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

[ayatollah]

I can actually see the point that articul8 is making here. At first I though he was asking "Where was AFA at the Battle of Kursk then ?" But no, he isn't. He's simply saying anti fascist activity alone isn't a sufficient measure of the overall political maturity or validity of a group or movement. Which, although I fundamentally disagree about his "radical socialists should continue to work in the LP to AGAIN try to turn it to the Left" argument, is a bit of a "no brainer" for anyone surely. For instance, back in the 1970's the "cultural" offensive of ANL Mk I was integrated with an open and "less public" physical force anti fascism - AND the whole campaign seen as just a component of the wider labour movement and socialist struggle . AND at that time , the radical Left (and the branch level Labour Party) still had a significant working class base - although much reduced from the short-lived boom in working class membership of radical and reformist socialist organisations - eg, in 1974 the IS (VERY briefly) had 80 factory branches !

BTF argues (I think correctly) that the RA/AFA street campaign against the fascists "created the political space" for the LEFT to fill ... BUT then argues that the Left signally failed to fill this space, particularly in (white) working class communities. RA seems to have based this (undoubted) failure by the Left to build (anywhere actually) from the mid 1980's onwards on the fundamental "middleclassness" of the Left, its fundamental political barrenness, and overall the bankrupcy of Socialism as a philosophy and movement. Hence the avowedly non-socialist "radical working class localism" of the IWCA from the "Filling the Vacuum " strategy . I would argue that this analysis reflects only that RA/AFA's period of undoubted incredible anti fascist effort from the mid 1980's onwards - coincided with a period of unprecedented working class DEFEAT and demoralisation after the 1984 Miners Strike, and the social engineering inherent in the Thatcher/Reagan era of deregulated neo-Liberalism. So there was NO significant Left around to take advantage of the "political space" created by the undoubted good work done by RA/AFA to keep the fascists from dominating the streets. Blaming the Left for being "middle class tossers" as the reason for this absence of the Left generally , is to underestimate the defeat of the working class represented by Thatcherism, Blairist/Thatcherism - and the long debt fueled economic bubble which only burst in 2008, during which the working class generally saw no need for any alternative to buoyant capitalism. (but often remained hostile to growing multiculturalism - hence the remaining "political space" for the BNP's electoral "bigot politics" strategy )

The post 2008 Crash era is very different to the era RA/AFA operated in - and the potential to fight the capitalist offensive that only the LEFT and Socialism provides, means that the analysis of "Filling the Vacuum" needs to be significantly updated and revised - in a Socialist direction.

 

[butchersapron]

I would suggest that it's not the obvious correctness of pointing out that physical force anti-fascism alone without an active political component is a non-runner today that's got up a few people's noses, but rather the fact that articul8 knows damn well that he's talking with people who were arguing exactly that well before filling the vacuum was even circulated and he knows this damn well as he's been talking to them on here for nearly a decade now.

 

[articul8]

I'm trying to understand the chronology for one thing - there seemed to be at least a defacto split between squaddists and politico's pretty much throughout the 80s - I wasn't old enough in this period to know whether this was a spurious argument from the SWP leadership, or whether it was something AFA et al identified with too. And why 94 specifically? Did the vacuum only arise then, or was it only then that it was noticed?

And I don't know how to evaluate the claim that activities like beating up a few hundred boneheads going to a Blood and Honour gig helped to prevent the emergence of a traditional fascist party on European lines. As I said, I support physical confrontation with fascists where necessary but from my reading of the book it does seem like it threatened to become, or became for some, an end in itself and of no more intrinsic political worth than any other sort of hool/gang subcultural activity.

 

[SpineyNorman]

"labourite liberal" my arse - I'm not against physical confrontation with fascists where necessary. I'm just probing some of the assumptions and plaudits that AFA is making for itself. (Nor - fwiw - did I say that everything about the USSR was negative).

I wasn't suggesting you did but I got the impression that you believed that was what I thought.

