BRITAIN: Ben Quinn, in London, visits Barking and Dagenham, an area with one of the largest Irish communities where 12 BNP councillors were elected this year
Amid the barricades, Irish dockers and their Jewish neighbours in London's East End were among those standing shoulder to shoulder 70 years ago this month.
During what is known as the Battle of Cable Street, the working-class residents of the city's most multicultural quarter blocked a march by Oswald Mosley's Blackshirt.
At a time when fascism was in the ascendant elsewhere, it had been dealt an iconic blow in Britain.
However, following breakthrough local election results earlier this year by the far right British National Party (BNP), many believe that fascism is once again on the march in east London - except this time some London Irish are taking a rather different stance.
No less than 12 BNP councillors were elected in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham, an area with one of the largest Irish communities in the East End.
The new BNP councillors include Robert Buckley, Irish football fan and proud holder of an Irish passport thanks to the fact that his parents are from Cork.
Handing out leaflets one recent Saturday afternoon on Dagenham High Street, he is part of a new generation in a party still regarded by mainstream politicians as a dangerous gang of racists. "My dad came here in the 50s and still is a Labour voter. He told me that when I became involved [ with the BNP]," said the 40-year-old insurance broker who has spent many happy years as a member of the "Green Army", travelling to watch the Irish soccer team play.
"I was a Labour voter but I felt abandoned not just by Labour but by this council in particular," said Mr Buckley, who had no previous involvement with far-right politics.
"Anytime I needed help I was not given it, and then someone I knew mentioned the name of Richard Barnbrook [ the BNP leader in Dagenham] and asked if I would be interested in standing."
"Everyone looks back to the National Front and that type of extremism, but if that was part of the BNP I would have nothing to do with it.
"I can understand why people were suspicious. It was about being Anglo-Saxon, and there was a sympathy for loyalism, but that has changed."
On the irony of being in a party preaching against immigration he added: "All over the world people move from country to country, but there is a difference between moving just for the sake of it and moving if you are going to put something back into the kitty of that country.
"A lot of people are fed up with the 'take, take, take'.
"They are frustrated and annoyed that the country is being diluted."
His language echoed that of the BNP's leadership, which has striven to portray itself as the defender of "indigenous" white working class voters at a time when many feel alienated by Labour's preoccupation with "middle" England.
Dagenham is a classic example of the type of ground deemed fertile for BNP growth.
Where jobs were once plentiful thanks to a massive Ford manufacturing plant, unemployment now scars sprawling housing estates.
Meanwhile, the arrival of emigrants and refugees, many from West Africa, has become a focus for resentment.
Today the area is one where old-fashioned high street cafes touting traditional London fare such as jellied eel sit alongside shops selling African music, food and beauty products.
The street chatter is a cocktail of East End accents and the dialects of Nigeria, Congo and Liberia.
Into that mix, the new face of the BNP has arrived - a clean-cut, often articulate, activist in a suit, far removed from the image of a sieg-heiling skinhead.
And yet, there is an abundance of reminders of what the party used to be about, and still is.
Among the activists on Dagenham High Street was one who admitted to having been a football hooligan in his youth, as well a supporter of the National Front - the extreme alternative to the BNP.
Nearby, a table outside an underground station was piled high with BNP literature, including a newspaper called The Voice of Freedom.
Above the headline "The Real Manifesto", its front page carried a mocked up image of Tony and Cherie Blair surrounded by devoutly-dressed Muslims.
Superimposed to one side was "Labour" headed notepaper bearing the words "immigration, immigration, immigration."
Inside, pages ranged from mourning the passing of a twee 1950s-style English utopia ("Many classic British dishes are dying out because the current generation of young people have never heard of them") to misleading current affairs "reports" ("Firms that employ white workers face being sidelined").
Such scare tactics are working, helped by realities on the ground.
As explained by Dagenham's Labour MP, John Cruddas, immigrants have been drawn to an area with the lowest cost housing in Greater London.
Against this backdrop, the population has grown faster than the state can fund public services at a time when the pressures of globalisation are being fiercely felt in "indigenous" working-class communities.
He adds: "Many tend to see the allocation of services through the prism of race. In terms of school rolls, there has been a 4 to 5 per cent reduction each year in white enrolments."
Mr Cruddas believes that the BNP's results were no flash in the pan and fears that the party has a strong chance of electing its first MP - a prospect that fills him with dread.
He says: "There have been more racial attacks since they came on the scene. There is a sense of vulnerability on the streets." As for the local Irish community, he cautions against assuming that it is shifting its traditional support for the Labour Party towards the BNP.
The MP, who has family roots in Donegal, adds: "You have to remember that the Irish community understands the dynamics of immigration, which makes them better equipped to navigate through it."