“To use the old East End terminology, they weren’t very good on the pavement…”
In the second part, East London Dockers Leader, Mickey Fenn (RIP) explains the situation in the 1970′s when the most militant elements of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) formed fighting ‘squads’ to take the physical fight directly to the fascists. The squads, which were eventually disowned by the leadership of the SWP, were the forerunners of AFA.
The programme then moves on to the BNP’s ‘Rights For Whites’ campaign which met with particular success in the South London boroughs of Bermondsey and Thamesmead and criticises the conservative left for cowardice in the face of the enemy.
A Northern AFA activist and a Scottish AFA member then explain why they joined AFA and favoured the more direct militant approach to anti-fascism.
Former Boxing champion Terry Marsh ends this section of the programme with an analysis of the general shift to the right being an economic question that must be addressed by a progressive working class movement.
First broadcast on Open Space in 1992