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

Red About Town said:
Taken from the Red Action FB page. Short clip on the page too.

We have longer footage that was recorded live, as it happened, by one of the Red Action members who couldn't attend herself that night. Unfortunately, it's still on a VHS tape, which we will endeavour to get transferred.

The background of the evening was that two vanloads of AFA (one from Edinburgh, the other from Glasgow) toured the constituency in Lanarkshire where the BNP had stood a candidate and expected a strong loyalist vote. We didn't find them and decided to chance our luck at the count in the Glasgow SECC.

When we arrived we were informed that we had missed the BNP's arrival by only a few minutes and that 25 of them were already in the hall. Entry was by ticket only. We decided to approach members of the SSP/Militant as they arrived to see if they had any spare tickets and to warn them that the fash were already inside. The attitude of many of those passing us ranged from dismissive to openly hostile. One scoffed that the BNP would be 'no problem' for them.

After about 5 minutes, and to his eternal credit, Alan McCombes emerged and told us that the BNP were already trying to intimidate people inside the count and he handed us a bundle of tickets that he had collected from his comrades. We marched into the count and the fash almost shit themselves at the sight of us... Scottish BNP leader Scott McLean, tried to appeal to one of the leading Celtic (CSC) lads with us, saying, "Why are you here John? We're not into violence any more..." To which he replied with the immortal words, "You're fucked then, cos we are!"

McLean later approached the Red Action organiser and tried to speak to him, he was met with the stonewall reply, "Fuck off, I dont speak to fascists..." When McLean tried to continue the conversation, another Celtic lad, Big Pete, stepped forward, punched him straight in the mouth saying, "Did you not hear what he said? We don't speak to fascists!"

BBC's Kirsty Wark, covering the Scottish vote, commented, "We've just been informed that a militant anti-fascist group has infltrated the count..."

When Asian Labour MP Mohamed Sarwar was elected it was the BNP's cue to heckle and wave flags, as soon as they did so AFA steamed them from behind, some of the SSP people also joined us at that stage. Eventually the cops took control and decided that the safest option was to get the fash out of the hall, As they were escorted out, AFA members attempted to get at them.

Kirsty Wark's comment at that point was also immortal, "And there's some of the real citizens of Glasgow showing the BNP what they really think of them..."

* The mobilisation was a joint one between Glasgow AFA and Edinburgh AFA, the two Scottish AFA branches regularly co-operated on joint actions. It included members of Red Action, the Celtic Soccer Crew, hunt sabs and anarchists
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An interesting evening that one, I was with the then Scottish Socialist Alliance (which became the SSP). We went in and when going inside went past a good squad of AFA outside. Not long after a good number of our younger members and the more alert and sensible membership in the hall were asking why AFA were still outside when we had tickets to get them in. I remember a bit of a 'debate' taking place which had almost surreal input from those opposed to getting AFA in from people who'd never thrown a tight hander in their life telling us we were exaggerating and it was ok. Completely ignoring threats in toilets from the BNP and their pals. The stupidity of those comments was based on their studied avoidance of the BNP whilst others got the tough end of the fash threats. Thankfully, as the article mentions, McCombes won the day as regards the 'debate' by simply getting tickets from others and geting those tickets to those outside.
If I remember right AFA had a big black French lad with them who git in with a ticket with a woman's name on it and the doormen were simply told well he's French. framed might remember that little story better.
 
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Fedayn said:
An interesting evening that one, I was with the then Scottish Socialist Alliance (which became the SSP). We went in and when going inside went past a good squad of AFA outside. Not long after a good number of our younger members and the more alert and sensible membership in the hall were asking why AFA were still outside when we had tickets to get them in. I remember a bit of a 'debate' taking place which had almost surreal input from those opposed to getting AFA in from people who'd never thrown a tight hander in their life telling us we were exaggerating and it was ok. Completely ignoring threats in toilets from the BNP and their pals. The stupidity of those comments was based on their studied avoidance of the BNP whilst others got the tough end of the fash threats. Thankfully, as the article mentions, McCombes won the day as regards the 'debate' by simply getting tickets from others and geting those tickets to those outside.
If I remember right AFA had a big black French lad with them who git in with a ticket with a woman's name on it and the doormen were simply told well he's French. framed might remember that little story better.
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He's actually of Nigerian descent and has a broad Edinburgh accent, but he pretended to be French and put on an 'Allo Allo' accent because of the female name on the ticket... :D
 
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Red Storm said:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ay-decision-shun-poppy-embroidered-shirt.html

Daily Mail uses Cody Lachey's twitter quotes on McClean refusing to wear a poppy. You might have seen Lachey from the Very British Gangster 2 and the series. The one with all the Republican stuff in it...

