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Beating the Fascists: The authorised history of Anti-Fascist Action

Fedayn said:
There is no doubt some-small numbers it ahs to be said-Man U have been invovled in some EDL and fash games over the past few years. How that came about is anyone's guess but there have been a small number notable by their presence. Possibly a link via Hibs onto Oldham. Possibly just younger heads not sharing their seniors views. This has happened at Hibs recently.



As in his claims re 'famnous' political; backers and the EDL string-pullers. What makes you think her's right?
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Personally I always felt there was something off about the EDL from the beginning. For example: how for instance did they get the numbers they did to go to a carpark off the M25 or somewhere and - where nothing happens and as importantly could happen - and yet get them to come back time and again for more? Their unparalled success in their branding with the media. Plus the discipline of the demonstrations when there was no membership as such, so there can be no hierarchy which when you think about means that there is no one actually in charge; in charge in the sense of giving an instruction and having a reasonable expectation that it would be obeyed, especially then when you consider the demographic...

But I suggest you read the article like I did and make up your own mind.
 
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Joe Reilly said:
Fair enough. I did warn I wasn't paying attention. I'm not entirely convinced that the video and the printed speech - though they share a theme - are actually identical.

Be that as it may what still strikes me as curious is that here you have what Griffin describes as a 'false nationalism' being opposed by what O'Hara showed to be a 'false anti-fascism' and why so few on here have anything worthwhile to say on it.

It seems to me the implications could hardly be more profound.

The other of curiousity is the role of the media. I distinctly remember Paxman on Newsnight fairly early on referring to the 'EDL' as if it was of an established vintage and what a contrast it was with the media generally who after twenty years of the 'Troubles' could hardly distinguish their UDA's from their UDR's (republicans might argue that there wasn't much to distinguish them anyway) never mind their UVF's.

So we have a far-right grouping that comes out of nowhere, can put thousands on the streets at a moment's notice and the curiousity of the media ends with uncovering the nom de guerre of Mr Lennon. And that (apart from the digging up of Alan Lake by the Sunday Times) was it. As is now evident Lake himself is pretty small fry, in the wider scheme of things.

Official anti-fascism dosen't come out of it any better pulled hither and thither. Manipulated from within and without. First, the EDL are denounced as an adjunct to the BNP. Then they are cast as an alternative to the BNP. Nick Lowles announces that they are the 'most dangerous street presence' since the NF in the 1970's, while in fact the EDL were generally law-abiding and compliant with the police and their own stewards (whoever they were?) and all told hardly broke more than a kebab house window, does make comparison with the NF/BM who gloried in all sorts of mayhem, including grisly murders look grotesque.

Then the SWP decide the EDL who arevery publicly pro Israel are 'proto fascist' which is not impossible, but does rather rip up their own Holocaust heavy criteria and propaganda. And on it goes.

On stormfront meanwhile Griffin is described as 'a state agent and sell-out' etc while on here genuine anti-fascists are labelled 'Lumpen Strasserites' by an individual (who to some may well appear 'nuttier than squirrel shit', and I quote) is nevertheless a supporter of, and has had sit down meets with leading figures in Hope not Hate, and is pursuing a strategy on here and on other sites of presenting physical force anti-fascism as having been set up and led by mis-fits and gangsters in a style that is practically indistinguishable from that of say C18.

All I'm saying, is that now might be a good for all concerned to take stock.
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And when Ive got time away from gathering nuts Im spending it colluding with the Hope not Hate lot. Having sit down meets. OK tell me when where and who with and what I do in the set up. How do you know Im not with Gerry? And you describe yourself as a genuine anti fascist....you couldnt even put your name to your fucking book... With the last lot of shite youve been posting I think people can see youve sold out good and proper.
I really dont know much about squirrell shit Gary but I do see plenty of evidence of your creeping paranoia. You spent a lot of time and energy demonizing the likes of myself (and Dave Hann, GP) and Ive tried to put to you your blatant hypocrisy as you hid behind the 'people' you mention. And you know it. You only have to read the threats, vitriol, bile, lies and personal attacks on those people emanating from your RA forum circa 2003 as you threw out your toys and spat out the dummies - a tantrum which nearly ten years later has hardly abated. Your politics are suss..but Im secure in the knowledge that your influence is miniscule and diminishing and nobody will ever again regard you as credible. Some day youll be exposed for what you are. Your rejection of even a basic anti fascist ideology places you firmly in the camp of the opposition and your constant fixation with HnH will not deflect from the fact that you and your ilk will never ever be taken seriously again by 'genuine' anti facsists. Its over so be man enough and take some nutty advice from Tufty...
 
