chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Cool. Glad it arrived safely.
Beating the Fascists: The authorised history of Anti-Fascist Action
- Thread starter cogg
- Start date
Cool. Glad it arrived safely.
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
You claimed the story of his involvment in the Bradford vote-rigging fiasco and follow up "don't quite fit with my personal recollections of the individual mentioned. Therefore, I think it highly unlikely this person would involve himself in some of what's been posted here?"
Having such vivid personal recollections of an individual that you would vouch for his personal integrity more than three decades later is one thing, but in revealing he was little more than an acquaintance inevitably poses a question against your own credibility. You can see that can't you?
TopCat
Putin fanboy
Why so defensive?
I wondered that. Is audiotech actually Jeff Robinson?
I was reading this audiotech/robinson thing again this morning and it occurred to me it is justy like back in the day...
Posh(-ish) leftie launches impassioned attack on Red Action... based entirely on his own prejudice... and ignoring the evidence... gets his arse firmly slapped (metaphorically of course)... squirms, wriggles and backtracks... get slapped again... sulks...
As Joe was saying the other day about AFA meetings - bring your 'A' game or don't bother your arse - there were very few fool's pardons handed out.
Posh(-ish) leftie launches impassioned attack on Red Action... based entirely on his own prejudice... and ignoring the evidence... gets his arse firmly slapped (metaphorically of course)... squirms, wriggles and backtracks... get slapped again... sulks...
As Joe was saying the other day about AFA meetings - bring your 'A' game or don't bother your arse - there were very few fool's pardons handed out.
audiotech
wav, aiff, mp3, ogg, flac
"Posh leftie"! Hahaha, fuckin' desperate and I'm no Mr Robinson either. You know fuck all about me same as I know fuck all about you. Have you read the comments by M. O'F in Hann's book btw? "...slagging off every left group and the omnipotent sanctity of of Red Action...". He a "posh leftie" too? To be fair, he does go on to state: " And one thing for sure, when the chips were down you would search a long time before you would find a finer group to have standing alongside you." From what I've read of Red Action and based on my experience here, I can fully accept this latter, important point. The premise, that you disingenuously state on my behalf, as above, is completely and utterly mistaken and not what I'm engaged in here.
Don't get yer knickers in a twist dear.
I am not saying you are posh (hence the -ish). I'm saying that is how your self-righteous judgements would have been perceived then... and now.
I look forward to reading Mickey's comments in due course. But if what you have quoted is true then the behaviour and attitudes Michael is condemning is exactly that which was the leit motif of... no the very essence of.. oh yeah... the young Mick O'Farrell.(ie. memorably turning up to a summer lark in the park cum paper sale with a Samurai sword strapped to his back... for reasons best known to himself. Nearly came in handy too.)
To be frank, I would have loved it if Mickey had stuck it out and been around to give us all the benefits of his burgeoning maturity - god knows we could have done with it.
Unfortunately he lost the political argument and rather than face that unsavoury fact and argue his corner he decided to isolate himself - and pontificate from the sidelines. This was seen by most other people - including his closest, long-time personal friends and political comrades - as more than a tad hypocritical.
I am not saying you are posh (hence the -ish). I'm saying that is how your self-righteous judgements would have been perceived then... and now.
I look forward to reading Mickey's comments in due course. But if what you have quoted is true then the behaviour and attitudes Michael is condemning is exactly that which was the leit motif of... no the very essence of.. oh yeah... the young Mick O'Farrell.(ie. memorably turning up to a summer lark in the park cum paper sale with a Samurai sword strapped to his back... for reasons best known to himself. Nearly came in handy too.)
To be frank, I would have loved it if Mickey had stuck it out and been around to give us all the benefits of his burgeoning maturity - god knows we could have done with it.
Unfortunately he lost the political argument and rather than face that unsavoury fact and argue his corner he decided to isolate himself - and pontificate from the sidelines. This was seen by most other people - including his closest, long-time personal friends and political comrades - as more than a tad hypocritical.
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
It's a bit rich to denounce all and sundry for 'spinning' and 'disengenous' invention when it is you that volunteered an opinion and when challenged adopted a position of gnomic infallability: "you know fuck all about me...hahaha!"
So if what has been attributed to you is not "what I'm engaged in here" why not explain what it is your are engaged in?
so stop crying about it you silly sausage
framed
Leave it!
No, actually, you've just made an arse of yourself.
You answered none of the points put to you, despite challenging Joe Reilly on the veracity of his comments.
Your attempts to smart-arse it out just make you look even more bitter.
You learn something new every day here, up to that exchange with Reilly I thought you were okay and your posts worth reading.
framed
Leave it!
Witnesses to the said provocation were flagged up by Joe and Liam. Indeed, Liam specifically named a person who is no friend of Red Action as an independent witness to the shenanigans.
