Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
EVIL IN OU
Britain in the 60s wasn’t all about free love and new fashions – fascism was on the rise too. A new drama tells the story of those who fought back
Trafalgar Square 1962 and swastikas are being waved alongside Union Jacks while a demagogue spits out fury about the ‘Jewish poison’ as his fans chant ‘Perish Judah’.
It sounds like a dystopian show set in an alternate universe, but this and other events depicted in new drama Ridley Road – about an underground network of Jewish anti-fascists who did all they could to halt the return of the far right – really did happen.
Based on the novel Ridley Road by Jo Bloom, the four-part BBC1 series tells the story of the 62 Group, who came together to defeat the neo-nazi National Socialist Movement run by Colin Jordan, played by Rory Kinnear.
The unlikely protagonist is a hairdresser from Manchester called Vivien Epstein (Agnes O’casey), who follows her lover Jack Morris (Tom Varey) to London, where she finds he has become mixed up in the 62 Group. When he’s injured and goes missing, she bravely agrees to infiltrate the neo-nazis to help save him.
‘I was immediately taken by the issues in the book, especially the idea of a sweet hairdresser who became involved in this quite macho world,’ says actress and writer Sarah Solemani, who came up with the idea of the show and making Vivien more central to the story than in the book. ‘This is a history most people don’t know about – fascists in Trafalgar Square with swastikas just as the 60s were getting into their swing.
‘In the middle of this new era of exploration and love are these vestiges of this violent and hostile ideology, which was protected by the police because there was freedom of speech and no race relations act. So anyone who had a permit could wave as many swastikas as they wanted; the people being arrested were the ones who tried to break up the meetings.’
The 62 Group operated on the margins of the Jewish community – the establishment tried to stop them – as they were unafraid of doing all they could to stop these fascists, even if it meant violently. Tracy-ann Oberman, who plays Nancy Malinovsky, the matriarch
of the 62 Group, and whose grandparents knew some of its members, says, ‘These were tough Jews who’d been soldiers and fighters, many had lost family in the Holocaust. They could see the police weren’t doing anything about these people burning down synagogues, so they had to take matters into their own hands.’
Sarah says the drama’s relevance became apparent as anti-semitism reared its head again in British politics. ‘We’re living in a time of huge flux and are talking a lot about race,’ she says. ‘While I want this show to be entertainment, I hope it might also hold a mirror up and say this hasn’t completely gone away.’
Nicole Lampert Ridley Road, tomorrow, 9pm, BBC1. All four episodes will be available on BBC iplayer from tomorrow.