Red Storm said:
Fair big update the the archive this week.

Some interesting bits are: the letters between searchlight and Brighton AFA, Leeds AFA memo on World in Action claims and Birmingham AFA's reasons for resigning from AFA.
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Though people are probably aware that the WIA 'expose' was set up by Searchlight, Searchlight also warned AFA against having any involvement in the expose! It is also worth noting that the letter from Leeds AFA attacking the makers and by extension Searchlight is signed by 'Paul'. In the 1997 AFA inquiry into Leeds AFA as whole, 'Paul' admitted to being a Searchlight asset...
 
Red Storm said:
Which parts are in accurate?
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I didn't get any further than the headline, which says all you need to know. No football club in this country has a political stance. Ever since the dawn of professional football, clubs have been capitalist enterprises, mostly supported, in the big cities and industrial towns, by politically passive Labour voters.
 
LLETSA said:
I didn't get any further than the headline, which says all you need to know. No football club in this country has a political stance. Ever since the dawn of professional football, clubs have been capitalist enterprises, mostly supported, in the big cities and industrial towns, by politically passive Labour voters.
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Football as a professional activity is in itself a political stance. Just as Rugby League being a professional, rather than amatuer, sport was a political stance, professional football had a political dimension to it.

And clubs themselves may not have an overt political stance, but that's not the same thing as the fans, is it? Fans have often used a football club as a basis of political activity, be that right-wing or left-wing. Football clubs, like any other capitalist enterprise, don't exist in a political vacuum.
 
Delroy Booth said:
Football as a professional activity is in itself a political stance. Just as Rugby League being a professional, rather than amatuer, sport was a political stance, professional football had a political dimension to it.

And clubs themselves may not have an overt political stance, but that's not the same thing as the fans, is it? Fans have often used a football club as a basis of political activity, be that right-wing or left-wing. Football clubs, like any other capitalist enterprise, don't exist in a political vacuum.
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Football supporters in England simply reflect the society they come from. Most supporters of most clubs have traditionally been working class, and hence socially conservative Labour voters.

If 'football as a professional activity is a political stance,' then it's clearly right of centre, isn't it?
 
Delroy Booth said:
Football as a professional activity is in itself a political stance. Just as Rugby League being a professional, rather than amatuer, sport was a political stance, professional football had a political dimension to it.

And clubs themselves may not have an overt political stance, but that's not the same thing as the fans, is it? Fans have often used a football club as a basis of political activity, be that right-wing or left-wing. Football clubs, like any other capitalist enterprise, don't exist in a political vacuum.
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I think you're conflating clubs with fans. A football club can be notably 'non-political', whilst it's fanbase is overtly political and actively so. The only club I can think of with an overtly political fan base and an officially political club is St Pauli.
 
Aren't you missing an opportunity to plug a certain book about a certain club available from all good bookshops in a certain street in Old Market?

:D
 
LLETSA said:
Football supporters in England simply reflect the society they come from. Most supporters of most clubs have traditionally been working class, and hence socially conservative Labour voters.

If 'football as a professional activity is a political stance,' then it's clearly right of centre, isn't it?
Click to expand...

It's an interesting topic of discussion that. Professional football came into existence as a direct result of the pressure applied by the footballers early trade union bodies, who were fighting for the right for working people to be able to get compensation for playing their sport. Prior to this football was a sport which was set up only to allow gentlemen of independent means to play, people who didn't need to work, so could afford to play and not be paid. In the same way MP's were not paid wages prior to Chartist times, on the implicit assumption that anyone poor enough not to be able to indulge in political life had no right to be in parliament, anyone so poor that they'd need compensating in order to play for their team was similarly excluded. I'd argue that the amatuer football that was a product of the British public school system was more conservative, small c, than the professional leagues, whatever your objections to the professionalisation of the sport on anti-capitalist grounds might be.

Whether it's centre right or not, and whatever your particular take on it is, there's undoubtably a political dimension to professional football that of flies in the face of your previous comments.

Fedayn said:
I think you're conflating clubs with fans. A football club can be notably 'non-political', whilst it's fanbase is overtly political and actively so. The only club I can think of with an overtly political fan base and an officially political club is St Pauli.
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I'm not conflating, a club and it's supporters are two seperate things, I'm just pointing out that because a football club is itself apolitical, or at least aspires to be as much as possible, doesn't mean the supporters of that club are too.

