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THE PAST IS NOT ALWAYS OUR GUIDE  
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David Rosenberg
August 10, 2024
Morning Star
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_ A look back to the days when the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against
Racism stood against the thugs of the National Front. There are
important differences to the anti-racism battles of today, which calls
for fresh thinking. _

Demonstrators at the start of a procession in a "Carnival Against the
Nazis" organised by the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism,
April 1978,

 

As far-right hate and violence sweep across Britain, exploiting the
Southport murders as a pretext but especially targeting Muslim
communities, anti-fascists of a certain vintage are taking to social
media and posting defiant images of an Anti-Nazi League (ANL) badge.
It’s a way of saying: “We have seen this before, and we will stand
up to it again.”

The ANL, launched in autumn 1977, credits itself, with much
justification, for defeating the National Front (NF) in that period.
With 20,000 members nationally organised into local branches, and with
a large hinterland of sympathisers, the NF terrorised inner-city
migrant communities with incendiary racist propaganda and provocative
marches. The ANL mobilised impressively to physically confront the
fascists in large numbers, drown out their messages and discredit
their lies about immigrants through mass literature.

The NF, though, was more than an organised group of racist thugs
propagating hate and violence. It had a political programme. Beyond
the obvious racism targeted against Asian and Caribbean minorities of
“Stop Immigration — Start Repatriation” and a demand that
Britain must remain a “white country,” the NF called for: the
return of national service; restoring capital punishment; an education
system that recognised “innate differences in intelligence between
children”; withdrawal from the common market and replacing it with
an ultra-protectionist “economic nationalism” and
self-sufficiency; and adequate warmth in winter funded for pensioners.

When the NF was formed in 1967, its chair was AK Chesterton (GK’s
cousin), a veteran of Oswald Mosley’s deeply anti-semitic pre-war
British Union of Fascists. Through the 1970s the NF’s more internal
literature was replete with “world Jewish conspiracy” theories,
but the anti-semitism was more coded in its literature for mass
consumption. It condemned the “malign influence” of
“cosmopolitan finance.” It asserted that “international monopoly
capitalism” and “international communism” represent different
means to “a world tyranny,” run by the you-know-whos.

Among the NF’s inner-core, the “mongrelisation” of Britain
through black and Asian immigration was cast as a Jewish plot.
International fascists today promote the “Great Replacement
Theory” which claims that Muslim immigrants/refugees are replacing
white Christians in the West. They finger Jews such as George Soros as
the instigators. Fascists don’t move on from one enemy to the next,
they merely accumulate them.

Some older anti-fascists have also posted images of their Rock Against
Racism (RAR) badges, recalling an incredibly exciting and overlapping
cultural movement that preceded the ANL by more than a year but
combined with it to hold two mass carnivals in London in April and
September 1978 with a Northern Carnival in Manchester sandwiched
between them in July. Total attendances at these carnivals were well
into six figures.

Leading black bands and white bands pushed defiant anti-racist,
anti-fascist messages on stage, and celebrated multiculturalism. In
the first Carnival in Victoria Park, east London, the Birmingham-based
reggae band Steel Pulse donned white hoods for their song Ku Klux
Klan, The Clash played an immensely powerful set, and Tom (not Tommy!)
Robinson had the whole 80,000 crowd singing the refrain of “Glad to
be Gay” — a song that BBC radio had banned.

ANL propaganda sheets ridiculed the fascists’ “NF” acronym as an
anti-democratic movement that promised No Fun and No Future. They made
badges appealing to specific identities: “Social Workers Against the
Nazis,” “Skateboarders Against the Nazis,” “Vegetarians
against the Nazis.”

In 1977, in my late teens I was immersed in these movements that
formed much of my lasting political and cultural outlook. I still
treasure my original memorabilia — circular placards that on one
side say, in black on yellowing white, “Smash Race Hate in 78,”
and on the other: “Reggae Soul Rock ’n’ Roll, Jazz Funk and
Punk, our Music! Rock Against Racism.”

RAR’s regular gigs in smaller venues around Britain mainly combined
punk (almost entirely white) and reggae (almost entirely black). They
brought the growing audiences of both genres together at the same
gigs.

While I enjoy seeing ANL and RAR badges on social media, I hesitated
about putting mine up there in response to the riots, because I worry
that too simplistic a parallel is being made with the late 1970s.
There are important differences, and we can’t simply transplant the
main tactics we used in the 1970s. In that time we drew inspiration
from the anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s, and the slogan “They
Shall Not Pass,” but these were not an exact blueprint.