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/lat...Cody-Aiden-Lachey-unmasked-as-racist-deserter

Daily Star looked into him back in 2013.
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The ARRSE thread is all kinds of fun:

http://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threads/craig-langley-cody-aiden-lachey.199991/
 
or eddie morrison's memoirs of a street soldier which is beyond the bullshit zone. it's a surprise he even remembers anything as he was so drunk most of of the time. he bottled it for several years after literally being bottled in leeds. stampton is well known as a grass, an opportunist and for lasting only a few months in any group before being kicked out.
 
'no more brother wars my arse.' there are more calls for unity on the far right than actual members. they usually put it down to micro-fuhrer syndrome. this is eddie stampton who beat his girlfriend to a coma.
 

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and this the other eddie morrison with jailed pedophile martyn gilleard who apparently converted to islam to prevent him being beaten up. again.
 

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i think stampton is far from clandestine and has been very visible on some of the demos i've been on. oh, hang on, that thing up there slagging it off is from VNN uk fascist site. not me. i cant do graphics as well as that.
 
malatesta32 said:
i think stampton is far from clandestine and has been very visible on some of the demos i've been on. oh, hang on, that thing up there slagging it off is from VNN uk fascist site. not me. i cant do graphics as well as that.
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I didn't think it was from you mate :thumbs: I was referring to the 'outraged' fascist above
 
Here's another excerpt... I was gonna post it months ago but Mr Stampton informed me he had nicked my last posts wholesale for his own book (not the RAC one that is out now) so I left it a while. At least there might be one well-written story with some resemblance to the actualité in his book.

The Yellow Minibus.
I actually started my political career as a bit of a Poster boy for the National front. That was not my intention but that’s how it turned out.

I arrived at Foleshill Park in Coventry. The Bloody Sunday March (Commemorating the 14 Irish civilians shot dead by British paratroopers in January 1972) had been due to take place in Coventry but was banned at the last minute. In their infinite wisdom the organisers had decided to move it to Birmingham. Now these days, 40 years on and after the enquiry and the British Government’s apology, most people could easily draw a distinction between a Bloody Sunday march and an ‘IRA’ one. That was not the case back then (just four years after the Pub Bombings) and the local press had stirred things up no end so it was likely to be lively to say the least.

There was a 52-seater coach and a shiny, yellow minibus with the words ‘Warwick University Student’s Union’ emblazoned down either side. I opted for the minibus as that’s where my mates Harry Hempo and Cusseedy were and also, although most people on it were students, the minibus lads were much more working-class/hairy arsed than the lefties on the coach. Both the coach and the bus had a police motorcyclist behind them as we pulled out and headed for Brum. We were in high spirits and the craic and banter was flowing as we looked forward to the day. We were about to get much more excitement than we had bargained for.

As we approached Stonebridge Island on the A45 we saw two things that should have alerted us, but sadly didn’t. The first was seeing the coach speeding back the opposite way with their motorcyclist in tow. The second was that in a layby on our left was a Salford van Hire minibus packed with men who looked nothing like students. As we passed, they pulled out a few cars back. It became clear that they were NF. Nobody showed any fear and I was heartened that, unlike previous encounters, people seemed up for it.
There was a bit of gesturing between the two mini busses, but nothing that gave an insight into what was about to come. Our police escort whizzed off but we did not think too much about why. At first we thought the gestures from the NF were inviting us to ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’. Well we did think we were hard enough as it happened and were indeed about to ‘have a go’.

