Then, looking behind him, he saw that whoever was organizing the defence of Cable Street was thinking ahead. Even while the police dismantled the barricade, another was going up a few hundred yards farther along the street.

Lloyd retreated and began enthusiastically to help build the second wall. Dockers with pickaxes were prising up paving stones, housewives dragged dustbins from their yards, and shopkeepers brought empty crates and boxes. Lloyd helped carry a park bench, then pulled down a noticeboard from outside a municipal building. Learning from experience, the builders did a better job this time, using their materials economically and making sure the structure was sturdy.

Looking behind him again, Lloyd saw that a third barricade was beginning to rise farther east.

The people began to retreat from the first one and regroup behind the second. A few minutes later the police at last made a gap in the first barricade and poured through it. The first of them went after the few young men remaining, and Lloyd saw Dave and Lenny chased down an alley. The houses on either side were swiftly shut up, doors slamming and windows closing.

Then, Lloyd saw, the police did not know what to do next. They had broken through the barricade only to be confronted with another, stronger one. They seemed not to have the heart to begin dismantling the second. They milled around in the middle of Cable Street, talking desultorily, looking resentfully at the residents watching them from upstairs windows.

It was too early to proclaim victory but, all the same, Lloyd could not suppress a happy feeling of success. It was beginning to look as if the anti-Fascists were going to win the day.

He remained at his post for another quarter of an hour, but the police did nothing more, so he left the scene, found a telephone kiosk, and called in.

Bernie was cautious. ‘We don’t know what’s happening,’ he said. ‘There seems to be a lull everywhere, but we need to find out what the Fascists are up to. Can you get back to the Tower?’

Lloyd certainly could not fight his way through the massed police, but perhaps there was another way. ‘I could try going via St George Street,’ he said doubtfully.

‘Do the best you can. I want to know their next move.’

Lloyd worked his way south through a maze of alleys. He hoped he was right about St George Street. It was outside the contested area, but the crowds might have spilled over.

However, as he had hoped, there were no crowds here, even though he was still within earshot of the counter-demonstration, and could hear shouting and police whistles. A few women stood in the street talking, and a gaggle of little girls skipped a rope in the middle of the road. Lloyd headed west, breaking into a jog-trot, expecting to see crowds of demonstrators or police around every bend. He came across a few people who had strayed from the fracas – two men with bandaged heads, a woman in a ripped coat, a bemedalled veteran with his arm in a sling – but no crowds. He ran all the way to where the street ended at the Tower. He was able to walk unhindered into Tower Gardens.