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

Joe Reilly said:
Ironically, this in part at least, is what the IWCA project anticipated, and sought to prevent. And if indeed anti-fascism is 'all over the show' then the focused and resolute campaign beginning in 1995, (and still ongoing by the sounds of things) to misrepresent the IWCA and what it was all about, can hardly be regarded as insignificant can it?
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A bit of a convenient misquote "Joe", I actually said:

" Our generation of activist anti fascists are certainly politically "all over the show" too."

Yep, that's US I was talking about, us 70's/80's physical force activists . Anti fascism itself as a multi-facetted activity has always been "all over the show" politically - with the usual mix of reformist posturing and weak banner-waving - mixed in with people getting stuck in physically when "street fascism" makes its periodic re-appearances - (a la the shambolic last few years of the "EDL phenomenum" -- from a quite clever opening gambit of "anti Islamic extremism - we're not racists" - quickly on to dwindling numbers of drunken boneheads stirring the shit in ethnic minority communities). The wider campaigning against racism and fascism is obviously much broader, encompassing basic trades union work, to political work building resistance against the cuts on a wide local and national front by many Left organisations. I think the key difference between old lags like myself and yourself and your co-thinkers is that whereas I can see the time - specific logic of a lot of the "time for local activism in the white working class" analysis in "Filling the Vacuum" in 1995 (though not your abandonmemnt of socialism itself as an outdated "middle class" foible), history moves on, but you haven't. So you have both consistently "bigged up " the UK potential of the BNP to become a mass party , right up to the point where it so predictably collapsed - and rubbished every reappearance of violent street fascism in the years since , as being laughably irrelevant ("Not the REAL gigantic mean Nazis we fought in our day, oh no !") and rubbished every anti fascist initiative to confront this resurgeance. Frankly the EDL et al may well be a laughable shower of drunks - but a minority ethnic community facing an incursion by a big gang of street thugs will be very happy to have support from the white Left on the day, even if mainly of the placard -waving UAF, HnH, variety of respectable campaigners. I'm not suggesting you and the old RA lads have to "get your boots on" again to join them -- I'm a bit physically buggered myself nowadays to do that. I'm just suggesting that constantly counterposing "getting out on the landings" doing basic local campaigning work on working class estates , RATHER than supporting or doing specific anti fascist work, particularly when racists invade local communities, shouldn't be an either/or situation.

What the contributions in "Physical Resistance" which cover the break up of AFA argue is that Red Action seemed to view the single issue anti fascist "UNITED FRONT" of AFA as an organisation ("your property" ?)which could simply be converted into a multi-issue campaigning "POLITICAL PARTY", ie the IWCA project. This was, and is, and always will be, complete political nonsense. No participant in a genuine limited issue, multi-political organisation membership, united front should ever try to hijack it to become part of their particular political project. It is fundamental bad faith to do so. Tha's why the attempt by RA/IWCA to transform the AFA into a political party was so destructive and doomed to failure - and why, even now, the mainly anarchist "other partners" in the 1990's AFA united front, still bear a grudge about what happened. This is particularly so, given that long after RA/IWCA had "declared final victory" over street fascism, those same young anarchists were continually embroiled in combatting the remains of violent street fascism all over the UK. And continue to do so, as street fascism has erupted again recently, alongside all the usual reformist/Far Left campaigns to this day.

You think that a lot of people on the Left have "got it in for you" Joe. Well, most on the Left really don't know the remnants of the IWCA still exist. A few people around in the 1990's still bear a grudge at the destructuion of the AFA Network that RA/IWCA's attempt to convert it to a (non-socialist) local campaigning political party caused. And TODAY, a few people, like myself just don't agree with almost any aspect of the strange localist (working class power in working class areas -- whatever that can actually mean) politics and methodology of the IWCA, and see it as fundamentally reactionery.
 
I don't think the IWCA or similar projects were designed to appeal to the left, never mind a few on the left. It's audience was the local working class who , unlike a lot of the left, never mind a few on the left, didn't find it fundamentally reactionary.
 
The39thStep said:
I don't think the IWCA or similar projects were designed to appeal to the left, never mind a few on the left. It's audience was the local working class who , unlike a lot of the left, never mind a few on the left, didn't find it fundamentally reactionary.
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Ah, but you miss the point. The very fact that the IWCA did what the unthinking Left wouldn't and couldn't is in itself proof that not only is the IWCA reactionary but the working class communties where the strategy was applied are almost certainly reactionary as well. Otherwise how could it be that where the SA get (the usual)30 votes the IWCA get a councillor?
 
bignose1 said:
Come on back you miserable twat....tell us why you had to talk shite about that.
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I wanted to be absolutely sure that in this case, donations to any recommended group did not lead to the money going to your slimey cunt mates at Searchlight. :) Get it?
 
TopCat said:
I wanted to be absolutely sure that in this case, donations to any recommended group did not lead to the money going to your slimey cunt mates at Searchlight. :) Get it?
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What bit dont you get..I left the Searchlight circle in 94' (approximately a year after O'Shea stopped meeting with them). Why would you think this book would have anything to do with Searchlight. Its this kind of stuff that makes you look simple minded...and obsessive.
 
bignose1 said:
Why would you think this book would have anything to do with Searchlight. Its this kind of stuff that makes you look simple minded...and obsessive.
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So there's absolutely no way that the substantial fees Louise incurred in relation to Carter Ruck's failed attempts to stop the publication BTF would have been funded by Searchlight? She paid them out her own pocket yes?
 
On behalf of Louise, Carter Ruck spent around 6 months attempting to disrupt/prevent/delay the publication of BTF - someone had to pay for that (given that the case as presented was so full of holes that there's no way it would have been taken on by CR as a 'no win, no fee' arrangement)
 
love detective said:
On behalf of Louise, Carter Ruck spent around 6 months attempting to disrupt/prevent/delay the publication of BTF - someone had to pay for that (given that the case as presented was so full of holes that there's no way it would have been taken on by CR as a 'no win, no fee' arrangement)
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No idea about any of that, just wondering how much it would have cost? You seemed to know so I was asking, Do you know?
 
love detective said:
As with most published books, the lion's share goes to the publisher themselves
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I know that!
love detective said:
So there's absolutely no way that the substantial fees Louise incurred in relation to Carter Ruck's failed attempts to stop the publication BTF would have been funded by Searchlight? She paid them out her own pocket yes?
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Get in the real world you clown. She didnt give a toss Id imagine about BtF coming out...it was the vicious lies you told about DH that concerned her. Searchlight had no role in either No Retreat or PR you numbskulls. Its laughable. Is this a wind up........
 
DaveCinzano said:
I just heard that there was some kind of firebomb attack at the Freedom Books shop last night early this morning, has anyone heard any more about this?

[Corrected]

https://twitter.com/piombo/status/297331277068124160
https://twitter.com/piombo/status/297331923519410176
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Freedom Press ‏@Freedom_Paper
BREAKING: Freedom was firebombed last night. No-one hurt, upstairs is okay but shop and electrics have been seriously damaged.

Freedom Press ‏@Freedom_Paper
Not much to be done today, but plan for cleanup and appeal for cash (no insurance coverage sadly) will be getting sorted out asap.
 
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