 

[Joe Reilly]

As I said, I support physical confrontation with fascists where necessary but from my reading of the book it does seem like it threatened to become, or became for some, an end in itself and of no more intrinsic political worth than any other sort of hool/gang subcultural activity.

You never tire of repeating the bleedin obvious do you? The absence of political fidelity was made by the SWP CC against the squadists in 1981 and against RA and AFA every year since.

Not only that but near every BTF review made the same 'observation'.

Most of them would have reached that conclusion without necessarily reading the book of course.

Ditto the comparing of militant anti-fascism with any other sort of hool/gang subcultural activity.

Which invites the obvious question - having neither been an anti-fascist nor a hooligan how could you possibly tell?

Or as a fellow bigot on over-hearing an anecdote regarding some recent AFA adventure or other, put it so memorably: 'And afterwards they probably go home and beat their wives'.

Finally a tip. Don't ever say you 'support the use of violence against fascism when necessary'.

I don't know what Freud would say about it, but in my experience it is the hallmark of someone who has no intention of ever doing so themselves - regardless of circumstances.

 

[articul8]

Hold on,

You never tire of repeating the bleedin obvious do you? The absence of political fidelity was made by the SWP CC against the squadists in 1981 and against RA and AFA every year since.

Not only that but near every BTF review made the same 'observation'.

For the record, I didn't say it did tip fully over into apolitical violence, or at least not for those at the centre - but that it strikes me this was a danger inherent in this line of activity.

Ditto the comparing of militant anti-fascism with any other sort of hool/gang subcultural activity.
Which invites the obvious question - having neither been an anti-fascist nor a hooligan how could you possibly tell?

this is symptomatic - you only count as "anti-fascist" if you've personally administered violence to them (irrespective of the fact that for all of my adult life they haven't been taking up street-fighting methods)? Maybe its partly a generational thing. (fwiw - I am an "anti-fascist", I'm not making some liberal attacks on physical confrontation with fash per se. But not having been involved in street fights doesn't mean I'm anti anti-fascist. No, I haven't been a football hooligan (I tend to prefer watching the games). There is a whole genre of hool-lit though where people look back and think "wtf was all that about? Still, miss the buzz, the adrenalin rush etc">

Or as a fellow bigot on over-hearing an anecdote regarding some recent AFA adventure or other, put it so memorably: 'And afterwards they probably go home and beat their wives'.

Fellow bigot

 

[ayatollah]

Joe Reilly quote:
"Finally a tip. Don't ever say you 'support the use of violence against fascism when necessary'.

I don't know what Freud would say about it, but in my experience it is the hallmark of someone who has no intention of ever doing so themselves - regardless of circumstances. "

Sadly, this is, in my past experience anyway, all too true. That theoretical "moment of necessity" somehow just NEVER appeared for most of the Left.. not when it was some other poor bugger being beaten up or firebombed that is. In the early and mid 70's when the Far Left briefly DID have quite a respectable (in terms of a TINY Far Left) working class membership it was stunningly clear in each and every "pavement situation" or attacked public meeting, which socio-economic strata of the Left was going to stand their ground, and which was going to decide that that "moment of necessity" hadn't arrived yet. On a broader canvas , TODAY, it is similarly true that it is only IF once again the present economic crisis draws considerable numbers of working class people into the Left, will it be any bloody use at all. It's a strange thing - gone into at length by George Orwell in a famous article in the 30's, but Middle Class Lefties, have a MUCH higher proportion of cowardly tossers in their ranks than the middle class as a whole. I don't know why that is, but it is an observable fact.

 

[articul8]

In the early and mid 70's when the Far Left briefly DID have quite a respectable (in terms of a TINY Far Left) working class membership it was stunningly clear in each and every "pavement situation" or attacked public meeting, which socio-economic strata of the Left was going to stand their ground, and which was going to decide that that "moment of necessity" hadn't arrived yet.

