Ninety years on from the Battle of Cable Street, the debate
about London's radical past is far from academic. In a city currently marked by
such extreme social inequality, by the crisis of housing affordability, by the decline
of public services and by the re-emergence of a kind of nationalism and
anti-migrant politics, the history of those who had fought against poverty,
exploitation, political repression and fascism is very much with us.
This is what makes the third edition of David Rosenberg's
Rebel Footprints a particularly valuable contribution. It is neither a
conventional history of London nor merely a guidebook. Rather, it offers a
political geography of the city, built from the author's own walks, connecting
streets and buildings to the movements that occurred there. Pluto Press
describes the revised edition as guiding the reader from well-known to
lesser-known sites associated with struggles from the late eighteenth to the
mid-twentieth centuries. The third edition substantially revises the book, now
comprising eleven main chapters. The Russian Revolution and the East End,
Hackney, and radical Soho all receive new or reorganised treatment. The volume
concludes with an epilogue on the Brick Lane struggles of the 1970s, and
Michael Rosen provides the foreword.
The enterprise is immense. Rosenberg brings workers,
immigrants, women, political exiles, anti-fascists, and socialist organisers
back into the picture in a way they have largely been absent. The significance
of the history he recovers makes the shortcomings of his political approach all
the more glaring. Rebel Footprints is absolutely full of the notion that
history is made through struggle. It simply doesn't come to terms with the
question of why movements of such immense courage and such broad popular
support ended up with such limited political outcomes, why they were defeated
or why they were absorbed into institutions which were themselves committed to
the defence of the social order against which those movements had been
directed. The central issue is therefore a question of political perspective.
It is a history of rebellion, but not a history of the working class's struggle
for revolutionary leadership.
A rebellious city
The underlying concept of Rebel Footprints is
absolutely effective. The streets we normally see as routes between railway
stations, offices, shops, and houses are reconfigured as physical evidence of
political struggle. London stops being the endless accumulation of palaces,
monuments and institutions of the state as presented to us by the tourist
industry. It becomes a landscape of contestation.
The 2026 edition begins with “Trailblazers for Democracy in
Fleet Street and Clerkenwell”, followed by “Sparks of Rebellion in Bow and
Whitechapel”. It then explores “The Russian Revolution and London's East End”,
“No Gods, No Masters: Radical Bloomsbury”, “Hackney's Buried Histories” and the
struggle for housing in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch. Subsequent chapters move
south and west through Battersea and Soho, then head east again to Poplar,
Bermondsey, and, finally, Cable Street and Long Lane. The historical itinerary
continues beyond the main chapters with the epilogue, “Battleground Brick Lane
1970s”.
In my view, this is one of Rosenberg's real masterpieces.
The geographical structure prevents radical history from being boiled down to
the life stories of a few famous people. Political movements get a locality.
They had meeting houses, workshops, factories, tenements and streets. Rosenberg
has been running London social and political history walks since 2008. When
talking about the genesis of the project, he has been very clear about the
influence of Bill Fishman, the historian who believed you could understand
history in a very real way, not just through the lecture hall but by walking
through the very places where it happened. That is a very democratic approach. It's
a way of confronting the monumental history of the city that the ruling class
has always presented as its own.
History against official London
This is where Rebel Footprints is at its very best. London's
history is increasingly being presented through the lens of heritage, tourism
and property. The working people who actually built the city are only there in
passing. Rosenberg flips the script completely. The centre of historical
interest moves from Westminster, the monarchy and the City to the political
activity of the very people who are normally invisible. The book is designed to
get you to look at the apparently mundane and ask a very different set of
questions: who lived here, who worked here, who organised here and what
struggles took place here?
That approach has real power in a city which is constantly
being reshaped by property speculation. Working-class areas get redeveloped and
repackaged, and their social history is often turned into marketable
'heritage'. Rosenberg's approach is the other way around. The city itself
becomes the archive. The history is also inherently international. London was
not just the British capital. All over the world, industrialisation, empire and
political repression have brought workers, refugees and political exiles into
the city. Radical London was never a purely English phenomenon.
History is of course particularly pertinent when migrants
are once again being presented as the cause of social problems they didn't
create. The history of workers breaking down national, ethnic, and religious
barriers points overwhelmingly to a class explanation of inequality. The very
notion of internationalism in the labour movement is, however, problematic, and
Rebel Footprints doesn't address it adequately. London was both the
epicentre of working-class resistance and the capital of the world's largest
empire. The relationship between those two realities is fundamental to
understanding British labour history.
