In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by novelist Susie Gordon to discuss her new book, *A Monster in the Ash* – a fictionalised account of the 43 Group, the Jewish veterans of the Second World War who returned to Britain to find fascism resurgent, and went to war with Oswald Mosley on the streets of post-war London.**
The 43 Group is a little-known chapter of British history. Everyone has heard of Cable Street in 1936, but far fewer know of the Jewish ex-servicemen – butchers, bakers, trade unionists, lawyers, journalists, and even the young Vidal Sassoon – who gathered in the spring of 1946 to physically confront the fascist movement that had survived the war and was attempting to rebuild.
Drawing on Maurice Beckman's memoir and Daniel Sonnabend's history of the Group, Susie explains why she chose to write it as fiction: more people read novels than history books, and the story deserves a wider audience. We discuss the men and women who made up the Group – the majority Jewish veterans, but also non-Jewish allies – and their tactics: interrupting fascist meetings to force the police to close them down, sending spies into the enemy ranks, and engaging in bare-knuckle street fighting against former boxers and hardened anti-Semites.
We explore why this story has been forgotten. It complicates the simple narrative of the Second World War as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil, and it sits uncomfortably with the post-war Jewish community's desire to keep its head down, integrate, and not "blacken the name of British Jewry." The Jewish Chronicle urged the Group to desist; even the British veterans' organisation Ajax begged them to stop. They were, as Susie puts it, "out there on a limb on their own."
We also consider the wider context: the fact that the horrors of the Holocaust were not fully known in 1945; that the British government chose not to publicise the specifically Jewish nature of Nazi crimes for fear of stirring up domestic antisemitism; and that Mosley's antisemitism was not performative but sincerely held. And we reflect on the contemporary resonance: fascism never goes away. As Susie says, "There's always that monster lurking. There's always that spore within society that waits for its moment to rise up."
**Topics covered:**
- The origins of the 43 Group in the spring of 1946
- Jewish veterans returning to post-war Britain
- The tactics of the Group: meeting disruptions, espionage, street fighting
- Oswald Mosley and the reconstruction of British fascism
- Why the story has been forgotten and silenced
- The Jewish community's ambivalence towards the Group
- The incomplete knowledge of the Holocaust in post-war Britain
- The anti-fascist tradition in Britain
- The contemporary relevance of the 43 Group's story
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*Susie Gordon's *A Monster in the Ash* is published by Claret Press and is available now in print and audiobook. Please consider buying from an independent bookshop or directly from the publisher.*
*If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.*
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