Well I can't judge from 1st hand experience - though I can imagine it - but this kind of observation can tip over into implying that being less than gung-ho for a "pavement situation" on every single occasion was objective proof of someone being more petit-bourgeois

 

[audiotech]

Joe is right in the above post #2345. One slime-ball in the British Movement one time, who was a coward to boot and had been photographed seig-heiling on a picket outside a left meeting, said to me one night sometime later, as our paths crossed in a pub; 'well we had our thugs as well as you lot' (the group he supported had smashed the windows of the local trades club and daubed it with swastika's). I told him in no uncertain terms that he was right on one point, that him and his ilk were the thugs. At this point, he was promptly requested to leave the pub. No violence was threatened. He mumbled something as he left about Marx saying that people could change. Err, not in your case mush came the reply. There was a strong suspicion that he was also a tout, as he had been seen passing info onto one well known grass, also a fascist.

 

[ayatollah]

Well I can't judge from 1st hand experience - though I can imagine it - but this kind of observation can tip over into implying that being less than gung-ho for a "pavement situation" on every single occasion was objective proof of someone being more petit-bourgeois

But that's the strange thing.. the British army for instance is largely officered by middle class people - a quite aggressive activity I believe... lots of middle class people like playing Rugger .. also quite an aggressive activity. So one would imagine that middle class people deciding to engage in "revolutionery" politics.. would be generally quite "up for it" type of people. This certainly seemed to me to be the attitude of the working class component of the 1970's revolutionery Left. The majority of the middle class ones though - no ... really more interested in the ideas and lifestyle and possibly the bureaucracy of party organisation , than picket lines and general aggro. I suspect that in a period of major social upheaval all these generalisations would be much more in question.. as "ordinary" people entered into radical politics. But in the 1970's the caricature of the mouthy, obsessively sectarian ,but pretty gutless, middle class Leftie , was all too often, very accurate.

 

[audiotech]

To be fair, I knew and still know a few middle class lefty's who weren't and aren't 'gutless'. Two in particular, who had their car fire-bombed outside their house.

 

[ayatollah]

I'm a middle class Leftie myself .. so I'm obviously not suggesting everybody from that background is averse to fisticuffs when "necessary". The overwhelming majority were though, for sociological reasons of which I'm not entirely clear. "Too polite " ? "Too much invested in future career prospects" ? Not enough practice in the Grammar School playground ? Or maybe just that in a period of relative social stability the self-selcting middle class person interested in Left politics , particularly the often rather text-obsessed, follower of the "true belief" just isn't in general, a fighter ?

Its what they did next after having their car firebombed outside their house that determines whether they are Lefties "up for it" or Lefties as passive victims ,surely ?

 

[audiotech]

What did you want them to do? They continued in far-left politics, others may have folded after such an incident. Politics isn't about having fisti-cuffs usually - even for John Prescott.

 

[frogwoman]

i've got middle class people in my family who were jailed for years for politics stuff. one isnt really a leftie any more but doesn't really regret his actions. not sure its always a class thing!

 

[ayatollah]

What did you want them to do? They continued in far-left politics, others may have folded after such an incident. Politics isn't about having fisti-cuffs usually - even for John Prescott.

I only know what would have been done to the fascists in Manchester in the 70's and 80's if such a thing had been done to people on the Left. It would't have happened again. Which IS the point. Good for them though for carrying on. Without appropriate action though they were lucky not to suffer worse later. Of course the majority of Left activity doesn't involve fisticuffs. But we are discussing on the BTF thread, and the relative responses of middle class and working class Left activists to violence from the Far Right. But let me be clear, not all Middle class Lefties were lacking in bottle , and not all working class Lefties were "up for it" when threatened - but overall it was the working class militants who took on and beat the fascist street offensives. A factor which obviously heavily coloured many working class militants' view of the Left , not for the better. The now very well known riposte by SWP Guru Alex Callinicos to a request to assist with a opposing a fascist papersale in London from members of what became RA.. ie " that is NOT my function in the Party" . is emblematic of this issue - which will no doubt arise again when all sorts of activities which require an acceptance of personal and career threatening risk are required from the Left in the turbulent years that lie ahead.