The Russian Revolution comes to the East End
One of the most significant additions in the 2026 edition is
a whole chapter on 'The Russian Revolution and London's East End'. That
massively broadens the political canvas. The Russian Revolution can't just be
tacked on as part of the general tradition of London radicalism. October 1917
was a moment of total rupture. For the first time, the working class, under Marxist
leadership, took state power and began reconstructing society on a socialist
basis. That in itself was a moment of international political significance, and
Britain was no different.
The importance of the Russian Revolution to the British
working class cannot be confined to inspiration, solidarity, and radical
culture. It sparked a major debate about revolutionary organisation, reformism,
and the working class's political independence. That debate had a very real and
tangible effect on the British labour movement. This is where the distinction
between radical history and Marxist history becomes so important. Radicalism is
such a broad term that it can cover everything from democrats to anarchists,
pacifists, syndicalists, feminists, trade unionists, Labour reformists,
communists, and revolutionary Marxists. What these different tendencies had in
common was that they all provided diametrically opposed answers to the
fundamental questions of state, capitalism, imperialism and political
leadership. To absorb them into a single category of 'radicalism' and celebrate
them as such risks erasing the very disagreements that ultimately shaped
history.
The Labour Party as the destination of struggle
This is clearest where the histories of local revolt
intersect with the growth of Labourism. You can see it in many of the people
you met in Rosenberg's London who went from militant working-class politics to
parliamentary Labourism. It wasn't just a series of individual biographies. It
was a fundamental process in shaping the British labour movement.
The key historical question, of course, is why. The
reformist interpretation is that the Labour Party, the recognition of trade
unions, municipal reform, and ultimately the post-war welfare state were simply
the institutionalisation of the popular struggles of the 19th century. In that
view, the rebels of the 19th century are the forerunners of 20th century social
democracy.
A Marxist account has to put the issue in a different light.
Reform and revolution were alternative approaches to the problem, stemming from
different conceptions of the capitalist state. The point is that reform in
itself doesn't alter the capitalist relations of property or the nature of
state power. The 20th century has shown time and again that reforms won under
pressure from the working class can be taken away when the balance of class
forces has shifted. British working-class radicalism therefore cannot be
thought of as having reached its logical conclusion in the Labour Party.
Labourism itself has to be a subject of historical analysis.
Poplar and the limits of municipal socialism
The Poplar struggle is the textbook example. The willingness
of the councillors to go to jail rather than impose such onerous burdens on the
poor working people was absolutely a landmark moment in London labour history.
It was a demonstration of what could happen when a body of elected representatives
was under the pressure of a mobilised working class. Poplar also, of course,
highlights the limits of municipal politics. Municipal socialism can
redistribute resources within the boundaries of the national state. It cannot abolish
the capitalist social relations that are the very source of inequality.
This is particularly pertinent to George Lansbury. You can't
understand his political evolution in terms of sheer personal courage or moral
commitment alone. You have to see it as part of the evolution of Labourism. Trotsky's
Where Is Britain Going? (1925) is still absolutely essential precisely
because it looked at the contradictions of British reformism at a time of
intensifying class struggle. Trotsky argued that the apparent gradualism and
peacefulness of British politics masked deep-seated class antagonisms. That
argument is not confined to Lansbury. Workers could be extremely militant
within organisations which were formally and in practice nationally reformist.
That contradiction is the thread which runs through much of the history Rosenberg
reconstructs.
Battersea and the politics of accommodation
The Battersea section is another example of the book's
strength in that it doesn't present a one-dimensional political picture. It's
very much a geographical chapter in which south London is not some marginal
area to the more 'familiar' revolutionary history of the East End. Of course,
you have the same thing with individuals who start out in working-class and
socialist movements and then go on to become quite accommodative of the
existing order. Those shifts too can't be explained by biography alone. They resulted
from very specific historical and material conditions. The strength of British
capitalism, the huge amount of capital accumulated through empire, the power of
the parliamentary system and the development of a privileged trade union
bureaucracy all exerted a pressure on the labour movement.
That's why London's history is inextricably bound up with Britain's
position as an imperial power. The same city which was home to such profound
levels of poverty was the administrative and financial heart of the empire. The
fact that such extreme poverty coexisted with the metropolis's immense wealth was
a direct consequence of the international structure of British capitalism. You
simply can't make sense of the particular vigour of British reformism without
placing imperialism at the very centre of the analysis rather than at the
margins.
Cable Street: heroism and political mythology
The chapter on Cable Street remains inevitably one of the
most powerful parts of this historical landscape. The Battle of Cable Street on
4 October 1936 belongs to the collective memory of London's working class
because Jewish, Irish and other workers mobilised against Oswald Mosley's
fascist movement and attempts to march through the East End.