After that you went into smart-arse mode and effectively disengaged from the discussion, I presume because you had no answer to their posts?
I'm an ex-member of AFA and RA who joined a few years after that event. I have no knowledge of it and I was interested in your challenge to the veracity of Joe Reilly's recollection. You 'vouched' for one person against the word of others, I expected you to at least play another hand after that, but your bluff appears to have been called.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Nice deflection (and concession).
I think we are done here.
audiotech
wav, aiff, mp3, ogg, flac
One word against another. The individual cited not here to defend himself. I made myself clear and after Liam posted I accepted there was no more to be said. Then you came along and weighed in and even by your own admission you have no knowledge of said affair, as I've accepted I haven't, so if you hadn't it was over. Like you it seems I felt some loyalty was owed. I'll shut-up now.
framed
Leave it!
I wasn't offering 'loyalty' to anyone. I was interested in your initial intervention, but disappointed by your replies thereafter.
It was the facetious tone of your subsequent remarks that led me to believe that your 'loyalty' to the individual concerned was either misplaced, or a complete bluff.
End of.
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
But, of course it isn't about 'one word against another.' Not only is the conspiracy against AFA covered in greater detail in BTF, pages 132 -36, (which incidentally was edited/proofed by the object of the 'corridor conspiracy') but Interestingly, the letter (s), from Robinson courting support for the move to expel RA preceded the Bradford conference and only came to light when he made the unilateral move to suspend RA in a meeting in which just 5 branches were present. And two of those present, abstained.
And as you yourself admit, the individual in question has not issued any denial whatsover, either on here, or anywhere else that I'm aware of.
But you, who have not seen hide nor hair of him for over 30 years have nevertheless decided to issue a denial on his behalf without his knowledge or indeed permission.
So when you come down to it, it has nothing to do with him at all - it's all about you. And your motivations.
As one of the few dwindling apologists for Big Nose and his unhinged campaign, I can only surmise the revisionist fever is catching.
bignose1
Searchlight Spoiler
Dwindling apologists....wtf...you mean on here...is that all there is. Think your way out Gaz. And unhinged...defined by you for those who oppose sick false and personally motivated attacks. You just dont deal with this stuff very well.......an ego that cant cope with ideas not to their orthodoxy.
past caring
The Cathars were right
You've been done, you mean.
Sorry audiotech, but I myself worked with Jeff Robinson (and other members of his long-term Bradford coterie) for many years in the 1970's, from our joint SWP years, the ANL, to the early AFA years, and the now forgotten, stillborn, "Socialist Federation" project which RA were briefly part of. Jeff was one of the most devious, double dealing people in Far Left Politics it was ever my misfortune to deal with I'm afraid. His word was worth absolutely nothing. He and I were the two AFA National Steering Group people delegated to be the enquiry Commission to get to the bottom of the accusations against Class War (which we now know were just Searchlight smears). Robinson did NO work for this enquiry at all - just came back with more unsubstantiated smears. I eventually ran all the smears to ground as baseless, and simply wrote the entire report, exonerating Class War myself . Jeff Robinson simply , grudgingly, eventually, signing it, after some very heated exchanges at my house where we had met up to consider our combined evidence collected (in Jeff's case -- NONE). Fortunately I had , on receiving no evidence from Jeff over weeks, already written a draft of the report - which simply became the actual final report.
Jeff was indeed also the main operator/plotter behind the subsequent attempt to expel Red Action ( a move which I at first managed to squash at a National Steering Group meeting as Chair, but as I was just about to bail out of activist politics and move to Scotland, Jeff and his plotters obviously came back again with the plan once I was out of the way). Fortunately Liz Fekete, who was/is a principled person, eventually came up trumps in denouncing Jeff and co's. plot, as detailed in BtF. It was indeed Jeff and his Bradford cronies who deliberately set an entirely disruptive agenda for the Bradford AFA 1987 Conference ( totally abusing their "host AFA branch" Conference Agenda Committee role the night BEFORE the Conference) In alliance with people who have since proved to be utter Labourite reformists within the Bradford Asian Youth Movement. The entire conference was dominated with fruitless debates about a NAME CHANGE, FFS. The only actual discussion we had about anti fascist work the entire day was an informal session I ran during the lunch break ! An utterly disastrous, shambolic conference ! Jeff's agenda, with Searchlight, was entirely to hijack the now established AFA membership structure nationally, for a renamed AFA to become a softer, touchy-feely anti racist (NOT street action anti fascist) campaigning body - and pull in lots of state grants on that basis presumeably -- a sort of ANL Mk II, without the SWP dominance, and without Squadism in its midst. Jeff did everything re the conference corridor plotting, setting up RA for conflict with the Asian Youth guys, that has been described by Gary et al.
