After Bolton: tactical choices for anti-fascists
Posted on Sunday 21 March, 2010
Filed Under Far right
OVER the top comparisons with the streets of Italy during the Bienno Rosso thankfully remain alarmist nonsense. But it is the case that the fascist right now has an established street thug presence in Britain for the first time since the 1970s, and has even started to intimidate leftwing meetings.
Broadly there are two potential responses from the left. The first is to attempt physical confrontation, as happened in the face-off between the English Defence League and Socialist Workers’ Party-led Unite Against Fascism campaign in Bolton yesterday.
There are conflicting reports about what happened. Socialist Worker was quick to proclaim the day ‘a huge success’. Sure. What else could it possibly have been, comrades? But even discounting the perennial police tendency to downplay the numbers on leftwing mobilisations, most media accounts suggest that the EDL had significantly more support.
If matters had come to a serious scrap, there is little doubt as to which side would have got a pasting. For all the streetfighting man belligerence of the UAF leadership – and two key SWP figures were arrested on the Bolton demo – there is a real question as to whether or not the far left is actually capable of putting a tough guy strategy into practice.
Trying to do so may be counterproductive, anyway. Rather than bus white student lefties into northern mill towns en masse, the real task at hand is to get local people to turn up in large numbers wherever the EDL decides to march. Many people will understandably not show their faces if violence is virtually guaranteed.
And of course, the EDL, which includes all too many seasoned football hooligans, is absolutely up for a ruck. The promise of a spot of bit of a barney on the day will only come as an added attraction to the layers it seeks to influence.
The second approach, typified by Searchlight-sponsored Hope Not Hate, centres on such comparatively unglamorous tactics as the organisation of anti-racist pop concerts, and the hard graft of canvassing in areas where the British National Party has a good chance of securing local government or even Westminster representation.
Sections of the far left criticise HnH as ineffectual at best and craven cowardice at worst. But at least it is not being distracted by an outfit that remains – for now, at least – thankfully a sideshow. It is also quite clear which of the two campaigns is having the greater impact.
This is not an either/or choice. Clearly, there could be times ahead when reruns of Cable Street or Lewisham will be on the order of the day. Progressive organisations will probably have to reconsider their security measures. But in the meantime, my donation ahead of the election will going to HnH.
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42 Responses to “After Bolton: tactical choices for anti-fascists”
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Political intimidation is a fact of life, whether by the Save-the-Minks [and pubic lice] nutters or the Extremist Left or the Extremist Right.
The U.K. government seems unable to close down REDWATCH despite pious bleating and hand-wringing …
LINK DELETED
… NOT a joke at all, very poisonous stuff BUT inevitable, given the way things are …
If the Brits can’t shut down REDWATCH, it seems inexplicable that the FSB Litvinenko Detachment has not shut down KAVKAZ CENTER:
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/
… which rejoices in the deaths of Russkis, Brits and Americans.
The elections will show pretty starkly that the far right has done a much better job of engaging with the demoralised and disenfranchised sections of the working class. If I were on a waiting list for a council flat I’d be hard pushed to think of a reason for Margaret Hodge.
Events like yesterday’s are a reminder of the other element to this issue, the need to create a political force to represent working class people.
The toiling masses can, of course, rely on the political wing of the Labour Movement:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7070350.ece
Whether the UAF leadership intended physical confrontation I don’t know – that might have been their intention, but you’d think they’d have done a bit more to discourage school students and the elderly from attending their counter-demo if that was the case. However, that aside, counter-demos *should* definitely be part of any sensible anti-fascist strategy. Anti-racist pop concerts and canvassing are important too, but it’s hard to think of a better way to make British Muslims feel scared and isolated than to let Islamophobes march through their towns unchallenged.
Lots of issues raised by this post.
I think you’re overstating the differences between UAF and HnH. At their core, both are essentially popular front antifascist groups, who believe in working closely with the establishment. The most significant difference is that UAF take an “anyone but fascists” stance (so have David Cameron as a supporter etc.) whereas HnH are more straighforwardly partisan for the Labour party.
