I was lucky enough to follow 43 Group founder Morris Beckman in speaking on anti-fascism at this years Anarchist Bookfair. This is the full text of my talk, where I argue that the success of the BNP makes no platform redundant as a strategy for defeating them, although we may still wish to use it as a tactic.
Speech To Anarchist Bookfair – Saturday 24th October 2009
Thank you to the organisers for inviting me.
I have the rather dubious task of bringing things up to date, to 2009.
The circumstances for anti-fascists have changed radically over the past decade since Nick Griffin became BNP leader in 1999.
He and Tony Lecomber started the gradual modernisation of the BNP into what I think is still essentially a fascist party, but one that is willing to bend with the wind, to try out different ideas to see what will work, and is positioning itself as the type of Euro-Nationalist party that we have seen gain great electoral success in France, Belgium, Austria, Italy etc
1999 also saw probably the last successful riot by demonstrators in the UK – J18. Afterwards, the police promised a war of attrition against activists and have broadly delivered on that.
Virtually unlimited resources have been thrown at recording, cataloguing and following members and supporters of any organisation or current that may actually achieve anything. Anti-fascists have been high up on this list.
Nothing distracts from this task. Two days after the 7/7 bombing, Londoners may not have been surprised to see a large police operation at Kings Cross station. But this was not some follow up to the attacks – but police officers deployed to take pictures and compile intelligence of demonstrators returning from the G20 protests in Scotland.
A curious set of priorities.
But such police action, combined with the saturation coverage of CCTV in cameras in most towns and cities, make the sort of actions the 43 Group carried out virtually impossible to replicate successfully today.
No Platform
The dominant method of dealing with fascists in Britain has been the strategy of No Platform. We heard the type of tactics Morris outlined.
Street level activism was combined with a general distaste in the political mainstream and media for fascist or Nazi organisations. That did not prevent politicians occasionally copying the rhetoric or even policies of the fascist right, but in general they were denied normality. John Tyndall would never have got on Question Time.
I am going to argue today that No Platform is now a dead duck as a strategy.
It is not a viable strategy to defeat a party with scores of councillors, 2 MEP’s, 12,000 members and perhaps the most popular website in British politics.
With the exception of London, BNP membership is probably higher in most towns and cities than the numbers interested in actively no platforming them.
If we take the example of Stockport – the last BNP membership leak suggested 60 odd members in the town. The number of active anti-fascists in the town is probably in single figures.
A handful of people cannot no platform a greater number.
I do believe No Platform still has its advantages and uses as a tactic.
There is much to be said for harrying BNP stalls, and leafleting sessions. One of the things that continues to damage Nick Griffin are his bizarre public appearances surrounded by a security squad of wobblebottoms.
BNP security chief Martin Reynolds may be successful at his internet dating requests for ‘women who look like Dawn French’ but providing a discreet security presence is not his forte. No other public figure conducts himself in this way, surrounded by goons, and it was noticeable after one successful Antifa intervention in Yorkshire, Griffin turned up for a court appearance in a car complete with metal grilles over the windows.
So our pressure can have an effect on their behaviour. But there are other areas where anti-fascist pressure is simply side stepped.
In Barnsley in 2007 BNP street stalls were disrupted, tables smashed, papers stolen etc etc. The difficulty is, the BNP still stood in the subsequent local elections, still polling strong votes, and moving towards a position where they are seen as the alternative, or the radical opposition locally to the Labour Party.
So – anti-fascists managed to disrupt the BNP, to wound them, but not to kill them off.
Perhaps we need to think a little bit less about the BNP, and a little bit more about their voters.
Which brings us onto the next question:
Can We Defeat Fascism, Purely With Anti-Fascism?
This to me is the core issue, and the debate we need to have.
Morris and the 43 Group did.
The ANL and other currents who opposed the NF in the 1970s did.
Anti-Fascist Action and those opposing the BNP in the 1980s and early 1990s did.
I still think anti-fascists, using No Platform, are more than a match for those on the loopey fringe of the far-right – the British People’s Party, Racial Volunteer Force, Blood & Honour etc.
But in the long term, they are not the groups we have to worry about. The BNP is. And its electoral strategy, and electoral success, is something in the UK we have not seen before.
This question is a particular problem for Anarchists who by and large don’t vote and uncomfortable with organisations that are electoral.
If people think back to the formation of the Independent Working Class Association, I think that was one of the main reasons for its failure. A political current was not going to emerge from Anti-Fascist Action without the Anarchists.
Of course no one was more poorly placed than Red Action to lead a political initiative of that type. Red Action had a disastrous record of failing to maintain working relationships with virtually everyone they came into contact with, but I suspect deep down the real problem for Anarchists was that the IWCA was clearly going to be an electoral beast.
Of course the BNP’s is not a purely electoral strategy – there is a cultural element present, a desire to build up a cadre of members – Larry O’Hara, if he writes the book he should have written years ago on the British far-right - has the best analysis of this, (although in the meantime you can read some of his thinking in Notes From the Borderland) but the BNP are very much engaged in a war for position, attempting to take advantage of each opportunity that arises.
Multi-Culturalism
In the case of the ANL, a mixture of methods were used here – from No Platform, to the development of a cultural strategy that brought together white, black and Asian youths around shared interests, music and football in particular.
You had even as late as the early 1990s a generation of broadly secular Asian youth who had cut their teeth in such politics – the Asian Youth Movements.
What we had in that era was a sort of voluntary multi-culturalism was practicesed that is and was very different to the type of top down funding based multi-culturalism to be practiced by councils like the GLC, Bradford and Birmingham City Council’s and Ken Livingstone’s London.
Kenan Malik has analysed this better than I could.
I think that brand of politics has been very damaging to our cause. After all if there is such a thing as the black community, or a Muslim community, or a Vietnamese community, there is by definition surely a white community. And just as ‘community leaders’ emerge to represent the Muslim community and to lobby on its behalf, we cannot proclaim ourselves to be shocked when someone steps up to say they represent the ‘white’ community. Whatever that is.
This is what happens when we abandon class politics, or we have sometimes well intentioned politics foisted onto our communities by government. We need to move away from the idea of communities fixed by race or religion, and raise the banner of class politics.
In doing this our enemy won’t only be the BNP – it will actually be those in the state, in local government, in faith groups and in the establishment parties who gain from the current system, ignoring the long term damage it does us all.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
Well the answer to that question in my 17 years in the Anarchist movement has always been the same – to the pub.
But there is a point when the drinking stops and we have to ask ourselves – do we have an Anarchist movement, do we have an anti-fascist movement that is – in management speak – fit for purpose.
I don’t think we do.
I do think we have potential. There are more than enough people passing through the doors of this bookfair over the course of today to form a successful campaign, group or resource if people put their minds to it.
The problem is we have to look beyond harrying the BNP, being against them, and instead look towards replacing them.
And that requires an Anarchist movement, socialist movement, community campaign – call it whatever you want – that does things, and does things that are relevant to people’s lives and aspirations.
We can do better.
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