But as the lads at the back opened the doors, they suddenly hesitated. Something wasn’t quite right. Looking around they realised that all the Fascist shouts of ‘come on’ were not directed at us at all but were meant for the 100 or so of their NF mates who had been stopped at the roundabout by the police and were milling about in a state of high excitement having just missed a confrontation with our coach. Now they were all off their buses and streaming down to where we were stuck in the (completely Police-induced and controlled) traffic tailback.

The lads pulled back in and shut the doors shouting warnings. We looked up and could see droves of them running through the traffic and along the side of the road, some literally falling over themselves in their enthusiasm. “Drive! Drive!” people shouted. But the driver had nowhere to go. We were on the inside lane and boxed in by cars front, back and side. I was absolutely shitting myself and like everybody else was panicking as our fate became clear. Within seconds the minibus was surrounded and everybody ducked down, curled up and did their best to protect themselves. I was too slow getting down and ended up the only one standing - which as it turned out wasn’t a bad way to be as the roof gave me a fair bit of protection.

Then the strangest thing happened. Just as I thought my heart or my head would explode, a strange calm came over me. It was almost as if I was watching this on TV rather than being in it. I suddenly felt eerily calm. I know that feeling well now, almost like an old friend, but it was weird at the time. Basically my limbic brain had kicked in and having identified that flight or freeze was not an option, it only left fight.
 
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The Yellow Minibus Part 2

Loads of them had us surrounded and all kinds of missiles (cider bottles, bits of paving slabs etc.) bounced off the windows before they started to break through. Very soon there simply were no windows and the missiles were coming through the holes and hitting people. We were showered with broken glass and pandemonium reigned as our attackers worked themselves into a frenzy. Eager fascist hands then began to grab people and try to pull them through the broken windows. I pulled a couple of people back in. They had one fellas head, arms and shoulders out but, fortunately for him, they were all so keen to batter him that the ‘pullers’ stopped pulling so they could hit him and I was just able to drag him back in.

As he slid back in I saw there was a huge amber-handled screwdriver stuck in his donkey jacket where someone had tried to stab him. I had no idea if he had actually been stabbed but I grabbed the screwdriver, held it by the shaft and began to whack the grabbing hands as hard as I could with the heavy handle. Obviously I have no idea what kind of a mad lunatic I looked like to them but the fear and pain in the eyes of the owners of the hands I walloped was encouraging.

The bus was being rocked fiercely from side to side, with fascists all round both sides and ends and we were rocking with it. It was hard to keep your feet and I would’ve fallen over had there been any space to fall into. And all the time this disassociated calm. I saw one of them hold the petrol cap aloft triumphantly and could hear them shouting ‘Burn the bastards!’ At the time I had no idea that the bus was diesel-fuelled and that actually diesel does not ignite readily but it didn’t seem to matter anyway. It was like I had accepted we were going to die.

The driver was unconscious and the passenger door had been ripped open. An RCP fella was wrapped around fat Jimmy the Scouser who was sat in the middle. He was hanging on for dear life as a fascist half got in, planted one foot on the side of the seat, the other on the door jamb and pulled with all such force that when he eventually lost his grip he flew backwards into the crowd.

A big, easy-going fella from Derry was holding the door handles down and together as the Fash tried to pull them open. He was shipping lots of blows as they tried to batter his grip loose but he stuck resolutely to the task. I had always considered him a bit of a big softie cos he was so softly and politely spoken, but he was a hero that day. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that people would have been maimed or killed had he given up.

Next thing a smoke canister was thrown in. It was the kind that Sky-divers used. Whilst they may have simply made for impressive viewing at two-thousand feet, they were devastating in an enclosed space. Everybody was choking and gasping for breath as the thick red/orange smoke tore at our throats and burned our eyes. At that point I actually considered for a few seconds giving up, lying down and accepting my fate - then the canister was at my feet and I just grabbed it and tossed it back out the window. One of the Fash screamed as it bounced off his face. I don’t know what he thought it was but his panic meant it took them a few seconds to toss it back in. Funny enough it was this lowest point that galvanised others into action. As the macabre game of pass-the-parcel with the smoke canister continued more people sat or stood up and joined the battle. Thank God CS gas - which would become fairly common just a few years later - was not yet available.