ANL and RAR had enormous strengths which we can build on today. They
sought to drive a wedge between the Hitler-worshipping leaders of the
fascist movements and the more diffuse angry, frustrated, often
unemployed young people who were prey to arguments that scapegoated
immigrants for their misery.

They grasped the need for a mass movement far beyond the ranks of
those already politically aware. They captured the imagination
especially of many young people who could be pulled in a very
different political direction under the pressure of economic crisis,
and educated them about fascism and hate. Using the slogan “Black
and White, Unite and Fight!” they offered those people the chance to
be part of a meaningful, humane future based on solidarity and
multicultural unity.

But these extraordinary movements inevitably also had limitations and
weaknesses. The ANL’s founding statement was signed by 300 figures
from politics, trade unions, music, the arts, professions, football
and other sports, TV, film — including many individuals young people
admired and identified with. Nearly all of the signatories were white.
The minorities most under direct physical attack — Asian and
Caribbean — were relatively absent from this list and from the
leadership of these movements.

While the propaganda they produced was sharp on pinpointing the
explicitly pro-Nazi sentiments of NF leaders, their attention to state
racism and the politics of immigration control which impacted on the
daily lives of minorities was more sketchy.

While the ANL can claim most credit for defeating the NF on the
streets, three other factors played a significant part: the militant
youth movements of minorities under attack which often operated
autonomously, an intelligence-led operation by the anti-fascist
magazine, Searchlight, to infiltrate and disrupt the NF, setting off
conflicts within its ranks; and the co-option by the Tories, led by
Thatcher, of much of the NF’s anti-immigration programme, combined
with increasingly racist policing tactics against minority groups.
Non-fascist racists could achieve their goals through conventional
right-wing politics which took power in 1979 and kept clear blue water
between hard-right Conservatives and the openly fascist far right.

Fast forward to 2024. What is different about the threats to migrant,
refugee and longer-standing minority communities now? Even before
September 11 2001, the majority of the British far right began to
embellish their generalised anti-immigrant position with a more
specifically Islamophobic politics, while retaining their conspiracy
theories. But since September 11, we’ve had more than two decades of
a deepening state-sponsored Islamophobia connected with both domestic
and foreign policy, that has had support across the political
Establishment and its media.

The interlude of Corbyn-led Labour temporarily pushed back against
these agendas, but Keir Starmer’s Labour has renewed that
Islamophobic Establishment consensus. This has been illustrated by
Starmer’s description of the last two weeks’ events. He condemned
“thuggery” and “violence” against the police. Only under
pressure, has he talked of keeping Muslims safe, and even then he
can’t utter the word “Islamophobia” — something that many
Muslims and anti-racists accuse him of justifiably.

On the obsession with “borders” and “security” and the use of
the inflammatory “Stop the Boats” slogan, it is hard to separate
Labour and Tory policies. The far right will always want to go further
and quicker, and they have seized their opportunity on the streets. An
Establishment consensus, backed by right-wing media, has echoed
far-right talking points on migrants and refugees and, for the last 10
months, demonised pro-Palestine protests. This further legitimised,
strengthened and emboldened the far right.

However, if, in the 1970s, the British far right was a very
centralised top-down entity, today it is much more fragmented. Tommy
Robinson — an irritant, chancer, opportunist and showman — can
pull off occasional events that bring the fragments together in huge
numbers in central London spaces, but he doesn’t have a coherent
ideological programme or any branch structure.

We should be more worried by the 14 per cent of the electorate —
more than four million votes — that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party
received in the 600-plus seats in which it stood candidates, taking
votes both from former Tory and Labour voters.

Reform UK does have an embryonic right-wing populist ideological
programme and it will be identifying their significant clusters of
support. Farage and his closest associates within his party move
within the ideological circles where those who hold hard-right and
far-right political positions and conspiracy theories can happily
converse and coalesce. Unlike the late 1970s when across Europe there
were mainly social-democratic governments, today the
further-right/National Conservative tendencies are getting stronger in
many countries.

The anti-racist and anti-fascist movement will eventually succeed in
discrediting Robinson — or he will do enough to discredit himself
— but the more serious battles against the hard-right/far-right
politics that Reform UK is building will pose a tougher challenge, and
will be quite different to the battles with the NF of the 1970s.

An authoritarian right-wing Labour government that combines austerity
economics with a failure to build a principled politics opposed to
racism and nationalism will make those battles much harder. We have to
build movements from below that can simultaneously oppose racism and
nationalism and fight for social and economic justice.

_David Rosenberg is an anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigner active
in the Jewish Socialists’ Group._

* Anti-Fascism
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* UK
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* anti-racism
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* National Front
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