 

[audiotech]

Well in Leeds things were done during the ANL mk1 days I can assure you.

I had to laugh once when a headline in the local rag reported sometime in the 90's, if memory serves, that a brutal attack on a left-wing papersale had taken place, horrifying people going about doing their shopping. Turned out that is was in fact the fascists who'd been turned over by AFA.

Callinicos is a wimp when it comes to fighting and he's not hesitant to admit it, nevertheless, that doesn't apply to all that are, or have been on the CC of the SWP. I would hazard a guess though that most probably have been and are though.

 

[The39thStep]

There wasn't any offensive against the fash in Leeds after the firebomb attack despite the fact that it has been well documented that oddball Tony White was the one who stalked them and set the whole thing up.

CC members who would get stuck in - John Deason, I saw Pat Stack charging at fash in a wheel chair .I even once saw Pete Alexander have a little go in Ealing when we moved the NF paper sale on. Holborow was the one who would issue instructions and then deny all knowledge. Strouthous spoke a good fight and then expelled those who carried out what was required.

Although he never reached the heights of CC Andy Zebrowski who later became a full timer could be very handy.

 

[ayatollah]

I had a classic "Paul Holborough experience" - in about 1978 - big street battle in Leicester - with surprising amount of hand to hand with the cops as we tried to get at the NF. We smashed through one police line in classic IMG "link arms comrades" style.. bombed down a side road at head of a goodly mob. Round thre corner, and ANOTHER police line blocking the road. Holborough is there with a crowd. He waves us on -- as in "go, Go, Go !". We hit the police lines , they buckle, we fall into a melee with them .. Holborough and his crowd DON't join in , they stand back and APPLAUD us ! (I KID YOU NOT !). Lots of us get arrested . (80 in total that day - the fascists got bricked to hell).

Anyway a couple of weeks later I'm at an SWP meeting and I happen to meet Holborough by chance in the toilet in an interval... "That was a stupid, adventurist charge" he sniped ! In those days I was still enough of a hack NOT to stuff the bastard's head down the bog !

 

[bignose1]

What did you want them to do? They continued in far-left politics, others may have folded after such an incident. Politics isn't about having fisti-cuffs usually - even for John Prescott.

Carrying a bit of extra timber...mid 50's ..dodgy knees...work and home address known...on Redwatch...so when I go pointing a lens into their faces nowadays..rather than a boot..Im a cop out. Been levelled. Got a crew...well a little one...worried...yeah of course...but then I have earned their displeasure...so hey ho...just back from Madrid and a walk round the hills/fields of Jarama and a few days before stayed in Durango nr Bilbao which was bombed a month before Guernica....doesnt put me in that league but it damn makes me feel good about being an anti fascist...

 

[audiotech]

I understand totally bn1.

 

[audiotech]

There wasn't any offensive against the fash in Leeds...

There were mass pickets organised in the city centre when paper sellers were being targeted.

Not from the SWP, but a few NF were put on their arses in Pudsey, nr Leeds, by others. Strange that TW turned up after that rumble had ended?

The BPP tried to have a showing later after all that, but were humiliated and had to be escorted by the police and shoved into taxis from a farcical picket they'd tried to organise. I think about three or four of them turned up, facing hundreds of anti-fascists.

 

[bignose1]

There were mass pickets organised in the city centre when paper sellers were being targeted.

Not from the SWP, but a few NF were put on their arses in Pudsey, nr Leeds, by others. Strange that TW turned up after that rumble had ended?

The BPP tried to have a showing later after all that, but were humiliated and had to be escorted by the police and shoved into taxis from a farcical picket they'd tried to organise. I think about three or four of them turned up, facing hundreds of anti-fascists.

Tony White...probably told by his handler to arrive a tad late...btw whatever happened to angry face Appleyard...

