https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/16/we-fight-facists-by-daniel-sonabend-review

Britain’s fascists targeted Jews in the years after the second world war. This is the story of the 43 Group who fought back

The end of the second world war and its immediate aftermath in Britain is today mythologised – on the left and the right – as a time when the country pulled together amid hardship. There is truth in that, but as Daniel Sonabend’s lively account of an overlooked episode in political history reveals, it also had its vicious side. Britain’s home-grown fascists, who had never quite ceased activity during the war, even after scores of them were interned under Defence Regulation 18B in 1940, were quick to rebuild their networks and resume street activity. It wasn’t long before Oswald Mosley, the former leader of the British Union of Fascists, reappeared with a new party, the Union Movement. It continued the old tactic of trying to stir up resentment against Jews in working-class neighbourhoods, by holding rallies at such places as Ridley Road market in Dalston, east London, then still the centre of a large Jewish community.

The fascists believed their ideas would fall on fertile ground: Britain suffered crippling shortages, with rationing even harsher than it had been during the war years, while antisemitism remained widespread. Distorted press reports reinforced the stereotype of the Jewish black marketeer, while prejudice against Jews – not overwhelming, but more common, and more openly expressed, than many today would care to remember – was further exacerbated by conflict in Palestine between British Mandate forces and Zionist militants fighting to establish a new state. In summer 1947, the killing of two sergeants in Palestine by the Irgun was the trigger for widespread antisemitic riots across Britain, targeting Jewish homes and businesses in Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow.