Beating the Fascists

Excerpts from a review by Professor Nigel Copsey – read the full review on pages 11 & 12 here

This book, the ‘official’ history of Anti­Fascist Action (AFA), chronicles the experience of militant anti­fascism in Britain from the late 1970s through to mid ­1990s. Running to over 400 pages, the text is broken down into a series of sections and sub­sections that revisit, in graphic detail, a succession of violent encounters between anti­fascist militants and their opponents. Written from an activist’s perspective, it straddles, if rather awkwardly, both generalist and scholarly audiences.

…the significance of AFA, for Birchall, was that it performed a subterranean ‘holding operation’ that postponed the ‘inevitable’ breakthrough of the British far right for some fifteen years. Whilst Birchall admits that trying to objectively quantify the impact of anti­fascism is difficult because ‘it is attempting to prove a negative’ (p. 23), he makes the more valid point that only after the ‘militant foot’ was removed from the BNP’s ‘fascist neck’ did ‘the latter bloom(s) politically’ (p. 23). ‘That is to say, the authority previously exerted by militant anti­ fascism on events becomes that much clearer by what happens after it is no longer the foremost influence’ (p. 23)

In the first section of the book, Birchall chronicles the roots of AFA in the anti­fascist squads of the 1970s Anti­Nazi League. The story moves on in the second section to AFA’s 1985 launch before (interspersed with colourful descriptions of low­level clashes with fascist opponents) it recounts internal organisational squabbles between moderate and militant anti­fascists. In the end, the militant wing won out.

In 1989 AFA re­launched as a militant anti­fascist organisation that specifically targeted the white working class, a constituency that AFA believed formed the recruiting ground for Britain’s far right. For sure, as recent studies have revealed, it has been this constituency that has largely comprised the social bases of BNP electoral support. AFA’s objective was now essentially twofold: to defeat or contain fascist activity in white working ­class neighbourhoods through physical confrontation; and to convince this constituency that its interests could not be satisfied through organisations like the BNP. The third and final section covers the period between 1990 and the mid­1990s when the BNP finally decided (coming under sustained pressure from AFA) to abandon the streets, which then forced AFA to overhaul its anti­fascist strategy

At the end of the book Birchall seems to bemoan the absence of militant opposition to the BNP, ‘Sooner rather later’, he declares, ‘a progressive left will have to declare outright war on conservative anti­fascism too’ (p. 397). But what Birchall advocates is not necessarily a return to physical force anti­fascism. Instead he calls on the wider left to ditch the sterile politics of mainstream anti­extremism, offer a real (socialist) alternative, and finally bring the ‘marginalised working class in from the cold’ (p.403).

Whilst one may have some reservations about the book’s theoretical and intellectual contribution, in telling the (untold) story of AFA from the inside, Birchall has nonetheless performed a valuable service. What Birchall’s insider account reveals is that militant anti­ fascism unquestionably had an impact on the BNP’s organisational and strategic development ­ – a point that activists from existing anti­fascist organisations, such as Unite Against Fascism (and indeed some academics), are reluctant to concede.

Excerpts from a review by Huddersfield University – read the full review here

While there is some history that is widely known and even taught in schools, other pieces of history slip behind us almost unnoticed, apart from by the people involved. Until the writing of this book, the story of Anti Fascist Action was one of those types of history.The book tells the story of Anti Fascist Action’s longterm street war against the far right.

The author goes into detail not just about where and how, but also why. And puts forward a strong defense of AFA’s activities as a vital component in defending democracy. The political analysis in the book is just as detailed and written with no less passion than the more physical parts. Birchall not only makes a strong case for militant antifascism’s success on its own terms, he also suggests that AFA were the first to recognise the danger posed by the BNP’s move towards electoral politics. And explains how AFA moved to community politics in an effort to counter that.

The book is also an important attempt to chronicle a previously untold historical struggle.Recommended, for both academic and casual readers.