 

[audiotech]

Dave Appleyard, middle-class and fascist wannabe?

http://www.1in12events.co.uk/archive/publications/fascists/background.html

 

[bignose1]

Dave Appleyard, middle-class and fascist wannabe?

http://www.1in12events.co.uk/archive/publications/fascists/background.html

Was never sure...but no surprise....dont want to sound like Joey 'fruit cake' Owens but I bet Whatmoughs at it....

 

[audiotech]

Was never sure...but no surpise....dont want to sound like Joey 'fruit cake' Owens but I bet Whatmoughs at it....

That's a definite, btw he was one of those who met with the pavement in Pudsey I mentioned. With all the bandages he was wearing, he looked like an extra from 'The 'Mummy Returns', or was he calling for his mummy? Hard to tell.

 

[Joe Reilly]

this is symptomatic - you only count as "anti-fascist" if you've personally administered violence to them (irrespective of the fact that for all of my adult life they haven't been taking up street-fighting methods)? Maybe its partly a generational thing. (fwiw - I am an "anti-fascist", I'm not making some liberal attacks on physical confrontation with fash per se. But not having been involved in street fights doesn't mean I'm anti anti-fascist. No, I haven't been a football hooligan (I tend to prefer watching the games). There is a whole genre of hool-lit though where people look back and think "wtf was all that about? Still, miss the buzz, the adrenalin rush etc">

That's not and has never been been implied much less stated. Personally administering violence dosen't come into it. There were loads of people in AFA, and thousands more that supported AFA events that would not have been happy on the pavement. That was no disqualfication.

Indeed there were a goodly number who did actively support engagements with the opposition but who on an individual level had little or no experience of (unlike, incidentally those 'at the centre') violence outside of politics. Nevertheless they routinely turned out, not for 'the buzz' but because they knew that numbers were important, and they saw it as their duty as anti-fascists to be there.

What all of them offered was an unequivocal political support for the tactic as those engaged in it saw fit. That was mandatory; a prerequisite. It was that principle, and not the use of force itself that distinguishes militant anti-fascism from the less efficient variety.

Otherwise it's a familiar slippery slope as others on here have testified.

The Chapel Market scenario referred to by Ayatollah is a case in point. Here we had a member of the SWP CC accidentally stumbling across an imminent confrontation and being invited to stand with his party colleagues fearing imminent attack from a greater number of NF mustering across the road.

Self-evidently every man and woman counted in such circumstances, not in terms of inflicting violence, but in terms of offering moral support, and through adding to the numbers and standing their ground, they knew they offered both a rebuke and a deterrent to the fascists busily assessing their options.

Whether he considered he was physically equipped for such a role was not what mattered. Less able than him stood.

It wasn't a matter of tactic's but of personal integrity.

 

[ayatollah]

The is another quite famous story..apparently true... SOUNDS true. Vanesa Redgrave, ex luminery of the WRP. meeting at a Hollywood Soire with her Luvvie pals. Robert de Niro says "jeez Vanessa... all this revolutionery stuff you and Corin are into.....do you mean you're gonna SHOOT folks ?" Vanessa sips a long dark drinkies..."oh dahling... other people would do that"

People like Callinicos, and Redgrave, lack not only physical courage (and that is much more about an attitude of MIND rather , than big muscles --an iron bar up the sleeve equals out many hours honing muscles in the gym), but a moral courage, which says you stand in the line when others are at risk, and do what you can, share the risk, pain, and "distasteful tasks". anyone who thinks their "role" is just as a "theoretician" or "leader" is fundamentally politically corrupt - a Noske or Ebert in waiting to get all historical.

You seem very personally sensitive about all this physical stuff, articul8,......sure there's NEVER been any time when you should have stood alongside your mates but didn't ? It's not always a physical issue... can also be risking your job in a strike situation...speaking out about workplace bullying or corruption.....just doing the right thing despite potential personal disadvantage or harm.