Their tactics don’t differ that much overall. Both go for the antifascist pop concert tack and take a basically liberal “the BNP are nasty people” approach to propaganda. Again, the main difference would be HnH’s focus on canvassing for the Labour Party specifically. Their analysis is eseentially a watered down version of stuff the IWCA has been saying for years. So where the IWCA aimed to replace the BNP as the ‘radical alternative’ in working class areas (not that successfully, it has to be said), HnH have taken the same stance on community work, but prefer to try and prop up the establishment as opposed to offering an alternative.
Objectively, both groups have failed to stop the BNP growing. I’d take Beacon’s election as the starting point for that.
The BNP are the bigger threat, but that doesn’t mean the EDL don’t need opposing. I think different tactics are needed though. The battle with the BNP is one for “hearts and minds”. With the EDL it’s trying to stop them growing in confidence. Their intimidation of a UAF meeting shows that’s happening.
I don’t believe the propaganda from the cops that the UAF were up for a ruck in Bolton (which you seem to be taking as fact). If they were, there’s no way they’d have led people into an obvious kettle. I think this was first and foremost a police riot and was preplanned.
You’re overstating the physical capabilities of the EDL. There’s a core of hardened hooligans. But most of them are hangers-on and wanabees. They aren’t some kind of streetfighting supermen.
Onto more tactical issues.
The idea that physical confrontation gives the EDL “what they’re looking for” has been heard before about Combat 18. Actually, C18 only wanted to win fights. When it became clear that wasn’t the case, they quickly fell apart. I suspect the same potential exists here.
The most successful anti EDL mobilisations have been Brum and, especially, Edinburgh. Those were also undoubtably the most militant mobilisations, which is hardly coincidental. And that militancy happened very much out of the control of the UAF. HnH weren’t really involved at all. However, there was an issue with the lack of focus and strategy of some less experienced militants.
The only militant antifascist group in England is Antifa. and there are some serious issues there. They’re tiny. They have far too narrow a base- they’re almost exclusively anarchist. They downplay ideological confrontation too much and their propaganda is generally a bit rubbish anarchism by numbers stuff. And they get sidetracked down the dead end of attacking fascists at home, whereas it’s the streets that matter.
To draw all that into a conclusion. I think it’s time we looked at whether militants need to be making a clean break from the liberal antifascism of UAF/HnH. Those groups are never going to be set up for militancy, because of their emphasis on keeing the establishment on side. So, while this obviously won’t hapen overnight, it may be time to look at setting u some sort of orginsation, in the hope of uniting and coordinating militant activists. That’s already happened to a small extent with the launch of the Edinburgh Anti Fascist Alliance. And I think it’s worth looking at that development and seeing what wider lessons can be learnt.
Waterloo Sunset, have a look at this video of the EDL and then repeat your claim that “You’re overstating the physical capabilities of the EDL. There’s a core of hardened hooligans. But most of them are hangers-on and wanabees.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr5Ob5s1fWc
Can you imagine the left up against that lot? What a joke: one that’s compounded when rosy-cheeked SWP students start chanting “police protect the nazis”
The Great Brains at HP are here:
http://hurryupharry.org/2010/03/21/weyman-bennett-charged-with-conspiracy-to-commit-violent-disorder/
There are those who utter “Gordon Bennett!” as an exclamation.
Why not adopt “Weyman Bennett” for the same purpose?
I note the Alice in Wonderland comment on the Unite Against Fascism website – where it talks about how ” protesters were celebrating victory in Bolton on Saturday” (http://www.uaf.org.uk/).
What an embarrassing shambles, even by the very low standards of the ‘anti-fascist’ left. Yes, Waterloo Sunset, we do indeed need to make a “clean break from the liberal anti-fascism of UAF”, etc. That is, from the *politics* – and political approach – of the UAF. This is no way implies complacency, or ignoring the EDL. Or happy-hour piss-heads like them.
“Rather than bus white student lefties into northern mill towns en masse, the real task at hand is to get local people to turn up in large numbers wherever the EDL decides to march.”
That’s more of a long term strategy isn’t it. Meanwhile we cannot just allow a bunch of hardcore racist thugs to go to any town they please to intimidate and attack Muslims and other ethnic minorities. The SWP tactics, while not perfect, are perfectly justified. Any if any pop stars want to join the protests they are perfectly welcome to.
