“Because there was no other organisation … The Labour Party wasn’t interested in fighting fascism or doing anything about it. We was all young lads … and we all decided to join the Young Communist League at the time because they at least were looking after us, and not only that, they provided us with a hall where we could box and do things and dancing. So, they kind of looked after us. In other words, when I look back all the years, they kind of lured us into it … The Young Communist League was like a youth club … Because we knew as much about communism as the man in the moon. I only joined because I wanted to fight fascism … I wasn’t no big shot or nothing like that. I was just like everybody else. I was shouting and throwing stones around. I don’t push no politics because I weren’t interested in politics …”

“The Jewish community weren’t interested. They just wanted to keep their nose clean. They thought if we keep quiet and keep out of it, it’ll either die away or we won’t get brought into anything. And that’s how they were. I remember the people used to say … a lot of the mothers used to say to the lads, ‘mind your own business, don’t interfere’… So, it was only these young fellows like myself … that wanted to fight fascism … And that was the only weapons we had. The government was against us, the police were against us, at that time. So, all we could do was demonstrate or pick a few half bricks up off the Croft and throw them at the fascists. But we fought them hand in hand many a time, especially on Strangeways … I remember quite a few shop windows getting smashed in as we pushed the fascists back towards them … It was our way of demonstrating against them.”

“I remember that day … We’d gone to the club. They let us know that Mosley was having a demonstration and we went to this club, the Challenge Club, which was in Cheetham and we get more and more young people kept coming in to join us. And we decided that we’d march to Albert Croft and demonstrate against him … We knew we were going to get in a fight because we’d been in half a dozen fights before with the fascists … and when we got there, right away we were getting hustled by the police at that time ‘cos they probably wanted to stop us from fighting or demonstrating. Anyway, we got there and all we was doing for the first hour was shouting slogans ‘cos that all we knew. There was nothing else we could shout. Then a few scuffles broke out ‘cos the fascists used to come at us. Rush at us with sticks or truncheons, whatever they had in their hand, so naturally we used to fight back. But really, we didn’t go to start a fight, only to demonstrate against it.”