Anti-Fascist Action
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Direct Action Movement |
Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) was a militant anti-fascist organisation, founded in the UK in 1985 by a wide range of anti-racist and anti-fascist organisations.
It was active in fighting far-right organisations, particularly the
Among its more notable mobilisations were violent confrontations such as the "Battle of Waterloo" at
History
AFA was launched in
Thousands of people took part in AFA mobilisations such as the
In 1989, there was a split in AFA between militant anti-fascists and other members, such as the Newham Monitoring Group, whose views were closer to
Early 1990s
In the early 1990s, AFA continued the pattern of twin-track physical and ideological confrontations with fascism. Examples of the former include the first Unity Carnival in east London in 1991, with 10,000 participants, and a demonstration in Bethnal Green, with 4,000 participants (under the slogan “Beating the Fascists: An old East End tradition”). In September 1991, AFA launched its magazine Fighting Talk, of which 25 issues were published between 1991 and April 1999; the magazine incorporated Cable Street Beat Review.[12] The first issue reported the recent launch of a Dublin branch and a Glasgow branch, the latter with the support of Red Action, Class War, Direct Action Movement, Workers Party Scotland, Scottish Anti-Racist Movement and the Republican Bands Alliance.[13]
Cable Street Beat continued in the early 1990s, with the involvement of bands including the reformed The Selecter,[14] Bad Manners and Gary Clail.[citation needed]
Physical resistance to fascism also continued. In 1990, three AFA members were jailed for a total of 11 years following an attack on a neo-Nazi activist.[15] AFA's militant approach to anti-fascism was given media airing in May 1992, when the BBC screened a documentary, Fighting Talk, as part of its Open Space series.[16]
A long street battle between AFA against
By this time, there were 21 branches of AFA listed in Fighting Talk, in locations including Birmingham, Brighton, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol, Cardiff, Oxford, Exeter, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester and Norwich.[19]
"Filling the Vacuum" strategy
In 1993, Derek Beackon, a candidate from the British National Party (BNP), won a council seat in Millwall on the Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets, under the slogan of "Rights for Whites".[20][21] This signalled a turn in the BNP's policy from confrontation on the streets to a bid for electoral respectability, partly as a response to their defeat on the streets by AFA.[20] In 1994, BNP activist Tony Lecomber announced this turn in tactics with a statement to the press that there would be "no more meetings, marches, punch-ups".[22][23] In 1995 London AFA responded with its Filling the Vacuum strategy,[24] which involved offering a political alternative in these communities instead of concentrating on challenging the fascist presence on the streets. Red Action and its allies campaigned within the AFA Network after 1995 for AFA as an organisation to adopt the "Filling the Vacuum" strategy. However, given that AFA contained a number of political groups, with differing political programmes, this, and the decline of street action by the BNP as it embraced "respectable electoralism", contributed to the breakup of much of the AFA network, with much internal recrimination.[25]
Anti-fascist mobilisations still occurred after 1995, such as ones against the National Front in Dover in 1997 and 1998. The number of AFA branches across the UK peaked at 38 in the mid-1990s, with regular national conferences and an active Northern Network. A new AFA National Coordinating Committee was set up, and in 1997, an official AFA statement forbade members from associating with Searchlight.[citation needed] In 1998 the committee expelled Leeds and Huddersfield AFA for ignoring this policy.[dubious ] There were some local relaunches of AFA groups, such as in Liverpool in 2000, but by 2001, AFA barely existed as a national organisation.
Red Action and other AFA activists followed the logic of providing a political alternative to fascism in setting up the
Politics
Critics argue that AFA's physical confrontation approach was often more visible than their ideological work, and their tactics were criticised for their squadism and use of violence.[27] However, supporters of AFA's approach cite its involvement in the youth music scene and successful propaganda events like the 1986 and 1987 Remembrance Day "Remember the victims of Fascism" marches as evidence of this wider agenda.[1]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Birchall, Sean, Beating The Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action (London: Freedom Press, 2010).
- ^ a b c "1985-2001: A short history of Anti-Fascist Action (AFA)". libcom.org.
- ^ Steve Greenfield and Guy Osborn When the Whites Go Marching In? Racism and Resistances in English Football in Marquette Sports Law Review 1996
- ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
- ^ a b Copsey, Nigel. "Crossing Borders: Anti-Fascist Action (UK) and Transnational Anti-Fascist Militancy in the 1990s." Archived 21 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine Contemporary European History 25.4 (2016): 707-727.
- ^ Copsey, Nigel (4 October 2016). Anti-Fascism in Britain. Taylor & Francis. p. 158.
- ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
- ^ "Cable Street Beat: A Brief History" Fighting Talk
- ^ "Ant-Fascist Archive".
- ^ Cable Street Beat Review no.1, 1989.
- ^ Cable Street Beat Review no.5.
- ^ "Fighting Talk magazine - Anti Fascist Action". libcom.org.
- ^ Fighting Talk no.1, p.6
- ^ Fighting Talk no.1, p.13
- ^ Birchall, Sean, Beating The Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action (London: Freedom Press, 2010) p. 195
- ^ "Beating the Fascists » Fighting Talk – Part 1". beatingthefascists.org. Archived from the original on 2012-10-25. Retrieved 2013-03-05.
- ^ Birchall, Sean, Beating The Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action (London: Freedom Press, 2010) pp.291-302;"It Woz AFA Wot Done It!" Red Action Vol 3, Issue 6, April/May 1999
- ^ "Station closed in skinhead battle". The Independent. 13 September 1992. Archived from the original on 2022-05-07. Retrieved 16 July 2017.
- ^ Fighting Talk no.3], p.19
- ^ a b Copsey, Nigel (2004). Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 53–54.
- ^ Taylor, Diane (20 November 2001). "Isle of prejudice". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ^ "New Leader : New Danger". www.redactionarchive.org.
- ^ Jon Kelly "Nicky Crane: The secret double life of a gay neo-Nazi", BBC News Magazine 6 December 2013
- ^ "Filling The vacuum - London AFA". libcom.org.
- ^ Physical Resistance. 2013 by Dave Hann
- ^ "About us". 8 August 2013.
- ^ Dave Hann "Physical Resistance" Zero Books, 2013
Further reading
- Birchall, Sean, Beating The Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action (London: Freedom Press, 2010) ISBN 978-1-904491-12-5
- Bullstreet, K. (2001). Bash the Fash: Anti-Fascist Recollections 1984-1993. ISBN 1-873605-87-0.
- Anti-Fascist Action: an Anarchist Perspective (Kate Sharpley Library, 2006) ISBN 978-1-873605-49-3
- Hann, Dave and Steve Tilzey, No Retreat (Milo Books, 2003) ISBN 1-903854-22-9
- Interview with author of No Retreat in Spike Magazine
- Hann, Dave, A Hundred Years of Anti Fascism (Zero Books, 2013) ISBN 978-1780991771
- Mark Hayes and Paul Aylward Radical resistance or rent-a-mob? soundings issue 14 Spring 2000
- Testa, M., Militant Anti-Fascism: A Hundred Years of Resistance (AK Press, 2015) ISBN 978-1-84935-203-1
External links
- Anti-Fascist Archive
- 1985-2001: A short history of Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) on Libcom.org
- Beating The Fascists Video on YouTube
- Bullstreet, K. Bash the Fash: Anti-Fascist Recollections 1984-1993 (Kate Sharpley Library, 2001)
- AFA Ireland (archived)
- Nicky Crane: The secret double life of a gay neo-Nazi