You’re overstating the physical capabilities of the EDL. There’s a core of hardened hooligans. But most of them are hangers-on and wanabees.
If that. They seem to be a source of considerable amusement to the (superannuated) footy meatheads I see around.
“Yokels and plastics.”
Hopefully those anti-fascists who insist on physical confrontation with the EDL and BNP at every opportunity rather than where necessary, will now be lining up to offer themselves as character witnesses for Weyman Bennett’s defence against the charge that he would ever incite violence.
Does JOHNNO not realise that pop stars are more interested in drowning polar bear cubs than in what’s happening down the road?
Talking of political enthusiasms, some of you may not be up o speed on contemporary political poetry:
http://hurryupharry.org/2010/03/22/indictment-usa/
Is Begg the new Adian Mitchell?
Bill,
“Does JOHNNO not realise that pop stars are more interested in drowning polar bear cubs than in what’s happening down the road?”
Thats sort of the point I was subtly making!
I think Waterloo Sunset is pretty close to the mark. We clearly need to do something different from Saturday. There was more militancy, and IMO the police grossly overreacted. It being Manchester they are made authoritarians who cannot tolerate any defiance to them whatsoever. Hence the police riot, which was planned from the start, inasmuch as they had the resources on the ground, but I don’t think they probably intended to use them as they did. Hence the contrast between Manchester and Bolton.
Of course if Weyman Bennett wants any witnesses there will be plenty of people I’m sure to come forward on his behalf if asked.
I now realise that there was an inadvertant ambiguity in my posting about pop stars and drowning polar bear cubs.
There are probably quite a few pop stars who would be interested in making a public fuss about the fate of polar bears suffering death by drowning but mercifully few – now that Heavy Metal is more-or-less a thing of the past – who would be willing to actively participate in drowning them.
“If we had a good club, we could beat them!”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The left has certainly been taken over, and is now just another talking shop for the middle class.
The EDL are a legitimate working class organisation. As such none of their members are going to be interested in St. Leon the Loser and his ice-picking proclivities.
The question that we need to be asking is this: are we serious about taking revenge for the past 30 years, or are we content to carry on having a nice wank?
Exile,
My dad worked in a factory and my mum is a nurse. My socialism comes directly from my dads union activity. So sweeping statements about the left being a talking shop for the middle class cuts no ice with me.
As for the EDL being a legimate working class organisation, you will be telling us that West Hams inter city firm was a legitimate organisation next.
circulate this widely, from saturday.
The dreadful and disturbing video footage of a riot police officer pushing Bertie Lois to the ground is starting to circulate. The police violence towards this 89 year old war veteran, antifascist protestor and Bolton resident will shock the nation and show the real nature of saturdays events. Circulate it everyone!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9Abqu-dVWc&feature=player_embedded
The assault occurs about 26 seconds into the video. Two coppers are dragging a UAF protestor, and the riot cop on the right shoves Bertie to the ground.
Bertie had given a widely reported quote to the media before the demo. This is from the Telegraph:
“Second World War veteran Bertie Lois, 89, who lives in Farnworth, Bolton, protested with the UAF. He said: “I fought the Second World War against these Nazis. What did I fight for if we let them? The EDL are the enemy. I would say to them ‘you are the guys we fought for, what are you doing?’”I am also here because I am against the war in Afghanistan.”
But none of the media have yet picked up on the story of the police violence towards Bertie.
Ooer, your dad and his union activity, eh? As opposed to you who are obviously a nice little boy with a nice little job.
As for the idiocy about the old man, the video shows quite clearly that he is pushed over by a man in a red crash helmet. Still, fantasise all you like – Trots are good at that.
Bernie, thanks for that, blogged on it.
The question that we need to be asking is this: are we serious about taking revenge for the past 30 years, or are we content to carry on having a nice wank?
Asians in Bolton aren’t responsible for the depredations of the last 30 years you weapon.
If you’re that fussed go and “protest” in Sevenoaks, Amersham and Hampstead.