 

[Joe Reilly]

You seem very personally sensitive about all this physical stuff, articul8,......sure there's NEVER been any time when you should have stood alongside your mates but didn't ? It's not always a physical issue... can also be risking your job in a strike situation...speaking out about workplace bullying or corruption.....just doing the right thing despite potential personal disadvantage or harm.

I'm not sure it helps to personalise it in this way. For one, it is far too widespread for that. It might be that people on the Left look around them and see people like themselves; with similar backgrounds, abilities, aspirations, strengths and weaknesses and so on and come to believe that they are not only representative of the entire left but this is how it was always peopled. Accordingly other elements who also claim to be of the left, who act, think, and operate very differently, with different strengths and weaknesses, are regarded with atavistic suspicion: 'You are not one of us'.

With the fear of 'the other' established almost instantly the thought process goes something like this. If we are the genuine article then you, who are so different, have to be some kind of imposter. Which automatically leads to questions of motivation. What would motivate a person to do something as a matter of routine, that would to me, a bone fide socialist and anti-fascist, be anathema?

Obviously If I am the genuine article then their rationale can be nothing other than base.

Self-aggrandizing, unnecessarily brutal, adventurist, and when you think about it, almost (but whisper it) fascistic. All of which, and worse, have been stated or implied over the years.

Why this incessant finger-pointing? Actually it's fairly simple as it introduces what Lord Denning, in the appeal of the Birmingham 6 called an 'appalling vista'. What he found indegistible was the either or scenario.

If the Brum Six were telling the truth then that means the entire police, prison, and forensic service, were perjurers.

It also follows that if 'Squadists', AFA were genuinely anti-fascist then...? Just as unthinkable.

 

[miktheword]

I'm not sure it helps to personalise it in this way. For one, it is far too widespread for that. It might be that people on the Left look around them and see people like themselves; with similar backgrounds, abilities, aspirations, strengths and weaknesses and so on and come to believe that they are not only representative of the entire left but this is how it was always peopled. Accordingly other elements who also claim to be of the left, who act, think, and operate very differently, with different strengths and weaknesses, are regarded with atavistic suspicion: 'You are not one of us'.

With the fear of 'the other' established almost instantly the thought process goes something like this. If we are the genuine article then you, who are so different, have to be some kind of imposter. Which automatically leads to questions of motivation. What would motivate a person to do something as a matter of routine, that would to me, a bone fide socialist and anti-fascist, be anathema?

Obviously If I am the genuine article then their rationale can be nothing other than base.

Self-aggrandizing, unnecessarily brutal, adventurist, and when you think about it, almost (but whisper it) fascistic. All of which, and worse, have been stated or implied over the years.

Why this incessant finger-pointing? Actually it's fairly simple as it introduces what Lord Denning, in the appeal of the Birmingham 6 called an 'appalling vista'. What he found indegistible was the either or scenario.

If the Brum Six were telling the truth then that means the entire police, prison, and forensic service, were perjurers.

It also follows that if 'Squadists', AFA were genuinely anti-fascist then...? Just as unthinkable.[/quote]



something very similar was stated in almost exactly those words in the debate held in Open Polemic jounal when RA started to examine and then dismantle many of the certainties held by the old conservative Trotskists. I think it was,

'remember comrades..if RA are right, then we....'

...the same unthinkable.

 

[articul8]

You seem very personally sensitive about all this physical stuff, articul8,......sure there's NEVER been any time when you should have stood alongside your mates but didn't ? It's not always a physical issue... can also be risking your job in a strike situation...speaking out about workplace bullying or corruption.....just doing the right thing despite potential personal disadvantage or harm.

I'm can't think of a single time I've "bottled it".(the two "political" fights I've ever been in have been against the odds, not that it matters)

I stood up for my colleague against my bosses in an industrial tribunal and stood to gain nothing whatsoever in return (quite the opposite). I don't want or expect anything in return, but neither will I take bullshit about it either.