Somebody shook the driver back to consciousness and he gunned the engine. He was literally driving blind for a few seconds as the Fash dived out of the way. One side of the windscreen had been kicked in and was flapping about while the driver’s side was full of those white impact marks you get on glass.

One fascist had climbed up the side of the bus and was kicking in through the window with his non-standing leg. Two of us had a hold of his leg as the bus took off and for a few beautiful seconds he was ours - he screamed and struggled as he bounced off the side of the bus. Whether it was his struggling or his mates managed to grab him I don’t know, but he slipped from our grasp. Probably best that he did to be honest, but I always looked on him as the one that got away. As we ploughed through diving NF-ers the road ahead cleared. We found out later that there had been a couple standing and jumping on the roof as well. Fortunately for them there were plenty of their comrades’ arms to fall into.

In the minute or so we were under attack the traffic in front had moved on a bit and naturally no-one behind moved to overtake our bus so we had a clear run of maybe 70 yards to the roundabout. There was a queue of irate members of the public berating the police for standing there doing nothing. The cops were taking plenty of no notice. There was a line of the slimy bastards, mostly with their hands actually tucked behind their backs, right across the road. Our driver just managed to squeeze through a gap on the outside, through the traffic onto the roundabout. As the fascists’ cheers and jeers rang out he did a 180 degree turn across the muddy grass and I thought for one horrible moment that he was gonna turn the bus over. Then one more moment of terror as the bus threatened to get stuck in the churning mud and the wheels spun for what seemed like forever but was probably a couple of seconds. Fortunately he recovered and we headed at high speed back towards Coventry. We received a final few missiles as we drove past our attackers on the other side of the dual carraigeway.

A quick check revealed that most injuries, even those with lots of blood, were superficial. Incredibly nobody was seriously hurt. There were not even any broken bones! We all looked like trolls of course. Tear-streaked, orange faces, red nostrils, with massive wide white eyes. Even the ones with short hair seemed to have it all standing up like mad Scientists after a laboratory explosion.
 
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The Yellow Minibus (Part3)

The relief was incredible. Some sat silently counting their blessings (and maybe their teeth) others, myself included were laughing like maniacs and recounting the tale.

A beautiful moment of surreal comedy rounded off the day. As we pulled into Cov & Warwick hospital the Salvation Army Brass Band was playing outside. As the bus rolled by and as each of them clocked our battered bus - with every single panel bashed in, every window except miraculously the driver’s one missing, full of bloodied, wild-eyed, orange faced madmen they stopped playing. As the last of them stopped, slack-jawed at what they were seeing their Conductor turned to see what the hell was going on, I stuck my head out and shouted “Hally-fuckin-luia”. Cue lots more maniacal laughter from most of us and dirty looks from others.

God only knows what the usual Sunday afternoon Casualty audience, mostly parents with kids with cut knees, broken wrists or pots stuck on their heads thought when fifteen madmen piled in, all with the ridiculous orange faces and red noses and some of us covered in claret.

The adrenal overload was almost overwhelming to be honest. Some sat shell-shocked; some were shaking with the post-fight adrenaline, whilst others blabbered on almost unintelligibly. I remember Mike the RCP-er who was in the front passenger seat simply refused point blank to believe how close he came to being dragged out. When I described to him what I had seen he protested ‘They couldn’t have grabbed me, I had the door locked’. Everybody laughed and pointed out that his door had no glass in it and it wasn’t exactly difficult to pop the snib and open the door, but I was amazed at his post-traumatic rationalisation. He just had a lost 30 seconds and that was it. He’d been so traumatised that he could not even consider admitting to himself that he was so close to death. He just blanked it out. I later discovered this is quite a common occurrence in a scary situation. People talk of the fight or flight response but by far the most frequent reaction to extreme fear is Freeze. That is what traditionally meant that lefty students stood frozen with fear whilst working-class street fighters from the NF or later the BNP picked them off. That would change soon and the Far Right would be the ones on the back foot, but for now the traffic seemed totally one-way.