Just like how say Brass Bands in coal mining towns were ostensibly apolitical, but also provided a basis for working-class solidarity within civil society, football clubs are capable of the same thing. Same goes for Clarion Clubs, choirs, all sorts of stuff that was ostensibly apolitical but became a de fact base from which to organise politically. See Johnathan Rose's book "The intellectual life of the British working-class" and Paul Salveson's recent "socialism with a nothern accent" if you want to get a better historical understanding of this sort of relationship between culture, sport and politics. My favourite example is the Workers sport federation and the mass trespass of Kinder Scout from 1932 myself.
 
Delroy Booth said:
Just like how say Brass Bands in coal mining towns were ostensibly apolitical, but also provided a basis for working-class solidarity within civil society, football clubs are capable of the same thing. Same goes for Clarion Clubs, choirs, all sorts of stuff that was ostensibly apolitical but became a de fact base from which to organise politically. See Johnathan Rose's book "The intellectual life of the British working-class" and Paul Salveson's recent "socialism with a nothern accent" if you want to get a better historical understanding of this sort of relationship between culture, sport and politics. My favourite example is the Workers sport federation and the mass trespass of Kinder Scout from 1932 myself.
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When do the examples examined in the second book end? And are they all linked with formal groups?
 
I have hazy memories of talking about this kind of stuff late on Friday night, as it happens, with a (Jewish) Russian friend of Mrs L whose granddad, despite being a career KGB man, followed Spartak and not Dynamo, the KGB-associated club, as does she. I also became aware that the phenomenon of following the bigger clubs despite having no local links to them, wasn't just confined to the capitalist West-they're from Odessa.
 
Delroy Booth said:
It's an interesting topic of discussion that. Professional football came into existence as a direct result of the pressure applied by the footballers early trade union bodies, who were fighting for the right for working people to be able to get compensation for playing their sport. Prior to this football was a sport which was set up only to allow gentlemen of independent means to play, people who didn't need to work, so could afford to play and not be paid. In the same way MP's were not paid wages prior to Chartist times, on the implicit assumption that anyone poor enough not to be able to indulge in political life had no right to be in parliament, anyone so poor that they'd need compensating in order to play for their team was similarly excluded. I'd argue that the amatuer football that was a product of the British public school system was more conservative, small c, than the professional leagues, whatever your objections to the professionalisation of the sport on anti-capitalist grounds might be.

Whether it's centre right or not, and whatever your particular take on it is, there's undoubtably a political dimension to professional football that of flies in the face of your previous comments.
Click to expand...


In what way does anything you're saying here fly in the face of what I said about football clubs being capitalist employers traditionally supported by working class, socially conservative, Labour voters?
 
LLETSA said:
In what way does anything you're saying here fly in the face of what I said about football clubs being capitalist employers traditionally supported by working class, socially conservative, Labour voters?
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I'm gonna cut this off here coz this conversation has got boring tedious semantic quibble with a cynical bitter ex-trot written all over it.
 
Delroy Booth said:
It's an interesting topic of discussion that. Professional football came into existence as a direct result of the pressure applied by the footballers early trade union bodies, who were fighting for the right for working people to be able to get compensation for playing their sport. Prior to this football was a sport which was set up only to allow gentlemen of independent means to play, people who didn't need to work, so could afford to play and not be paid. In the same way MP's were not paid wages prior to Chartist times, on the implicit assumption that anyone poor enough not to be able to indulge in political life had no right to be in parliament, anyone so poor that they'd need compensating in order to play for their team was similarly excluded. I'd argue that the amatuer football that was a product of the British public school system was more conservative, small c, than the professional leagues, whatever your objections to the professionalisation of the sport on anti-capitalist grounds might be.

Whether it's centre right or not, and whatever your particular take on it is, there's undoubtably a political dimension to professional football that of flies in the face of your previous comments.



I'm not conflating, a club and it's supporters are two seperate things, I'm just pointing out that because a football club is itself apolitical, or at least aspires to be as much as possible, doesn't mean the supporters of that club are too.

Just like how say Brass Bands in coal mining towns were ostensibly apolitical, but also provided a basis for working-class solidarity within civil society, football clubs are capable of the same thing. Same goes for Clarion Clubs, choirs, all sorts of stuff that was ostensibly apolitical but became a de fact base from which to organise politically. See Johnathan Rose's book "The intellectual life of the British working-class" and Paul Salveson's recent "socialism with a nothern accent" if you want to get a better historical understanding of this sort of relationship between culture, sport and politics. My favourite example is the Workers sport federation and the mass trespass of Kinder Scout from 1932 myself.
Click to expand...



So are there any examples of supporters of professional football clubs taking overt political action en masse? Which club's fans are traditionally left wing or right wing (in a mass sense)?
 
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