There is every reason to defend this memory. But Cable
Street must also be rescued from mythology. The question is not whether Communist
Party members and supporters fought courageously. Many unquestionably did. The
historical problem is the politics of Stalinism and the Popular Front. By 1936
the Communist International had abandoned the revolutionary internationalism
associated with the October Revolution. The Popular Front subordinated the
independent political movement of workers to alliances with supposedly
democratic sections of the bourgeoisie.
This was not an abstract dispute occurring somewhere outside
the history Rosenberg describes. At precisely the time British workers
confronted fascists in London, the Spanish Revolution posed questions of state
power, revolution, and counter-revolution with immense urgency. Any account
that commemorates anti-fascist militancy while treating the Popular Front
primarily as a strategy of broad democratic unity misses the fundamental
political issue. Courage cannot substitute for programme. Indeed, that is one
of the central lessons running through twentieth-century history: workers
repeatedly demonstrated immense courage while being led by organisations whose
political strategy subordinated them to forces protecting capitalist property
and state power.
What is missing: Trotskyism
The absence of sustained engagement with the Trotskyist
movement consequently becomes more conspicuous as the historical narrative
approaches the 1930s. Trotskyism was not simply another radical current
competing beside anarchism, Labourism, feminism or Stalinism. The Left
Opposition, and later the Fourth International, arose from the struggle against
the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union and Stalinism's abandonment
of socialist internationalism. This had direct implications for every major
political question in the latter part of Rosenberg's book: fascism, the German
catastrophe of 1933, the Popular Front, the Spanish Revolution, imperialism,
and the approach of another world war.
One need not convert a London walking guide into a history
of the Fourth International. But once a book seeks not simply to identify
places but to explain radical political traditions, suppressing or
marginalising conflicts over revolutionary programme becomes consequential. Without
those conflicts, Stalinism risks appearing as merely another component of the
broader radical tradition. It was far more historically significant than that.
Brick Lane and the extension beyond 1939
The addition of“Battleground Brick Lane 1970s” is therefore
particularly interesting. It breaks the earlier tendency for Rosenberg's
narrative to terminate around the Second World War and carries the geography of
struggle into London's later history. That is a valuable development because
migration changed but did not end the political character of the East End. The
location that had earlier witnessed the organisation of Jewish immigrant
workers became associated with later struggles involving newer migrant
communities.
Placing those experiences within the same geographical
landscape carries considerable historical power. The danger, however, remains
that the concept of radical continuity replaces political differentiation.
Successive populations certainly confronted discrimination and racist
mobilisation. But the organisations, programmes and international political
conditions within which they fought changed profoundly. Continuity of struggle
should not be confused with continuity of politics.
Rosenberg and Corbynism
The project's political standpoint becomes particularly
apparent in Rosenberg's own retrospective account of the book's history. Writing
about the third edition in November 2026, Rosenberg recalled that Jeremy Corbyn
was one of the speakers at the launch of the original edition in 2015. He
describes Corbyn's subsequent entry into the Labour leadership contest as
heralding “one of the most exciting and hopeful periods in Labour's post-war
history” and notes that enthusiasm for earlier radicals increased when Corbyn
became Labour leader, with what Rosenberg calls a “solid mandate for radical
change”.
This is politically revealing. Corbynism represented an
attempt to channel the widespread opposition created by years of austerity back
through the Labour Party. Its essential proposition was that Labour could be
reclaimed and transformed through mass membership and pressure from below. The
fate of this project cannot be treated as external to the political lessons of Rebel
Footprints. If history is invoked to demonstrate what mobilisation can
accomplish, it is equally necessary to examine what happens when mobilisation
remains politically imprisoned within organisations defending the existing
state. The critical historical issue is therefore not simply that movements
need courage, organisation or pressure from below. British labour history has
all three. The issue is political independence.
History from below and the problem of leadership
The book shares many strengths with the tradition usually
described as history from below. It turns attention away from monarchs, prime
ministers and generals and towards people whose experiences were routinely
excluded from official history. That intellectual achievement should not be
diminished. But there is a danger in transforming history from below into
history only from below.
The working class does not make history under circumstances
of its own choosing. Spontaneous struggle does not automatically provide the
political programme needed to overcome capitalism. Workers encounter existing
parties, trade unions, bureaucracies and ideologies. Different tendencies
struggle consciously for leadership. Consequently, leadership is itself a
historical question. Why did revolutionary opportunities end in defeat? Why did
reformist organisations acquire authority? Why did Communist parties that
originated under the impact of October become defenders of Stalinism? Why did
organisations created by workers come to police workers' struggles? These
questions cannot be answered simply by reconstructing mobilisation, however
sympathetically or vividly. The working class requires historical memory, but
memory without political analysis can become commemoration.