Note to anyone EVER tempted to work politically with Jeff Robinson. DONT !
I would laugh my balls off if it was.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Not me. I am a lazy fucker who loves unsubtantiated smears though.
Anyway. Back to the new , late, "Dave Hann's" (as edited by his partner Louis) book. "Physical Resistance". I've now read the entire book on my new Kindle (whilst eating a chip buttie though , so I'm not completely middle class........ OK I am really). Obviously some on here won't be/obviously aren't entirely happy (!) with some of the (very few) comments re RA when he left in 1988, by great old comrade Mick O'Farrell (has he become "Mickey" more recently ?), or by an anarchist contributor re the prolonged end-times argy bargy in AFA in the 90's. Pity though if this endless historical dispute blots out the overall impression of this book that I took away from a reading - ie, that it is a superb contribution to the collected oral history of the anti fascist struggle in the UK (and British participants in the Spanish Civil war). I think anyone, not embroiled in 30 year old disputes, will be inspired by the way that , repeatedly, ordinary men and women, from a surprisingly wide spread of(Left) political traditions, got themselves organised to face off each and every upsurge in the physical menace of fascism, right back to the 1920's. Some will say it's a bit light on political analysis. I think this is true, but then as as inspirational, "ordinary people can and did make a stand" book to be read by an audience not always interested in the fine political detail, but just wanting to get into action against present day manifestations of street fascism, I think the oral history approach works very well.
One thing that really shone out for me, as someone simply burnt out after 16 years of frenetic politics/anti fascist activism by 1987, is that nearly everyone contributing in the book went through the same process. Then a new generation of activists had to come along - often starting from scratch , re-learning lessons we had learnt so painfully. Physical force anti fascist activism is a young person's game in the main. (Though I was in many a quite hairy anti fascist argy bargy alongside a few absolutely ancient but superb AJEX , association of Jewish Ex Servicemen guys, political Zionists all, in Manchester in the early 1970's). The point left unsaid, but nevertheless implicitly posed by the "we all have our moment on the street" thread of the book, is what happens to us old activists afterwards ? The book well describes how many, many of the early Jewish fighters were attracted off to the sterile pastures of political Zionism, and of course the communists were repeatedly lost in the endless policy contortions of the CP dictated by Moscow. Our generation of activist anti fascists are certainly politically "all over the show" too. One of the things that I felt very strongly at the book's end was the need for those of us no longer "up for it" streetwise to at least support and encourage those young people currently facing up to the confusing mix of rabid multi-brand street rabble fascism as exemplified by the EDL ... rather than belittling both their activity as "liberal placard-waving", or the very real menace that even currently limited numbers of drunken neo-fascist boneheads imply for ethnic minority communities. Because one thing is clear, regardless as to whether , or more likely when, a BNP type far Right party starts to make real electoral headway again, the coming era of growing mass unemplyment and poverty WILL mean that the fascist street gangs are also definitely on their way back as a permanent part of the Radical Right offensive.
One thing that really shone out for me, as someone simply burnt out after 16 years of frenetic politics/anti fascist activism by 1987, is that nearly everyone contributing in the book went through the same process. Then a new generation of activists had to come along - often starting from scratch , re-learning lessons we had learnt so painfully. Physical force anti fascist activism is a young person's game in the main. (Though I was in many a quite hairy anti fascist argy bargy alongside a few absolutely ancient but superb AJEX , association of Jewish Ex Servicemen guys, political Zionists all, in Manchester in the early 1970's). The point left unsaid, but nevertheless implicitly posed by the "we all have our moment on the street" thread of the book, is what happens to us old activists afterwards ? The book well describes how many, many of the early Jewish fighters were attracted off to the sterile pastures of political Zionism, and of course the communists were repeatedly lost in the endless policy contortions of the CP dictated by Moscow. Our generation of activist anti fascists are certainly politically "all over the show" too. One of the things that I felt very strongly at the book's end was the need for those of us no longer "up for it" streetwise to at least support and encourage those young people currently facing up to the confusing mix of rabid multi-brand street rabble fascism as exemplified by the EDL ... rather than belittling both their activity as "liberal placard-waving", or the very real menace that even currently limited numbers of drunken neo-fascist boneheads imply for ethnic minority communities. Because one thing is clear, regardless as to whether , or more likely when, a BNP type far Right party starts to make real electoral headway again, the coming era of growing mass unemplyment and poverty WILL mean that the fascist street gangs are also definitely on their way back as a permanent part of the Radical Right offensive.
gawkrodger
Well-Known Member
just bought it (making it the 6th book I've bought in 2 days, whilst I still have a pile of about 30 unread books. Hmmm) and looking forward to it after the reviews here
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