Lessons from the fight against the far right

The working class has a long history of mobilising to resist attempts by far-right forces to attack and intimidate our communities. The Socialist Party and its predecessor Militant has a long history of taking part in those struggles, including at times playing a leading role.

We reprint extracts from reports of and about previous struggles. Each contains insights and lessons about tactics, the role of the police, and how sections of Labour leaders and others can try to hold back attempts to block the far right marching.

In all these struggles, the fight to stop the far right is completely bound with the fight for a socialist alternative, and mobilising the working class to fight for decent jobs and homes, fully funded services, and all our communities need.


Cable Street, 1930s

by Tony Aitman

On 4 October 1936 thousands of workers across the East End of London rose up to prevent a march through their areas by the uniformed thugs of Oswald Mosley’s fascists.

The lead-up to the events of 4 October was a series of meetings throughout East London, as the fascists attempted to whip up working class opposition to Jews as the scapegoats for the economic crisis, saying “Jewish interests” were responsible for the looming war.

To consolidate his position, and to intimidate the population, Mosley proposed a march through the East End on 4 October, in full uniform.

There was an immediate response to this; the Jewish People’s Council launched a petition calling for the march to be banned which gained 100,000 signatures within two days. There was massive opposition to the march. Yet, the anger and readiness to act of the youth and the rank and file of the movement was not matched by the leadership.

The Communist Party (CP) was at its strongest in the East End — CP member Phil Piratin was elected MP for Mile End in 1945. In the street where I lived as a child, virtually everyone was in the party. However, the Young Communist League had organised a rally in Trafalgar Square on the same day as the march, in solidarity with the Spanish Republic. East London CP organiser Frank Lefitte put out a statement: “If Mosley decides to march, let him. Don’t attempt disorder.”

As for the Labour Party, George Lansbury (the hero of Poplar council, jailed in 1921 for resisting cuts in poor relief) wrote: “What I want is to maintain peace and order, and I advise people who are opposed to fascism to keep away from the demonstration.”

But opposition from below was growing. Joe Jacobs, secretary of Stepney CP, was demanding direct confrontation with the fascists. The Independent Labour Party, the CP rank and file, Jewish groups throughout the area, were demanding direct action.

On the day, the East End erupted. Over 300,000 packed East London’s streets — 50,000 congregated around Gardners Corner, the site of a department store between Aldgate and Whitechapel. It was there that a police horse was pushed through the plate glass window of the store and there that my aunt was kicked in the head by another police horse.

At Cable Street, too, barricades were put up to stop the fascists marching and the police defending them. A shower of rubbish and the contents of chamber pots — few houses had indoor sanitation and these were a common feature of workers’ homes — were thrown on the police, while children threw marbles under the horses’ hooves to send them crashing to the ground.

If the fascists had marched through, there would have been an utter rout of the uniformed thugs of the fascists. To prevent this, the Police Commissioner decided the march could not go ahead and the Blackshirts were forced to retreat in complete humiliation.

Tony Aitman


National Front, 1970s

by Roger Shrives

On 13 August 1977, some 800 members of the fascist National Front (NF) provocatively tried to march through Lewisham, a working-class area with a big Black and Asian population.

This was supposed to be the NF’s big national mobilisation but the fascists took such a beating that NF leader John Tyndall was reduced to complaining bitterly that they hadn’t had enough protection — there were 4,000 cops on the streets, armed with riot shields!

When news had broken of the NF’s plans, the influential local body, All-Lewisham Campaign against Racism and Fascism (ALCARAF), comprising Labour Party ‘lefts’, Communist Party and religious leaders, opposed confronting the fascists. They wanted a protest meeting at Ladywell Fields, hours before the NF demonstration and miles away from New Cross where the fascists planned to march.

The Labour Party Young Socialist (LPYS) representative on ALCARAF was a supporter of Militant, The Socialist’s predecessor, He argued that the march should carry on to New Cross. Militant supporters got a resolution passed through Deptford Labour Party calling for socialists and trade unionists to directly counter the NF.

At a meeting before the ALCARAF demo, Militant supporter Nick Bradley, the LPYS rep on Labour’s National Executive, stood out from the timid moralistic claptrap by saying that only united action by the working class on the lines of Cable Street could defeat the fascists.

After ALCARAF’s meeting on the morning of 13 August, many protesters ignored the organisers’ advice and made their own way through the huge police cordon to New Cross.

A large contingent of LPYS members congregated around the Militant banner. It was the most disciplined section of the counter-demonstration, and showed how to organise effective action against the fascists.

For the first time in Britain the police used riot shields, as deployed for years on the streets of Northern Ireland, in Lewisham.

The police first of all smuggled small groups of fascists through the back streets. Then came the charge as three ranks of police on horseback trampled down protesters as they cleared the way for the NF just at the point where the LPYS contingent had formed.

Even before a barrage of bottles, bricks and smoke bombs came down on them, many fascists looked scared at the size of the anti-Nazi response. They started cowering beneath their coats and banners for protection. As they strayed onto the pavements, with the police in disarray, the anti-fascists gave them a hammering.

When a second contingent of fascists came through, they were forced to retreat in panic. Protesters burned the fascist flag. At that sight, around a quarter of the 800-odd fascists refused to march.