Mike got quite aggressive too and accused me of being ‘full of shit’. Even as others verified my story he grasped for a straw. ‘And another thing, where’s this mystical screwdriver then? Come on where is it?’ The truth was I hadn’t a notion. I simply could not remember, not once the smoke canister came in. It certainly hadn’t ended up on the floor of the minibus with all the other detritus - the broken paving slabs, cider bottles, and industrial bolts. The kid with the donkey jacket had no doubts though. He had a long weal down his side where it had grazed him but thankfully had been deflected away from piercing his flesh - and a stab sized hole in his jacket to show for it. Mike shut up once yer man wiggled his finger through the hole in his coat and asked him what he thought might have caused it apart from the screwdriver. In fairness to him, I think he was the one who had booked out the minibus under some spurious reason and he was gonna have to return what was left of it - and explain the state of it. So while the nightmare was over for us, his was just beginning!

I had some choice words for the SWP when next one of them started with the ‘we have to engage with the fascists - talk to them’ routine. Of course we had to constantly and consistently engage them in debate and discussion, that’s the only way you can challenge and ultimately change people’s views - but we could only do that after we had established our right to talk in the first place. You could not speak from a position of pleading and weakness.

Looking back on that day, there is absolutely no way that the police did not know exactly who we were, where we were and that we were driving into an ambush. In fact we were clearly led and directed, by them, straight into the ambush.

I still can’t believe there were no fatalities or even serious injuries. If only the fash were a bit more organised, a bit more clinical, a little less stupid. Had they rocked the bus from one side instead of two they would have surely turned it over and then we were fucked. If one of them had taken charge and stopped too many cooks from spoiling the broth. If the punters in front had abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, leaving us boxed in. If our friend from Derry had been, even momentarily, mentally weaker the back doors would have been torn open and we would have been dragged to our fate and torn limb from limb. Over the next few years I would see plenty of kickings handed out but I never once witnessed an occasion where a mob had a free hand like that, where they were given so much time, while such a large force of Police stood watching. That’s why I know I am not exaggerating when I say someone would have died.

Suffice to say that I was a changed boy after that. I knew who the enemy was. I knew what they were capable of. And I knew I wanted to be part of the fightback. So did Harry and Cusseedy. The problem was where the fuck were we gonna find like-minded people? Three people on that bus, myself, Harry and Cusseedy would later join Red Action.

I think it is fair to say that none of us would have been inclined to politically motivated violence before that, particularly Harry who was such a beautiful, gentle soul. Indeed none of us were violent at heart or got into fights in pubs by and large. But when life presents you with overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that we would have earn the right to protest, earn the right to speak our truth, then it would be complete dishonesty to ignore what was staring you in the face - or indeed for many unfortunates on the left, actually stamping on their face.

And the Poster Boy thing? Well for years afterwards Fascist publications carried photos of their gallant chaps swarming over our little yellow minibus. Or so I am told, I only saw one personally. The caption said something like ‘It’s not all hard work in the National Front. Here are some eager young National Fronters engaging IRA supporters in political debate’. They used it, and the ‘Warwick University Students Union’ logo emblazoned down the side, to recruit impressionable young working class lads with promises of easy pickings beating up ‘lefty students’. Must have made quite an inviting picture.
 
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Fedayn said:
An interesting evening that one, I was with the then Scottish Socialist Alliance (which became the SSP). We went in and when going inside went past a good squad of AFA outside. Not long after a good number of our younger members and the more alert and sensible membership in the hall were asking why AFA were still outside when we had tickets to get them in. I remember a bit of a 'debate' taking place which had almost surreal input from those opposed to getting AFA in from people who'd never thrown a tight hander in their life telling us we were exaggerating and it was ok. Completely ignoring threats in toilets from the BNP and their pals. The stupidity of those comments was based on their studied avoidance of the BNP whilst others got the tough end of the fash threats. Thankfully, as the article mentions, McCombes won the day as regards the 'debate' by simply getting tickets from others and geting those tickets to those outside.
If I remember right AFA had a big black French lad with them who git in with a ticket with a woman's name on it and the doormen were simply told well he's French. framed might remember that little story better.
Click to expand...
 
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