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

[Red Storm]

I'll never understand how someone can get rid of a book

 

[Delroy Booth]

I'll never understand how someone can give away a book

If your roof isn't being held up by towers of knackered 2nd hand penguin paperbacks then you've failed at life imo.

 

[malatesta32]

I'll never understand how someone can get rid of a book

lack of space, moving and having to schlep them across town. the fact that some of em are really embarassing. mainly moving though!

 

[The39thStep]

I have a copy of No Retreat that is going in my cull of books. If anyone wants it PM me or it'll be in the Oxfam box in a week or two.

Bignose will remember when The Junction were playing away at a Sunday football game he was injured and went for a walk around . Went into a charity shop and found some book that had details of the squads arrest in Manchester?

 

[Joe Reilly]

I was a bit disappointed with Mick O'Farrell's contribution, edit, a lot of the old stories and anecdotes are there, but in conclusion he appears to concur with Purbrick (I assume that this is Louise's opinion of RA because I never heard or read Dave express his disagreements in these terms) and the oft-repeated myths about Red Action's membership in terms of race and gender. Mick moans about the political deterioration of Red Action as a reason for his split with the group. I joined RA not long after Mick had left and I strongly disagree with his estimation of the organisation. If anything, the politics and theoretical positions of Red Action were further developed in his absence.

Then again, I suppose if someone else who was also there had already told all my best anecdotes in another book, I'd be pissed off too.

The real reason MO'F left RA in around '88 was the adoption by the annual two day conference of the central thesis of 'The Making of Red Action' which Red Storm has archived on his site. Distilled this was the rejection of the Left as being 'neither working class nor revolutionary' and the consequences that followed that conclusion. Mick and a small number of acolytes (none of them original members as implied by Renton) felt that RA was drifting toward outright anarchism as a result, when what it proved to be was an instinctive 'drift' toward the democratic element explicit in the writings of Marx and Engels and a rejection of the top down Leninist orthodoxies. MO'F was for one reason or another drifting in the opposite direction, so having lost the argument he left. The role RA played in the initiation of AFA in 1985 apart, the most significant political and organisational developments did as you point out happen after MO'F effectively retired from front line action.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

The real reason MO'F left RA in around '88 was the adoption by the annual two day conference of the central thesis of 'The Making of Red Action' which Red Storm has archived on his site. Distilled this was the rejection of the Left as being 'neither working class nor revolutionary' and the consequences that followed that conclusion. .

The Making of Red Action is a brilliant read by the way. It's instructive to read some of the points made in 1988 about the compostion of the left and its orientation and consider what has changed/been learnt since.

It should be widely read.

 

[Red Storm]

The Making of Red Action is a brilliant read by the way. It's instructive to read some of the points made in 1988 about the compostion of the left and its orientation and consider what has changed/been learnt since.

It should be widely read.

Agreed. I read it sat in Whitworth Park on a boiling hot day, laughing at the in your face lines. Good day .

Revolutionary Front are translating it into Swedish last I heard.

 

[Red Storm]

I don't remember learning that Dave was in a leading role nationally with AFA like Renton says. I know he was key in Manchester AFA but nationally?

 

[framed]

I don't remember learning that Dave was in a leading role nationally with AFA like Renton says. I know he was key in Manchester AFA but nationally?

Dave would have attended Red Action National Council meetings as one of the reps from Manchester, I was at most of these after 1990 representing Glasgow RA. I don't recall Dave ever being very vocal at NC meetings.

I remember a discussion over the IWCA, which I think took place at an AFA National Committee, where Manchester AFA presented an alternative proposal and Dave spoke to it. From what I recall, it was a mish-mash of one-issue lefty campaigns and stewarding duties for AFA that Dave proposed linking up as some kind of alternative strategy to the IWCA proposal of going straight to the working class and formulating a strategy based on their needs.

I may be misrepresenting Dave and Manchester AFA here as I can't remember the details of his proposal, but it'd be handy to have that to compare with the IWCA proposal at the same meeting. Do you remember that Joe (Reilly) and is there a copy of the Manchester/Dave proposal still around?

Pretty sure that it was an AFA NC and not a RA NC where this discussion took place, but time and memory might have fused some of these meetings together.

 

[Red Storm]

Also, I'm slightly miffed that Manchester Anti-Fascist Alliance was mentioned without asking if it was okay, as it was about something which happened not long ago. Not too big of a deal though.

