The Battle of Cable Street 80th Anniversary

Thank you to everyone who entered our competition to celebrate the Battle of Cable Street. The judges have met and the winners decided:

We were delighted with the number and range of entries for our competition from young people across Tower Hamlets. All the winners have had their entries reproduced in the poster below which will go in to all schools, libraries and ideas stores in the borough. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize winners will also receive a poster of their entry for themselves and their school.

Judges, local historian David Rosenberg and Tower Hamlets Young Mayor, Deng Yang, really enjoyed judging the competition and said they felt uplifted by the quality of entries and commitment to equality. As Deng said, ” It’s nice to think that the children who produced this work are part of our future.”

We are also grateful to Rachael Saunders, Lead Member for Education in Tower Hamlets, for her support for the project

Some schools set the competition as homework, others ran workshops as part of a drop-down day others dedicated curriculum time to build a cross-curricular project.

This report from Christchurch School gives a flavour of the competition’s impact:

“We had a whole week of activities for the commemoration of the Battle of Cable Street. We visited a synagogue, a Jewish tailors, the 24 hour bagel shop and Cable Street throughout the week. Your poster competition was absolutely perfect for the children to take part in.”

We are really grateful to all the teachers and schools who made time in a very crowded, and often constrained curriculum, to enable their young people to enter the competition. We think schools should have more freedom to develop activities like this which are so valuable for broad, rich, deep learning but can’t be easily tested.

It is more important than ever that, at a time when some seek to divide our community, that we come together and celebrate its diversity and solidarity. The different communities of Tower Hamlets have a long and proud tradition of coming  together to fight racism, fascism and the politics of hate.

Our two local history walks with David Rosenberg were a great success with over 50 teachers signed up to go on a guided tour of Cable Street and surrounds.