I never said that they were, webmong, did I? What I wrote was that the EDL are a legitimate working class outfit uninterested in Trotscum. I then went on to say, in another paragraph so even you should have been able to tell that it was a different topic, that we needed to be thinking about revenge, not playing silly buggers.
So what’s the deal? Working class creates its own organisation and the consensus is that it gets ignored or fought? Why? Because they are not keen on the latest rant from some unwashed loser in some Trot sect? Have you seen the mithering over at Socialist Unity? Precious little souls felt very intimidated when the nasty proles from the EDL turned up at some Trot meeting.
Come the next EDL meeting here in Brum I will go along. For some reason I suspect that I would feel at home there, whereas around here I feel in need of a bath.
It is a pity that a Oxbridge graduate, such as Exile, never managed to study any relevant history or understood fascism with any subtlety.
If he or others had then they’d realise that the EDL fulfils the role of the neofascist street army.
It is used to intimidate ethnic minorities, political opponents and stir up racial hatred.
That’s its job, its leadership is peppered with BNPers, neo-Nazis, semiprofessional hooligans and thugs.
It has no legitimate political purpose, other than to bolster neofascism in Britain, it should be thought of as an auxiliary to the BNP.
And if you politically oppose the BNP, then you should do so with their racist mates in the EDL.
All a bit basic, even for graduates from Ruskin College.
Considering that Exile apparently doesn’t understand the difference between Dudley and Brum, I wouldn’t hold out high hopes for anything more complex.
You’ve got fuck all to do with the working class you lumpen scruff, we want nothing to do with you.
Embarrassing ratboys like you are the middle classes’ best friend, there’s a reason they bend over backwards to keep you all out the slammer.
Good post Dave, and also Waterloo.
I agree with Dave on the busing in students issue, which is a perennial problem with this sort of action, especially when the calculation is that or leave a small number of locals to get slaughtered.
I agree with WS that Dave over-estimates UAF’s desire for a ruck. It seems to me they’re trying to have it both ways these days, posing as militant to differentiate themselves in the market from HnH (e.g. throwing the egg at Griffin, a self-indulgent stunt in a setting that was relatively safe) and then making a big deal about police brutality for the Guardian afterwards. (In Edinburgh, as far as I can tell, they tried to set their “peaceful” demo apart from the EAFA mobilisation, but then claimed credit for EAFA’s militancy afterwards.)
On the more substantive point, tho, on what anti-fascists ought to do, I really don’t know. It seems to me the question is a very local one: are there grassroots anti-fascist groups in your area?
On the more substantive point, tho, on what anti-fascists ought to do, I really don’t know. It seems to me the question is a very local one: are there grassroots anti-fascist groups in your area?
Actually, ratboy does have a point there. The class nature/structure/insatiable lust for pointless nose-spiting gesture politics/general asininity of the modern faux left (amongst other things) makes grassrooots socialist organization practically impossible.
Er, right, so the fact that the EDL is obviously mixed race means, according to Modernity that it “intimidates ethnic minorities”. And it somehow manages to have unnamed BNP folk in its leadership ranks when the BNP has expressly forbidden any contact with the outfit. Brilliant. Face it – you’re scared aren’t you? I can almost hear the arseholes clench.
“We want nothing to do with you,” says Dave Spart. What, you asked everyone did you, or did you do as Trotscum always do and make some shit up?
“We want nothing to do with you,” says Dave Spart. What, you asked everyone did you, or did you do as Trotscum always do and make some shit up?
Oh, you’re back from fiddling with your balls outside Spar.
I don’t need to ask anyone, contempt for the likes of you is a sine qua non of prole discourse.
We’d have more respect for you if you fucked off into Tarquin town to make nuisances of yourselves once in a while.
It’s amazing that neo-Strasserite thickos like Exile can’t use the Web to find out who’s behind the EDL?
He’s sitting there with Google and Exile can’t even find the EDL founder admitting that the BNP have taken it over.
Realising that argumentation wouldn’t work on such people I provided a post with plenty of little videos, which show the involvement of neo-Nazis in the EDL.
