A discussion of the anti-fascist 62 Group, and Ridley Road, the novel and BBC series it inspired.

50 years after its formation, the story of the anti-fascist 62 Group – the successor to the 43 Group, two veterans of which joined us at Jewish Book Week 2020 – remains relevant, as shown by the huge interest in the BBC1 drama Ridley Road, which took its name from a well-known fascist meeting place and site of several battles.

Jo Bloom, on whose novel the miniseries was based joins Dr Dave Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust (CST) and author of The Left’s Jewish Problem, and Steve Silver, former Searchlight editor, a researcher on the book and consultant on the TV show. They will discuss the story on page, screen and real life, as well as looking at modern parallels.

Jo Bloom has worked as a freelancer in the communications field for the past fifteen years with a focus on arts publicity and e-learning. She also contributed to the book review section of Time Out, London for a few years. Prior to this she lived and worked in Prague and New York. She was inspired to write Ridley Road when she met a Jewish anti-fascist who’d lived in the East End all his life and participated in numerous street battles with the fascists alongside both the 43 Group and the 62 Group. She lives in Brighton with her husband and young son.

Steve Silver is a journalist who was a researcher on Jo Bloom’s novel Ridley Road and also a consultant on the BBC TV series. He is a former editor of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, a publication that was initially founded by 62 Group members.

Dr. Dave Rich is Director of Policy at the Community Security Trust and is a leading expert on left-wing antisemitism, according to The Jewish Chronicle. He is an associate research fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, where he completed his PhD. He is the author of The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Antisemitism.