Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

including the mural. But people considered the proposal ‘very ambitious’,
says Mills, ‘and it was put on the backburner’.
Jones pursued it, though, and invited artist Dave Binnington to the
basement. Binnington had produced vivid and striking work under
London’s Westway flyover, inspired by the Mexican mural artists David
Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. He read voraciously about the battle, and
both he and Mills interviewed veterans to collect firsthand information.
Binnington projected a slide of an early design on to the town hall wall. He
recruited another artist, Paul Butler, to produce a series of predella panels
across the lower section, narrating the battle.
8
A mural project committee leafleted locals, inviting them to contribute
poems, drawings and memories and offering them the chance to appear
in the mural. ‘Just as the crowd in 1936 was made up of local people,’ the
leaflet stated, ‘so shall the mural be an image of people living here now.’
Many faces in the mural were taken from newspaper photos of the battle,
but the more ethnically diverse group behind a banner on the lower left
represents Cable Street’s 1970s residents. By then, few Jews lived there.
The Irish remained, but the new fast growing community was Bangladeshi.
Like earlier Jewish immigrants they worked in the rag trade around Brick
Lane and Cannon Street Road, which crosses Cable Street. Like the Jews,
they too were targeted by racists and fascists. The National Front stepped
comfortably into Mosley’s boots.
Bangladeshi Nooruddin Ahmed, who came to the East End in his teens,
recalls the febrile atmosphere: ‘Most of Tower Hamlets was a no-go area
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16