The Battle of Cable Street gone Yuppy

It's not often you overflow with gratitude for London transport.  But this weekend I did just that because it meant I got off at Shadwell instead of Greenwich in East London.  And Shadwell is on Cable Street, site of a battle that basically put a stop to fascism in Britain at a at a time when Europe was going mad with it. In 1936, Jews, Socialists, Irish and an assortment of others banded together to stop Oswald Moseley's blackshirts marching on the (largely Jewish) East End. They're marking their 75th anniversary this year in fact.
(the lovely History Workshop has a great article on it)
So here I was on the corner of Christan Street (yup, real name) looking ahead at a massive flyover in the distance, newly renovated Georgian houses for city slickers on one side of the street and pastel coloured council flats full of headscarved women tending to little kids on the other.  And I wonder, would it happen here today?.  Hopefully it wouldn't have to, but if it did, would people here -or anywhere- band together?

I stop thinking philosophically and think of my stomach.  There's a sign to Waitrose and Fitness First, and down a surgically cleaned road, there's a little square with a pub, a dry cleaners, and a bijoux little chocolate shop.  I love Waitrose, but inside never quite seen anything like this.  It's like the Stepford wives. 70% of people are wearing matching clothes and reading labels of food packets    There is only one family with kids (on a Sunday), one woman with a pram, and one disabled person (who is wearing Louis Vutton slippers).   The only person bigger than size 14 is the woman on the fish counter with a broad East End accent and a young girl at the till wearing hijab.
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Reassuringly, the old woman ahead of me in the queue farts, which reminds me of Wood Green.

I think perhaps the community here wouldn't stand on street corners in blockades if the BNP marched in Hackney, but you never know.  Perhaps it's not only poor communities where people stand together?  But perhaps not? Lots of buckinghamshire housewives did go and bake cakes and then March in the west end against the cuts didn't they?