 

[malatesta32]

agreed with the gist of this. having downloaded a lot of red action stuff for research i got to say the we are RA and the making of are both essential reading and well written. there is an argument for a best of RA as some of the reports on the fash are laugh out loud. the mix of this with the theory stuff is pretty engaging. mind you, i dont have to download it all!

 

[ayatollah]

Dave would have attended Red Action National Council meetings as one of the reps from Manchester, I was at most of these after 1990 representing Glasgow RA. I don't recall Dave ever being very vocal at NC meetings.

I remember a discussion over the IWCA, which I think took place at an AFA National Committee, where Manchester AFA presented an alternative proposal and Dave spoke to it. From what I recall, it was a mish-mash of one-issue lefty campaigns and stewarding duties for AFA that Dave proposed linking up as some kind of alternative strategy to the IWCA proposal of going straight to the working class and formulating a strategy based on their needs.

I may be misrepresenting Dave and Manchester AFA here as I can't remember the details of his proposal, but it'd be handy to have that to compare with the IWCA proposal at the same meeting. Do you remember that Joe (Reilly) and is there a copy of the Manchester/Dave proposal still around?

Pretty sure that it was an AFA NC and not a RA NC where this discussion took place, but time and memory might have fused some of these meetings together.

Both Mick o'farrell, and myself, were obviously long, long, gone from AFA by the time of the organisation-sundering arguments sparked by RA's proposition over its future direction in the 90's . But having read through the rival "takes" on events put forward in No Retreat, Btf, and now Physical Resistance, I can't for the life of me understand (as a founder member myself of AFA, and on its initial National Steering Group) why RA ever thought it appropriate to lobby for AFA (as a classic single issue, anti fascist direct action, campaigning group - based on a limited united front with a number of different independent political groups) , to itself become essentially a multi-issue, POLITICAL PARTY. It's surely as if the SWP at the height of the ANL MK I suddenly started lobbying for the ANL (with its much more diverse organisational membership admittedly) to adopt its SWP Trotskyist programme and become a part of "the Revolutionery Party" ? It was bound to end in tears. It was bound to split AFA asunder.

Why did you ever think that the anarchist components of the AFA network in particular, were going to buy in wholesale to the distinctive "localist" IWCA ("Filling the Vacuum" ) political worldview and strategy ? Especially as this involved declaring AFA's entire campaigning anti fascist work essentially redundant. I can therefore understand why so many anarchists are still bitter about RA's role at that time. They obviously DIDN'T think "it was all over" with the fascists -and appear to be still bravely fighting em in their various current guises today. Thinking YOUR own particular political strategy is the only possibly correct one is of course a feature of all political movements - but rather than campaigning in AFA for a completely unrealistic organisational adoption of the "Filling the Vacuum" strategy - shouldn't RA just have made its position clear,wound up RA, left AFA, and got on with building the IWCA "on the landings" ? Anyone in AFA who wanted to join the IWCA could then have done so, and the remaining people in the AFA Network could have got on with anti fascist campaigning without all the internal argy bargy ?

 

[framed]

Both Mick o'farrell, and myself, were obviously long, long, gone from AFA by the time of the organisation-sundering arguments sparked by RA's proposition over its future direction in the 90's . But having read through the rival "takes" on events put forward in No Retreat, Btf, and now Physical Resistance, I can't for the life of me understand (as a founder member myself of AFA, and on its initial National Steering Group) why RA ever thought it appropriate to lobby for AFA (as a classic single issue, anti fascist direct action, campaigning group - based on a limited united front with a number of different independent political groups) , to itself become essentially a multi-issue, POLITICAL PARTY. It's surely as if the SWP at the height of the ANL MK I suddenly started lobbying for the ANL (with its much more diverse organisational membership admittedly) to adopt its SWP Trotskyist programme and become a part of "the Revolutionery Party" ? It was bound to end in tears. It was bound to split AFA asunder.

Why did you ever think that the anarchist components of the AFA network in particular, were going to buy in wholesale to the distinctive "localist" IWCA ("Filling the Vacuum" ) political worldview and strategy ? Especially as this involved declaring AFA's entire campaigning anti fascist work essentially redundant. I can therefore understand why so many anarchists are still bitter about RA's role at that time. They obviously DIDN'T think "it was all over" with the fascists -and appear to be still bravely fighting em in their various current guises today. Thinking YOUR own particular political strategy is the only possibly correct one is of course a feature of all political movements - but rather than campaigning in AFA for a completely unrealistic organisational adoption of the "Filling the Vacuum" strategy - shouldn't RA just have made its position clear,wound up RA, left AFA, and got on with building the IWCA "on the landings" ? Anyone in AFA who wanted to join the IWCA could then have done so, and the remaining people in the AFA Network could have got on with anti fascist campaigning without all the internal argy bargy ?

