DANIEL SONABEND’S We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain (Verso) tells the stories of the Jewish ex-servicemen and women who came back from the second world war only to find that fascist gangs were still harassing Jewish communities back home in Britain.

The book recounts the heroic struggles of these Jewish veterans who challenged the fascists, often at considerable risk to themselves, given the level of violence that the gangs employed.

I was shocked to realise how little I had known about the continuance of far-right violence and the influence of Oswald Mosley in the post-war period and the threads of fascism, anti-semitism and racism that run through our history.