The continuing value of Rebel Footprints
None of this diminishes the usefulness of Rosenberg's
achievement. The fact that the third edition exists at all indicates the
continuing appetite for histories different from those supplied by official
heritage culture. A contemporary favourable assessment describes the walks as a
form of public “history from below” that makes the histories of ordinary people
accessible through the city itself. Readers should use the book exactly in that
spirit.
Walk Fleet Street and Clerkenwell. Walk Bow and Whitechapel.
Walk Bloomsbury, Hackney, Battersea, Soho, Poplar, Bermondsey, Cable Street and
Brick Lane. Look behind the expensive apartments, redeveloped warehouses and
commercial façades. Recover the city inhabited by generations who refused to
accept the conditions imposed upon them. But then ask the questions that the
landscape itself cannot answer. Why were their victories limited? Why were
reforms reversed? Why did organisations built through working-class sacrifice
accommodate themselves to capitalism? Why did socialist internationalism come
into conflict with Labourism and Stalinism? And why, after two centuries of
struggle, does extraordinary private wealth continue to exist beside
deprivation in one of the richest cities on earth? Those questions lead beyond
the politics of radical remembrance.
Which footprints should be followed?
This is ultimately the contradiction at the heart of the
third edition of Rebel Footprints. Rosenberg has produced something
genuinely valuable: a counter-map of London. It is a city populated not simply
by kings, financiers, property owners and politicians, but by workers,
immigrants, women, socialists, democrats and anti-fascists. It reminds the
reader that rights presented retrospectively as natural stages in Britain's
peaceful democratic development were secured through bitter struggles.
Yet history provides more than inspiration. It provides
warnings. The working class's greatest defeats did not occur because workers
failed to struggle. Frequently they struggled heroically. Defeat resulted when
courage and militancy were subordinated to political programmes incapable of
challenging capitalist power. That is why revolutionary history cannot finally
be reduced to a collection of inspiring rebellions.
London's radical past contains competing political
traditions, not a single progressive inheritance. Chartism, anarchism,
parliamentary Labourism, Stalinism and revolutionary Marxism cannot simply be
placed together beneath the heading of rebellion. Their differences concerned
the most fundamental question of all: which class should hold political
power?
In 2026 that question is far from historical. The physical
London Rosenberg guides us through has changed drastically. But the social
antagonism that produced earlier struggles has not disappeared. Enormous
private fortunes coexist with workers struggling with housing and living costs.
Migrants are again made scapegoats for crises they did not create. Nationalism
is used to divide workers whose interests cross borders.
Rebel Footprints helps recover the memory of those who
resisted previous manifestations of these forces. Its limitation is that memory
is continually allowed to stand where political explanation is required. Readers
should nevertheless take the book onto the streets. Walk the routes. Find the
halls, estates, factories, meeting places and battlegrounds. Remember the
matchwomen, Chartists, immigrant workers, suffragettes, tenants, socialists and
anti-fascists. But their greatest legacy is not the proposition that protest
eventually persuades society to become more progressive.
It is that every serious advance of the working class was
secured through struggle against entrenched interests, while the decisive
question remained the political programme under which that struggle was
conducted. The footprints therefore point somewhere Rosenberg does not finally
go. They point from protest towards the problem of political power, from
radicalism towards socialism, and from the recovery of working-class history
towards the necessity of revolutionary and internationalist leadership.
Bibliography
Book under review
Rosenberg, David. Rebel Footprints: A Guide to Uncovering
London's Radical History. 3rd ed. Foreword by Michael Rosen. London: Pluto
Press, 2026. 416 pp. ISBN 9780745351810. [plutobooks.com],
[amazon.co.uk]
Earlier editions and related work
Rosenberg, David. Rebel Footprints: A Guide to Uncovering
London's Radical History. London: Pluto Press, 2015.
Rosenberg, David. Rebel Footprints: A Guide to Uncovering
London's Radical History. 2nd ed. Foreword by Ash Sarkar. London: Pluto
Press, 2019.
Rosenberg, David. Battle for the East End: Jewish
Responses to Fascism in the 1930s. Nottingham: Five Leaves, 2011.
Further reading
Branson, Noreen. Poplarism, 1919–1925: George Lansbury
and the Councillors' Revolt. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979.
Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in
England. 1845.
Fishman, William J. East End Jewish Radicals, 1875–1914.
London: Duckworth, 1975.
Lenin, V. I. “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder.
1920.
Pankhurst, E. Sylvia. The Suffragette Movement.
London: Longmans, 1931.
Piratin, Phil. Our Flag Stays Red. London: Thames
Publications, 1948.
Rocker, Rudolf. The London Years. London: Robert
Anscombe, 1956.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class.
London: Victor Gollancz, 1963.
Trotsky, Leon. Where Is Britain Going? 1925.
Trotsky, Leon. The Spanish Revolution (1931–39). New
York: Pathfinder Press, 1973.