Is anarchism still 'bitter' about RA allegedly winding up AFA? It certainly wouldn't appear to be the case in the East and West Midlands where there has recently been a reappraisal by anarchists previously associated with AFA, who rejected the IWCA strategy at the time, got involved with Antifa and who have in the last couple of years now returned of their own volition to the debate over the 'Filling The Vacuum' document.

Why wouldn't we "think that the anarchist components of the AFA network in particular, were going to buy in wholesale to the distinctive "localist" IWCA..." ? Electoralism apart, anarchist thinking and practice would be very much geared towards a "localist" strategy; promoting co-operatism, activism and resistance at a local level. It is you who appear to be unaware of anarchist pragmatism and the practice of theory.

AFA wasn't a political party, it always remained a one-issue movement committed to the principle of 'ideological and physical confrontation of fascism'. The IWCA strategy was a proposal that recognised the need for the ideological opposition to fascism to be developed in working class areas as an alternative to the BNP's 'hearts and minds' electoral campaign. That proposal came from Red Action, one component part of AFA. It was democratically debated within AFA and the IWCA strategy endorsed by a majority. AFA was not closed down, as is implied in Hann's work and it certainly continued to function effectively, well after 1992 when Renton claims the 'political deterioration' set in. As has already been intimated here Fighting Talk magazine was published up to 2001 and reported on the activities of AFA branches and regions. There was always the option for local groups to carry on with normal anti-fascist activities and indeed there were 'RA majority' branches like Glasgow and 'anarchist majority' branches like Edinburgh who agreed with the IWCA strategy but who also continued with day-to-day AFA work because the local situation necessitated it.

The idea that it was as straightforward as 'anarchos v reds' is just a complete misreading of the whole debate around the IWCA and the 'Filling The Vacuum' document. I was one of those inside RA who had misgivings about the IWCA, not because I disagreed with the strategy, but because as an ex-member and youth organiser of Militant I had already been involved in electoral campaigns, which had seen the Milies get members of their organisation elected as Labour councilors in Glasgow (this was pre-SML and SSP). I knew the amount of work that would be required and I was also acutely aware of the human toll of such electoral campaigns, with a high rate of 'burn out' of good working class activists. I did not believe that RA, if it were left on its own to implement the IWCA strategy, was a large enough or strong enough organisation to cope politically with the 'burn out' of activists that might be a by-product of the IWCA's electoral strategy.

 

[Joe Reilly]

I don't remember learning that Dave was in a leading role nationally with AFA like Renton says. I know he was key in Manchester AFA but nationally?

Again for self-serving reasons undoubtedly, Renton is 'misunderstanding' Hann's role in order to demonstrate his thesis that physical force anti-fascism is essentially unethical given that 'violence had no place in our [anti-fascists] world' etc. So in boosting Hann onto the national stage he is hoping to demonstrate the pathology at the heart of, Red Action's in particular, existence. To Renton and others Hann was a true hero brought low by lesser beings.

In truth, the one and only time he, Hann clambered onto the national stage - 'ordering' a national AFA mobilisation to deal with the expected counter demo to the Bloody Sunday march in Manchester it proved to be unconstitutional. Regions, much less branches, never mind individual could not order, for obvious reasons, national mobilisations. That he subsequently played no role on the day, staying resolutely within the body of the march he was meant to be protecting, (due to the robbery charges) left more than one head-scratching at what he thought he was doing. Without any fuss JH and DC (who was drafted in from London)picked up the pieces and turned what might have been a fiasco into something of a triumph on the day. All, of course would become clear just a couple of months later, when he coughed to the robbery charges. But we have of course been over this many times before.


