Anti-fascism

The acquittal last month of the last two defendants in the group of Asian men known as the Rotherham 12 is probably the most important victory in the fight against racism and fascism in Britain for decades. The impact of such a decisive triumph for anti-racists has not been felt since Southall in the late 1970s or the Bradford 12 in the early 1980s. It is a victory for the whole of the working class.

I visited Auschwitz for the first time last November as part of Unite Against Fascism’s annual trip. I was one of a diverse delegation of activists. Seeing the camps, but also visiting the ghettos in Krakow and learning of the persecution the Jews experienced within them, was a deeply distressing experience.

Representing Norway at the Paris World Fair in 1937, where Pablo Picasso first showed “Guernica”, was the artist Hannah Ryggen, with her 1935 tapestry “Ethiopia”. The two works were exhibited next to each other in the pavilion of the Spanish Republic — Picasso’s cry of anguish against the Nazi bombing of the city in the Spanish Civil War, Ryggen’s epic heartfelt response to fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, with a bullet-headed Mussolini speared by an African fighter (folded over by the fair’s organisers to avoid offending the Italian government).

Those of us who are football fans invariably approach the start of a new season with a mixture of optimism and trepidation. The hope that our team will win a trophy sits alongside a fear of relegation or failure to qualify for a prestigious competition. As the 2017-18 season began, however, there was real concern about a significant development that has emerged during the summer and away from the stadiums.

There was great relief at the outcome of the French presidential run-off. For the second time in 15 years the election of a fascist president had been blocked. The main traditional parties, the Republicans and the Socialist Party, might have been excluded from the second round of voting, but as far as Europe’s rulers were concerned the election of Emmanuel Macron, a pro-EU economic and social liberal, by 66 percent to Marine Le Pen’s 34 percent had broken the rise of the “populist right”.

On 23 April 1977, St George’s Day, roughly 1,000 supporters of the National Front marched in multicultural Wood Green, north London. Over 2,000 anti-Nazi activists confronted them, in what became known as the Battle of Wood Green.

What are your memories of your childhood in Germany in the 1930s and how the climate changed?

In 1992 a group of Jewish socialists came together to write an Anti Nazi league pamphlet, “Holocaust Denial: The New Nazi Lie”, in response to the rise of Holocaust deniers, and in particular the British Nazi, David Irving.

The emergence of Holocaust Denial in the 1990s was not a coincidence. The British National Party (BNP) was making advances, as were Nazis elsewhere in Europe.

In 1993 the BNP won a council by-election in the Isle of Dogs, east London, and in the same year black teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered near the BNP HQ in Welling, south London.

The acquittal at Sheffield Crown Court of ten Asian men accused of violent disorder is a victory for anti-fascists everywhere.

The men were arrested along with two others following their involvement in an anti-fascist protest in Rotherham in September 2015.

In the aftermath of the Rotherham child abuse scandal, the town had become a target for fascist groups, who were escorted by police in a series of provocative marches in the town.

The barricades erected in Cable Street in London’s East End 80 years ago have become an iconic symbol of working class resistance on British streets. This victory over fascism, fought on Sunday 4 October 1936, saw crowds of between 30,000 and 200,000 (estimates vary wildly) stop the police from forming a wedge to allow the British Union of Fascists (BUF) to march into the area.