackshirts quickly surrounded me, hemming me in as the first pursuers from Ben Jonson Road now arrived. My gaze flicked here and there — I saw the man in the pale grey suit for an instant — and I had a horrid moment of recall, thinking back to Berlin, of that night when Hanna and I ran into that group of drunken Brownshirts. Brownshirts and now blackshirts. But I had no Hanna with me today.