Ridley Road Market, Hackney

Ridley Road Market has been an East London institution since the late 1880s, at that time it was in Kingsland High Street as well as a fair it moved around the corner to Ridley Road when a tramline was installed. The area was owned by Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London from 1550 to 1553, hence the name Ridley Road.

Capturing the area's rich history of immigration and cultural diversity. During 1947 and 1949 when it was the site of clashes between Oswald Mosley-led fascists and the Jewish anti-fascist 43 Group.

After the second world war, pre-war fascist leader Oswald Mosley, freed from his wartime prison in 1943, tried to rebuild the fascist movement he had led in he 1930s. A core of former British Union of Fascist leaders, joined by younger men, took up the largely anti-semitic agitation they had revelled in before the war.

Jewish areas of London, or areas where a mix of Jews and other communities mixed, were seen as areas for street meetings and rallies, this was to pick up support from and to foster, local xenophobic sentiment, and to intimidate and provoke.

Ridley Road, in Dalston, East London, was one of the regular battlegrounds between fascists and 43 Groupers, as it had been between the BUF and their enemies in the ‘30s, and would be again in the 1960s. A bustling street market, in an area with a large Jewish community, saw repeated fascist meetings and anti-fascist response.
This scene was repeated numerous times in Ridley Road, and in other areas of London seen as targets by the post-war fascists. Although in 1948 Mosley and the fledgling fascist groups combined to form the Union Movement, the constant battering they took from the 43 Group, with weekly fights all over town, took its toll on them.

Moseley stood for Parliament twice in the postwar era, gaining very little support. He was politically disgraced by his association with fascism, then moved abroad in 1951, spending the majority of the remainder of his life in Paris. The agitation had largely faded out by 1952.
However the core of the nazi movement and the underbelly of racism it fed on then resurfaced over following decades, though new migrant groups would become the object of the fascists’ main venom.

Today the market mirrors Hackney’s diverse population, with stalls full of Turkish, Jewish, Asian, African, Caribbean and local goods, from exotic fruit and vegetables to clothes and household wares.