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other Cable Streets
Street in the East End of London, England

Cable Street is a road in the East End of London, England, with several historic landmarks nearby. It was made famous by the Battle of Cable Street in 1936.

Cable Street starts near the edge of London's financial district, the City of London, in south western Whitechapel and continues on through to central Shadwell and then to south eastern Stepney, to the junction between Cable Street and Butcher Row in Limehouse. The street is parallel to, and south of, the Docklands Light Railway and Commercial Road, and north of The Highway. The area is close to Wapping and Shadwell Basin to the south, Tower Hill to the west, and Aldgate to the north. Since many Londoners define their locality by the nearest London Underground stations, the Cable Street area is often referred to as Shadwell. The street is in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in postal district E1. It lies within the parliamentary constituencies of Bethnal Green and Bow and Poplar and Limehouse, currently represented by Rushanara Ali and Jim Fitzpatrick, both of the Labour party.

Cable Street started as a straight path along which hemp ropes were twisted into ships' cables (i. e. ropes). These supplied the many ships that would anchor in the nearby Pool of London, between London Bridge and Wapping and Rotherhithe. Many other ropewalks can be seen on later maps, showing how demand for ropes grew as shipping increased. Until Victorian times, the current Cable Street had different names for each of its sections. From west to east these ran: Cable Street, Knock Fergus, New Road, Back Lane, Blue Gate Fields, Sun Tavern Fields, and Brook Street. Knock Fergus may have been a reference to the large numbers of Irish residents there then, but the name is old – it is found in the St Dunstan Stepney registers in the early 1600s. Also, in the 19th century, the area at the western end of Cable Street was identified as "near Wellclose Square", as this was a well known landmark, where nautical items were sold. The whole of the central area of the current street was named after St George in the East church and St George in the East parish. From Victorian times through to the 1950s, Cable Street had a reputation for cheap lodgings, brothels, drinking inns and opium dens. The last occasion in England when a stake was hammered through a sinner's heart at an official burial, took place at the junction of Cable Street and Cannon Street Road: John Williams was found hanged in his cell, after being arrested as a suspect in the Ratcliff Highway murders. Local people went along with the claim that he had committed suicide, from guilt of the crimes. At the time, 1812, suicide was considered to be sinful, and justified him being buried upside down with a stake through his heart. His skull was found when new gas mains were being laid in August 1886, and was on display for many years in The Crown and Dolphin pub opposite. On 4 October 1936 a violent confrontation between the Metropolitan Police and local communities on the street was later named the 'Battle of Cable Street'. Communist, anarchist, labour and Jewish groups joined with locals to resist a planned march through the East End by Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. The East End has traditionally been an area of London with a large Jewish population. It is estimated that around 100,000 Jews from Eastern Europe had fled to the East End in the period 1881–1914. A bus was overturned and used as a barricade, Mosley's car was attacked with bricks, and there was some of the most violent hand to hand fighting ever seen in London. The march was eventually abandoned. A large mural (created between 1979 and 1983) on St George's Town Hall, next to Library Place, depicts scenes from the day. A red plaque at Cable Street's junction with Dock Street commemorates the incident.

A musical based on the events in Cable Street in October 1936 ran at the Southwark Playhouse theatre in London from 16 February 16 March 2024.