The fascists faced bottles and an enraged population in New Cross and were humiliated — many of the older members were shaking. Angry Black, Asian and white youths confronted the fascists in New Cross and later in the day, angry young Black youth fought with the tooled-up police who had been seen to support the NF.


British National Party, 1990s

by Lois Austin

The BNP moved into Welling in 1987. At the time, the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) was a sizeable campaigning organisation, and the Bexleyheath LPYS, which is what I was a member of, responded to the BNP moving in. We set up the ‘Bexley and Greenwich Labour Movement Campaign against Racism and Fascism’. And we set out to get the HQ closed down.

Lois Austin on YRE lobby of the Home Office 25-6-93
Lois Austin on YRE lobby of the Home Office 25-6-93
Credit: Tim Bolwell

We organised protests and demonstrations. There were four racist murders in the area. Rohit Duggal, who was a young Asian man; Rolan Adams, from Thamesmead, who was brutally killed by a racist gang; Orville Blair; and then Stephen Lawrence.

We were out demonstrating in response to every racist murder and attack. We held demonstrations in Welling and Eltham, where the racists outnumbered us, skinheads giving fascist salutes. That’s what we were up against – the presence of the HQ was giving racists and fascists confidence.

We linked up with the Greenwich Commission for Racial Equality and the Greenwich Action Committee Against Racist Attacks. And we took the campaign to oppose the BNP to all the local trade unions, which affiliated to the campaign.

It was after Stephen Lawrence was murdered in April 1993 that the tables really turned on the BNP. It was such a terrible attack, there was a mass response, an outpouring from the local community. The YRE called a demonstration on 8 May, and we had 8,000 young people turn up. It was a joint demonstration with the Black socialist campaign organisation, Panther.

The Anti-Nazi League (ANL), led by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), organised a demonstration a week later, with the local Tory mayor on the platform and less than 2,000 in attendance. We wouldn’t have the Tory mayor on our platforms because they had done nothing about the BNP. We’d lobbied and petitioned to get the council to use its powers to close down the HQ and they’d done nothing but denigrate our campaign. So we said they were partly responsible for what had happened. Instead, we mobilised the local community, Black and white.

But despite Stephen Lawrence’s murder, still the authorities didn’t act and the BNP remained. So we organised a second big demonstration, in October 1993. The YRE proposed a joint demonstration of all the anti-racist organisations and the 16 October march was co-organised with the Indian Workers’ Association and the ANL. It was a massive demo. We knew it was going to be huge, you could feel it, such was the anger everywhere, especially in the local community. There were 50,000 people on that march.

The police and the state refused us our right to march past the BNP HQ. And when we got to the point where we wanted to march up the road to the HQ, all avenues were blocked by the police. The police brutally attacked protesters. YRE had argued for democratic stewarding of the demonstration. This was opposed by the ANL leadership but, on the day, YRE stewards were able to play an important role in defending the demonstration from police brutality.


English Defence League, 2010s

On 1 September 2012, the far-right, racist and hooligan English Defence League’s (EDL) attempt to march through the streets of Waltham Forest, North-East London, was blocked by a counter-demonstration of over 3,000 people.

I was one of the demonstrators. We had spent months leafleting, petitioning and door-knocking, all with the aim of mobilising maximum numbers against the EDL.

It has always been clear that getting a big counter-protest would be vital. But the Socialist Party also raised the need to have a strategy on how we use the numbers to maximum effect.

Rather than simply ‘celebrating our diversity’ we argued the anti-racist demonstration would need to revitalise the labour movement tradition of saying ‘no pasaran’ — preventing the EDL from marching in our community.

On the day, the counter-protest began with a rally, before marching down to intersect with the EDL’s planned route. A decision was made for the march to stay where it blocked the EDL’s route, but police ‘kettled’ the counter-protesters. This was a clear attempt to ensure we would not ‘meet’ the EDL at any point.

The blockade definitely had a big effect. The EDL were humiliatingly stopped, unable to have their planned march.

But after around 30 minutes blockading, Socialist Party and Youth Fight for Jobs members received word that the EDL were being re-routed through back streets to their rally.

At this point, I and other party members began discussions with the people around us on the need to move the march to the Town Hall in order to prevent their rally going ahead as planned.

The people surrounding us, mainly local Asian young people, were all clear in their determination to stop the EDL. They were keen for us to move people towards the Town Hall. We discussed with Daymer, a Turkish-Kurdish youth organisation, and began putting the call out to move the march.

At first we moved the crowd forward towards the exit which led most directly to the Town Hall. The police had blockaded this exit with vans, so we began chants of ‘we demand — let us through’. The police refused to allow us to pass, determined that they would protect the EDL. It soon became clear that the only possible way to get to the Town Hall would be via side roads.

A surge forward meant the thin police line that had been guarding this exit was dispersed and hundreds of protesters began following us up the street.

Marching through the back streets, the Socialist Party and Youth Fight for Jobs attempted to keep the march together to avoid individuals or small groups becoming vulnerable to attack by the police or EDL. We linked arms and led protesters downhill to the Town Hall.

On arrival we were greeted by a line of riot police protecting the EDL’s leadership — around five thugs without any ‘back up’. EDL leader Tommy Robinson was clearly shaken by the situation. The rest of their members were unable to join them and rally as planned. Their vulnerability, protected only by the police, was evident.