This article by Dinah Parkinson was first published in Blackshirt, weekly newspaper of the British Union of Fascists, April 18, 1936.
Trams on the streets of Manchester, 1934
In A Manchester Sweat Shop
The tram crawled through Cheatham Hill, Manchester's ghetto. It was Friday evening, and most of the shops were shut. A drab and dismal scene.
I entered into conversation with the girl next to me. She had boarded the tram as it passed through the region of waterproof factories and Jewish owned workshops—the region of sweated labour.
From commonplace talk she grew more confidential, "Thank Heaven I got out early tonight," she said, "Friday seems the only night I manage it. I'm supposed to finish at 6 o'clock, but I rarely do. It's generally between 6.30 pm and 7 pm."
"You're lucky really," I said. "Not many people are working overtime."
"Overtime! You can't call it overtime, I don't get paid a penny for it."
"What exactly is your work? I thought you must be at one of the factories as you got on the tram at D—— street."
"Oh no I'm a typist—."
Then seeing perhaps a flicker of amusement on my face, she hastily informed me, "I know most people think it's all plain sailing and a nice easy job. Most typists' jobs are I admit but mine—"
She looked round furtively. (Most of the girls I have interviewed have looked round in the same way, feared lest they may be caught imparting information of any kind).
"I'm at a firm of Jewish furriers, in a little back street close to where I got on the tram. I've been there three years and I get 25s per week, less insurance. So I don't even earn enough to keep myself. That's bad enough in itself, but that's not all by a long way. It's the office—"
"What do you mean 'The Office?'" I interrupted. "Do you mean the actual building, or the staff?"
"Both. You have to climb four flights of rickety stairs to get there, and the office is so terribly dark and poky, with a tiny window overlooking the chimney pots. In summer it's too hot and I feel on the point of suffocation, and in winter there are no fires and I'm frozen. There is always a musty sort of smell because there are lots of old ledgers and fur samples and things littered about, and the place is filthy. The furniture is old and dilapidated, and the roof is about to leak at any moment. We work in constant electric light, and the bulb isn't powerful enough. And the place is overrun with mice"—she shivered in spite of herself—"and cockroaches."
"I have read of such places in the papers" I said, "but I thought people came round and expected conditions in offices."
"I thought so, but I haven't seen any." she replied. "I suppose the manager wangles out of it somehow. He conducts his business on similar lines," she finished cynically.
"What about the staff?" I reminded her. "Well—I share the office with a junior, a girl about fifteen. She isn't a bad child, and she has an awful time, poor kid. The manager's son is in every morning. He thinks he can treat us like dirt, and so does, and so does the manager. That's the worst part about it. If I dared to take exception to the insolent way I'm spoken to, I'd lose my position—I've lost my self respect long ago. Jobs are too precious to throw away—even mine, so I just have to stick it. The workshop is close by, and the girls there are all saying the same about the way we are treated. I'm looking for another job, and I've decided one thing definitely, I won't be working for Jews any more. No one who hasn't come into direct contact with them realises what we have to go through."
Then she chuckled, "They held a Blackshirt meeting in Cheatham Hill recently. I was longing to go but I daren't. I know nothing about the policy, but I do know all the Jewish employers are scared stiff. I shall find out more about it. Oh here's my stop. Goodbye—"
And suddenly she darted away down the steps. A pity. She was so ripe for Fascism.
Mosley speaks from the top of a van, Manchester, 1936. On his far left is Neil Francis Hawkins, the B.U.F. National Organiser. In the middle, wearing jackboots, is John Hone, the Northern Inspecting Officer for British Union
These people look upon Fascism as a rather impossible dream—far too good for reality. Therefore, knowing our own countrymen and women are slaving under such conditions, we must not fail.
------------------
There were ant-Jewish riots in Cheatham Hill, Manchester over the August bank holiday weekend in 1947. The riots took place after the Sunday newspapers printed a story about two British army sergeants who were executed by hanging in Palestine by the Jewish terrorist organisation Irgun. The bodies were booby-trapped and hung in a eucalyptus grove.