Even in Manchester, Dave worked in tandem with GM and Carol, and then later JH. And it was only through cooperating with DAM in Liverpool/Doncaster and independent anarchists in Bolton, that Dave and RA had an influence regionally. So to try and re-package it all as a one man operation regionally, never mind nationally, is just simply nuts.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Both Mick o'farrell, and myself, were obviously long, long, gone from AFA by the time of the organisation-sundering arguments sparked by RA's proposition over its future direction in the 90's . But having read through the rival "takes" on events put forward in No Retreat, Btf, and now Physical Resistance, I can't for the life of me understand (as a founder member myself of AFA, and on its initial National Steering Group) why RA ever thought it appropriate to lobby for AFA (as a classic single issue, anti fascist direct action, campaigning group - based on a limited united front with a number of different independent political groups) , to itself become essentially a multi-issue, POLITICAL PARTY. It's surely as if the SWP at the height of the ANL MK I suddenly started lobbying for the ANL (with its much more diverse organisational membership admittedly) to adopt its SWP Trotskyist programme and become a part of "the Revolutionery Party" ? It was bound to end in tears. It was bound to split AFA asunder.

Why did you ever think that the anarchist components of the AFA network in particular, were going to buy in wholesale to the distinctive "localist" IWCA ("Filling the Vacuum" ) political worldview and strategy ? Especially as this involved declaring AFA's entire campaigning anti fascist work essentially redundant. I can therefore understand why so many anarchists are still bitter about RA's role at that time. They obviously DIDN'T think "it was all over" with the fascists -and appear to be still bravely fighting em in their various current guises today. Thinking YOUR own particular political strategy is the only possibly correct one is of course a feature of all political movements - but rather than campaigning in AFA for a completely unrealistic organisational adoption of the "Filling the Vacuum" strategy - shouldn't RA just have made its position clear,wound up RA, left AFA, and got on with building the IWCA "on the landings" ? Anyone in AFA who wanted to join the IWCA could then have done so, and the remaining people in the AFA Network could have got on with anti fascist campaigning without all the internal argy bargy ?

Unless that post is actually meant to be a wind up - in that case you got me - (or alternatively you are just dotin' in your old age) it is truly remarkable that with the benefit of hindsight and access to more than two years of sometimes intense discussion on here, that is your honest take on events, I have to say, with hand on heart, you did anti-fascism a great service in jacking it when you did.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

it's a shame he hasn't done us a great service by not posting on here any more

 

[malatesta32]

and here we go ... again.

 

[Pickman's model]

I got 'physical resistance' yesterday and at first glance it's a decent read

 

[Pickman's model]

and here we go ... again.

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops no one knows

 

[bignose1]

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops no one knows

Im finding it hard to resist...but I gave a promise not to get into heated stuff...even on a review level and Im inclined to respect it. Thats why Ive been posting shite on the Tesco horse meat thread instead....and I feel much better for it...come on if I can any one can...its my therapy and now as Im officially u/e, following 10 weeks gardening leave and having yesterday banked my pay off (I must say that it has helped as well) Looking for a job has started in official terms(JSA wtf) but Im getting into town shortly to get some new clobber and a le creuset tagine.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

We use our le creuset tagine at least once a month, I love proper Morrocan lamb

 

[bignose1]

We use our le creuset tagine at least once a month, I love proper Morrocan lamb

Nice one spanky any decent recipes pm me. I make my own pastes and did a lovely neck of lamb dish morrocan style in a mates tagine. We both lost jobs around the same time and have been cooking a lot...keeps us out of our local Spoons. Going to try an ox tail thingy at weekend.
I make a sort of paste..Chamoulla? from scratch

 

[bignose1]

We use our le creuset tagine at least once a month, I love proper Morrocan lamb

I bet youve got a volcanic one...

 

[bignose1]

Ok sorry I think were going off at a taginent

 

[DaveCinzano]

Looking for a job has started in official terms(JSA wtf) but Im getting into town shortly to get some new clobber and a le creuset tagine.

We use our le creuset tagine at least once a month, I love proper Morrocan lamb

I don't know about their tagines, but my casserole from them is great. And they replaced the original one after it got broken, no quibble

 

[DaveCinzano]

Ok sorry I think were going off at a taginent

Maghreb's up

 

[Red Storm]

Glasgow Anti-Fascists leaflet which I archived has been tumbled (?) quiet a lot recently

 

[malatesta32]

sidetrack but what's the advantage of a tagine over a normal casserole?

 

[malatesta32]

Glasgow Anti-Fascists leaflet which I archived has been tumbled (?) quiet a lot recently

ha ha an excellent vintage example of cut and paste as in blunt scissors, pritt stick and photocopier! there is an amusing RA account in one of the longer pieces about front room editing and the hazards thereof!

 

[connollyist]

Framed is that one you put together?