Excerpts from a review by Freedom Newspaper- read the full review here

Previously everything from the Red Action (RA) stable has been crucial to any understanding of both left wing working class politics and politics in general, past and present in the UK, and so this is. Hard to put down, Beating The Fascists is a no-holds-barred account of the Red Action and Anti Fascist Action’s practical and ruthless application of their aims, principles and practice, of making space for working class politics to develop unfettered by the threat of fascism

Beating The Fascists stands as THE critical book on post war UK anti-fascism, in the fact it is written by those involved (not academics) and that its conclusions desperately deserve recognition and immediate application by all those who read it and indeed profess to be socialists or anti-fascists in a period when a neo-fascist party gets 1million votes in a Euro election. If anarchists, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) or whoever fail to read it and listen to it then it is an indictment on them not the authors

Whilst a chronicle of physical force anti-fascism, in fact the conclusion of Beating The Fascists is that that is finished and we must move into a door to door strategy. This is a conclusion I believe anarchists should agree with but I, in fact, would go further and say that what is missing from the book is an acknowledgement that what made RA special was not their ability in close combat but their fundamentalism as regards class in politics

Excerpts from a review by Look Left magazine – read the full review here

For two decades British anti-fascists fought a cold blooded battle for control of the streets against burgeoning far-right movements, Brian Whelan meets the authors of a controversial new book by activists who were there on the frontlines.

Beating the Fascists could be two separate books, appealing to very different audiences. The first a brutally violent story bragging of hard man conquests, the other a vital political analysis of the rise of the BNP and detailed history of the groups that fought them.

The book is an often disturbing read, each chapter switching from graphic details of violent operations with militaristic discipline against fascists to analysis of the political decisions they faced.

Over ten years in the making Beating the Fascists not only chronicles the bloody street battles and political squabbles but also points out how fascists filled a vacuum for a radical alternative that the left has failed to.

Excerpts from a review by the Weekly Worker – read the full review here

[The Book] aims, from the outset, to provide a counterweight to the received wisdom that Britain’s political culture, with its traditions of pragmatism and tolerance, is immune to the explosion of far-right populism that blights those excitable continentals

There are three main threads to the narrative – the first is the evolution of fascism and far-right nationalism in the period covered; the second the complex political shifts and intrigues in the anti-fascist movement; and the third the series of often violent clashes between the two sides

Most of the book is, as noted, taken up by accounts of AFA’s – and especially Red Action’s – battles with the National Front, British National Party and sundry other fascist factions…..For the author, it is the pursuit of organised, basically paramilitary operations against fascists that, in the end, forced the latter to abandon its notion of controlling the streets.

Beating the fascists is on the whole pretty sniffy about the amateurism of AFA’s opponents; AFA could face them down, despite very often being outnumbered, by employing tactical nous and the element of surprise. Tyndall, and then Griffin, had to swap the boots for suits, ultimately because they were the ones getting booted. AFA, under the leadership of Red Action, should be commended for taking note of this change in tack by the BNP, and attempting to readjust accordingly

Whatever else may be said about Red Action, it must be pointed out that….it acknowledged that a political response was needed to the far right that took into account mass alienation from mainstream politics. Its response, ultimately, was the Independent Working Class Association. The IWCA attempts, in the last analysis, to replicate the kind of community work taken up by the BNP, in the same kind of places

Excerpts from an article by Freedom Newspaper- read the full article here

Fascism as an ideology expresses itself as the rear guard action of capitalism through the promotion of ultra-nationalism, a moral and racial superiority, a stark authoritarianism, and crucially a physical force violent presence on the streets. During the 1980s and 1990s it took the concerted efforts of a committed group of militant anti-fascists to successfully confront the far right and literally force them off the streets. Anti-Fascist Action are still remembered and feared by neo-Nazi gangs, racist thugs and members of far right nationalist parties as being unrelenting in their stated aim to confront fascism both physically and ideologically. So successful were AFA in their objectives that the BNP had to retreat completely from ‘street politics’ and reinvent itself as a parliamentary euro-nationalist party

Not only did AFA redefine the spectrum of how fascists operated they also offered us a warning on the far right’s ability to adapt to their circumstances. In the final chapter of Beating The Fascists AFA set out the task ahead in challenging the new forms of far right expression, and offers up the question “what happens if an extreme right party emerges that immunises itself against the charges of nazism? What happens when, with generational shift, the strength of ant-nazi feeling and memory of war fades?” What does happen is in part entirely up to us. We have been warned