23 May 2006: Memories of the Anti-Nazi League, responses to When we touched the sky

From Matthew, Leeds:

Thanks for writing and publishing When We Touched the Sky. I've a feeling that you might well receive a large number of biographical confessions from people who read the book. I read it with a lot of interest and excitement - took me back to compulsively reading Martin Walker's The National Front (and I was sorry you didn't say anything about this book and the impact it had) the night before before I went one my first direct anti-fascist activity in Leeds sometime in 1977 - there'd been an anti-fascist protest against an obscure Nazi group in Bradford two or three years earlier, but this was going to be much closer. I didn't go Lewisham (I distinctly remember being asked if I was going to Lewisham on a coach coming back from Grunwicks the weekend before, but thinking I'd already been on too many things in London), but had been following the growth of the National Front and the pattern of anti-fascist activities - I might still have a mouldering collection of leaflets and press cuttings in my cellar - and remember thinking they were going to get a million votes in the next election.

I was very enthusiastic about the formation of the ANL. It always looked like the SWP was key to the formation of the ANL, so the view that the SWP later took it over always seemed strange to me. I remember the first very big and exciting meetings in Leeds - a local Hyde Park area meeting crammed in a school in the Brudenells with at least a hundred people attending and being very impressed by the likes of Pete L (still a sympathetic journalist on the Evening Post) and John C - I was sorry that your trawl of activists doesn't seem to have included them. One thing your book does well is show that the ANL was a mass movement with huge and dynamic diversity. One of the frustrations is that it wasn't bigger, included more experiences. Perhaps you could pull together a series of local histories.

I went on the first carnival, but mostly remember that a nail worked its way through my shoe and I was hobbling by the time we got to Victoria Park. I've a suspicion the timing of coach back to Leeds meant I missed much of the music. I remember how exciting Socialist Worker was the next week - was that the 'Magic' headline? I wasn't a member of the SWP then - although I'd started reading SW in 1973 in the wake of going to University and mostly for coverage of events in Chile, and being involved a bit with NOISS around 1977 via solidarity work about South Africa - I was clearly the only contact in Leeds that the Southern African Solidarity Campaign had. But the coincidence of an IS/SWP member moving into my student house and getting to know comrades through the ANL brought me out of my shell and I joined in the early summer of 1978.

Incidentally, I missed a lot of the most violent and scary confrontations with the Nazis in Leeds city centre, including what seemed to be a set-piece entrapment and attack on the bastards. The guy who lived in my house and got me to join after an argument about the Korean War of all things had been so traumatised by these events he refused to go back and I still have a bad memory from a couple of years later of calling him a coward for his refusal to come and stand next to the Nazis in the town centre.

So I was a member of the SWP for the second carnival, remembering it was the RCT (I think) in particular saying we should divert the whole march to Brick Lance, but also remember people I identified as SWP calling for people to leave the park to go to Brick Lane and feeling guilty that I opted for the coach home instead.

As well as the carnivals there were the regular mobilisations against the Nazis when they wanted to march or meet. A glorious Saturday saw several thousand people come out in Leeds to surround an NF meeting in a city centre school in early 1979 - and we chased them them out of Leeds. But even successes had a downside - you mention the Leicester demonstration which was a success. But the Leeds coach I was on stopped at Trowell service station shortly before the Leeds NF coach arrived and those people in the cafeteria got badly attacked. I'll always remember just how swollen Norman's eye was after this. Or another time, in Dewsbury I think it was, when we were badly outnumbered by the Nazis and we were still chanting 'police protect the Nazis' from behind the police line I was rather glad was there!

Actually several people joined the SWP out of the ANL/RAR in Leeds, mostly younger and punkier than me - maybe not staying for long (but that is also connected to the way we built the branches according to the party line in the early '80s), but people we got involved in the Peoples March for Jobs, one leg of which went from Leeds and a late Right to Work Campaign march - we marched from Huddersfield to Wakefield to Leeds over three days and had a lot of fun.

I need to say something about RAR in Leeds. I've got no memory of who organised the gigs, but a long time the regular Friday nights at Cosmos club in Chapletown and at Leeds Poly (can't remember which came first) were great and a real focus for all sorts of people. Strongest memory is of the pigs head the Angelic Upstarts produced and got kicked round the audience, but also seeing Joy Division shortly before Ian Curtis killed himself was something. Regular gigs by the Gang of Four/Mekons/Delta 5. This was really vibrant and I think you underestimate the cultural and political impact of the local RARs. In Leeds as well the work done by Andy F should be remembered - producing wonderful amazing intricate and more-or-less indecipherable posters every week and the weekly routine of pasting them up round Leeds 6. That remains a lot more vivid for me than the Northern Carnival. I was there and enjoyed it, but also remember an anarcho-community oriented girlfriend, working at Chapletown CAB at the time and reflecting a certain line of 'community' feeling, arguing it was a march of outsiders 'on' the black community. Tssk.

I also remember the gloomy dread of every other Saturday and meeting for the minibus to take us down to Eland Road to leaflet against the Nazis. There was maybe one occasion with a lot of people there, a lot of times in it was much smaller and scarier (contra p88). It was a bad experience: no interest in football, wouldn't dream of going there, obviously middle-class student type facing generalised hostility, not much police protection and the threat of the Nazis turning up to attack us. Bad memory of getting kicked, turning enough to get in the leg rather than balls, and running with most of the people around me - leaving a smaller number of tougher comrades to their fates! So one thing I think you underestimate is how horrible and scary the thing could be. It's just amazing that we carried on doing it. And remember the threat and reality of violence came back in the 1990s - and it was the ANL tradition of building as widely as possible that saw that off.

I'd also say that there were more extensive pockets of squaddism in the SWP - I was in York in 1980 and there were some comrades there who were distinctly squaddist, that was there thing and what they did most Saturdays. I think they drifted away from the SWP after the turn away from the ANL without turning into AFA or Red Action activists.

And finally here I remember Andy S coming to a small Burley branch meeting in Leeds to put the line about mothballing the ANL - I supported the line, but one comrade got very emotional about what a betrayal this was. Comrades really had put their lives and souls into the ANL and it was hard to break from the memory of the highpoints and the routines of activity, especially as Leeds remained a hot zone for Nazi activity.

Okay Dave - sorry for going on so much, but your book brought a lot back for me. I've got political and other criticisms of the book, which, if you don't mind I will try to put to you - it remains an important topic; but whatever the criticisms I'm really glad that the book exists and impressed by the work that's gone into it.

From Charles, London: