IntroductionThere are incidents in any city’s history that go down in infamy and just such a one is the Battle of Cable Street on the 4th day of October in the Year of Our Lord 1894.
THE BATTLE OF CABLE STREET, 4TH OCTOBER 1894
Below. Fowler Mk V Walker
The incident was sparked by a simple daily occurrence around the great imperial docks in the East End of London. A wagon heading for the docks to be loaded onto a fast steamer to India was intercepted by a cadre of the Brick Lane Commune. They hoped to get whiskey or cotton cloth, something they might trade for food for the poor and destitute. What they actually got was secret shipment of the new water-cooled Vickers machine guns and enough ammunition to mow down an army.As the shipment was supposed to be secret the police were not informed and Captain Napier of the Prince of Wales’s Extraordinary Company was tasked with their immediate, and preferably covert, retrieval.