A report from the Community Security Trust (CST), published in February, revealed that there were over 4,100 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK in 2023. This is the highest number the CST has ever recorded in a single calendar year in its three-decades-long history. British Jews have been physically and verbally harassed on the streets. Kosher restaurants have been attacked. At points, Jewish schools have been forced to close their doors because their pupils have been at risk. What’s more, the rise in anti-Semitic incidents began within hours of Hamas’s pogrom in southern Israel. That is, before Israel had even mooted an invasion of Gaza.

The echoes of the 1930s and the rise of Oswald Mosley’s fascist movement are difficult to ignore. Then as now, Britain’s Jews were being menaced on the streets by a growing mass movement charged with anti-Semitic sentiment. And then as now, Britain’s Jews had to start fighting back.

It’s worth looking at one key moment in this conflict between Mosley’s fascists and Britain’s Jews. Not the well-known Battle of Cable Street in October 1936, when locals stopped a British Union of Fascists march through Stepney, east London. But another battle, this time in the Jewish quarter of Manchester. For this provides a remarkable story of resistance and bravery in the face anti-Semitism – and a reminder of what it takes to stand up against the oldest hatred.