Also, a link to material on Paul Ray, if Exile or other slow witted need further confirmation they can read the links or look up Chris Renton BNP EDL in Google, it is all rather elementary.
http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/the-edl/
Here is the self-hating dhimmis’ take on events:
http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/
Everytime bus-loads of middle-class first year humanities students and effete Trotskyists confront working-class football hooligans who are also a bit racist it is an absolute gift to the BNP. On the council estates where the BNP are strong it is these very lefties that are detested only second to immigrants, and bring a whole new meaning to class-war by turning up in peripheral market towns to shout “Nazi scum” at the working classes. Nazis? Get real.
I do suppose though that when you have so many links to anti-Semitic figures as the UAF do, downplaying and bandying around the term ‘Nazi’ is quite easily done.
Just incase you really did think that UAF were ‘anti-fascist’ as they proclaim, here are a few images from their recent rallies.
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l197/JJJjjjpua/UAFALLAH.jpg
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l197/JJJjjjpua/UAFflags.jpg
(This is the flag of Al Qaeda in Somalia)
Right, so you have dropped the bit about intimidating the ethnics, have you? Good because the number of black faces in the group made you look a bit of a mong. Well, rather more than normal.
James Bloodworth: This is me done with these cockroaches from now on in. I don’t want to argue with them on fora like this – I am bringing my eldest lad over soon and they can take it up with him. Bugger’s got a punch that makes me quite proud to be his old dad. I just hope that I live long enough to see them destroyed.
Good Twitter page that offers update on demos as they unfold, by the way. My blog has the details but I can’t be mithered with URLs today. What calls itself the left just makes me want to vomit.
“Everytime bus-loads of middle-class first year humanities students and effete Trotskyists”
” On the council estates where the BNP are strong it is these very lefties that are detested only second to immigrants . . .”
Dave,
any chance of getting your tech experts to install a facepalm button on your blog?
When you read cliched bollocks like this what else can you reach for?
Dave,
Maybe you should run a few articles on basic history, antifascist history and highlight the parallels with the 1920s and thirties as some of your readers, exile and co, could certainly do with some education on the topic.
and as my contribution here’s a video on the Welsh defence league, just like their mate in the EDL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HrS8Fmx2ho
Not forgetting http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/English-Defence-League-cracks-begin-to-show
One perspective that is notably absent from these regular, spirit-sapping debates from competing lefties with their (metaphorical and, probably, actual) cocks out – and that’s the perspective of the minority groups that are the actual target of EDL marches and the like.
It’s easy to mock the facile sloganeering of yer Swoppies – and hell, I do it enough meself – but there doesn’t appear to be very much speaking up on behalf of racism’s actual victims, on any side, in these debates.
Forget it – outsourced crap put out by someone who is about ready to drop his load – you Modernity. I can almost here your arsehole clench. Well, it’s been a long 30 years hasn’t it? Guess what? I think that wonderful moments when you repeatedly pony your strides are about to arrive.
I’ve always thought I should take an interest in psychology, but I never, that was until I saw a Ruskin College graduate, Exile, try and excuse the racist thugs within the English defence league.
And trying to understand what twisted mental process goes through his mind when he implicitly supports the EDL’s xenophobia and racism, by virtue of trying to sanitised the EDL and their methods
It must be some psychological disorder, because it certainly couldn’t be political, unless Exile actually agrees with the EDL’s supposed policies? And if that is the case, then why post here?
Exile would be far more welcomed at the BNP’s watering hole, green Arrow.
I just wish he’d fuck off there and stop giving out the blarney about the EDL.
This is Dave’s blog and he decides what goes.
However, since I am hardly at all in sympathy with the [almost certainly very very very nasty] people behind REDWATCH I was startled to see the link deleted.
lol, ‘antifa’ don’t really exist in Scotland at all, nevermind Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance is a broad grouping of people in SSP, RCG, Socialist Appeal, IWW, anarchists, unaffiliated etc. EAFA led the way in opposing the SDL directly in Edinburgh, with 500+ anti-fascists laying siege to the pub the SDL were gathered in. As did the prototype Glasgow Anti-Fascist Alliance when the SDL tried to demonstrate here last November.
We’ve now formed the Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance, with a group in Aberdeen too. And we will be confronting the SDL next week in Kilmarnock.