When we touched the sky: The Anti-Nazi League 1977-1981

Toby Abse, 'Lessons of the Anti-Nazi League', What Next? 32 (2007)
Here.

Reply to Toby Abse
Here

Nigel Copsey, 'When we touched the Sky', Extremism and Democracy 7/4 (2007)
The publication of David Renton’s study of the 1970s Anti-Nazi League (or, ANL for short) is the latest addition to the growing field of anti-fascism studies in Britain. This is the first book-length study of the ANL – a popular anti-fascist movement launched in response to the threat posed by the National Front, Britain’s premier far-right party of the 1970s. This is no dry academic tome. Renton’s narrative is accessible, lively and most engaging, drawing extensively from interviews with some eighty activists involved in the anti-fascist campaigns of that decade. More

Oi for England! Missed opportunity to touch the Anti-Nazi sky, Tribune, 5 October 2007
"In 1970s Britain, fascism was on a high". Thus dave Renton sets out his treatise. Now that might have been tge case in Franco's Spain or Pinochet's Chile but in Britain? Hardly. True, the National Front was attracting a following, but as a serious political force they barely registered.
But then Renton, it turns out, doesn't so much adopt the broad brush stroke as the professional decorator's roller, applying layers of sweeping generalisations over a gossamer thin veneer of salient facts.
He says the St Paul's riots in Bristol were triggered by the British Movement. Coming from the West Country and covering the local music scene. Reporting events it was clear that at the heart of the problem was the "Sus" law - which permitted the police to arrest on suspicion - and not right wing agitators, which was the popular myth.
But Renton sweeps it up, just the same as he blithely states: "The demise of Britain was bound up with the defeat of the Empire and black people were blamed". By whom? By the unidentified people who garland this book, perhaps: david L, Danny of Haringey or maybe Chris and Simon from Bristol University but not by anyone in my house.
Then Renton asks the big question: "Where did it all go wrong for the British Empire?" he succeeds in answering this in a way no academic has managed before: in just two paragraphs, blaming its demise on the failed Suez campaign in 1956 and American interference. No mention of the American War of Independence, the Indian Mutiny, the Boer War and the Balfour Declaration, each one another nail in the coffin of imperialism.
The Anti-Nazi League was an interesting and, let's not be churlish, influential political force. The movement merits a generous footnote in 20th century social history. An extended essay perhaps, a photo-journal maybe, but not this leaden catalogue of witness statements and hazy memories.
That the Anti-Nazi League was influential in shouting down the National Front and alerting a generation to their sinister ways can never be doubted - to the back of the room those who weren't in Victoria Park to express their solidarity and listen to The Clash (let's not quibble about which was the greater attraction).
The Anti-Nazi League was also the first and perhaps the only political movement to harness the power and influence of music. Rock Against Racism set it up, but it was the ANL which formed a true partnership with bands from Steel Pulse to X-Ray Spex and Tom Robinson to The Clash to help spread the message.
But Renton misses the big picture distracted by detailing the minutiae of the Lewisham riots with contributions from David B, David L, Charli and Mike, who succeed in throwing not a single watt of light of light on the events of 13 August 1977. ye bizarrely, he overlooks the entire Hitleresque Oi movement and its abhorrent bands and followers, slavishly chronicle by some of us in the music press three years later.
This book doesn't so much represent missed as an ideal that should never have progressed beyond a degree course essay, destined to gather dust on some long forgotten shelf.

Neil Davidson, 'Carnival, March, Riot', International Socialism Journal 112 (2006)
Over three years one organisation distributed 9 million leaflets, sold 750,000 badges, had 250 branches with 50,000 members, held a conference attracting 800 delegates and received affiliations from—among other bodies—50 constituency Labour parties, 30 AUEW branches, 25 trades councils and 13 shop steward committees. These are some of the materials produced, activities undertaken and supporters enlisted, not by the Stop the War Coalition since 2002, but by the Anti Nazi League (ANL) between 1977 and 1980. More.

Geoff Brown, 'Not Quite the Full Picture', London Socialist Historians' group Newsletter
We live in a time of revival for the left with new movements finding their way, not least against those who have buckled before Blair, often miserable, seeing it as impossible to win any serious fight, no matter how many are mobilised. More

Mike Roberts, 'Delving into ANL history', Morning Star, 17 July 2006
THIS is, perhaps surprisingly, the first full-length history of the Anti-Nazi League. Not only was the ANL one of the largest and most successful campaigns of the post-war British left, it was unique in that it was a cultural as well as political phenomenon. More.

'When we Touched the Sky', TWAFA, July 2006 This is the first book-length history of the Anti-Nazi League and the anti-fascist campaigns of the punk era – surprisingly, perhaps, given that this was a period when the National Front were at the peak of their success and the campaign against them was unprecedented in strength and prominence in post-war Britain. More.

Independent on Sunday, 25 June 2006
Surely you can't discuss the late 1970s and early 1980s without mentioning the Anti-Nazi league (ANL)? Apparently you can. watch enough of those TV shows devoted to the 1970s and 1980s and you'll eventually catch a glimpse of its logo, probably at one of the Rock Against Racism gigs in 1978, but the chances are won't hear much about the League's politics. It's astonishing how one of the British left's only real successes, to run the National Front out of politics and Fragment English fascism, has drifted out of popular consciousness. Although the ANL was well supported by the old Labour party, New Labour and its supporters prefer not to mention such things. More

'The other summer of punk', Red Pepper, June 2006
For an event as iconoclastic as punk, it's striking how great an industry has grown up around the memories of old rebels. The last year has witnessed the publications of three giant retrospectives: John Robb's wordy 576-page Punk: an Oral history, Simon Reynolds' considerable 608-page Rip it up and start again, and George Gimarc's whopping 750-page Punk Diary. On television and on radio, the people who took part in punk are solicited for their memories. But missing from all the commemorations is a sense that punk had at its heart a political campaign: Rock Against Racism, which from winter 1976 onwards shaped the bands, their look, and even their sound.
The story of RAR, the unruly older sister of the Anti-Nazi League, begins not with the Sex Pistols, nor even with 1976 and the so-called summer of punk, but elsewhere: with the rise of the National Front, which was then the chief carrier of racism in Britain. By spring 1976, the Front was almost constantly in the news. The NF received 15,000 votes at local elections Leicester in spring 1976, and 3,000 votes at bye-elections in Thurrock and then Birmingham. The Front was also able to recruit groups of young supporters, who were sent onto the estates and on the terraces to intimidate black youths and anyone else who didn't fit in.
Activists' minds were concentrated following an Eric Clapton concert in Birmingham, which culminated in the singer mumbling some drunken thoughts into his microphone. One young member of the audience, the future novelist Caryl Phillips, jotted down Clapton's words: 'Vote for Enoch Powell … stop Britain becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out … I used to be into dope … then a foreigner pinched my missus' bum. Now I'm into racism … It's much heavier … man.' With David Bowie having described Adolf Hitler as the first rock and roll superstar and the NF much in the news, Siouxse of Siouxse and the Banshees was photographed wearing swastikas. It seemed that racism and fascism were coming into vogue.
Within a week of Clapton's outburst, Rock Against Racism was launched. Photographer Red Saunders rattled off a letter for NME, Sounds and Socialist Worker: 'You've got to fight the racist poison, otherwise you degenerate into the sewer with the rats and all the money men who ripped off rock culture with their cheque books and plastic crap.' Five hundred people responded and a network of artists, punks and dreads was formed.
Two things helped RAR enormously. One was the rioting at Lewisham in August 1977. The day began with a National Front march, but the march was confronted and it ended with the Front's banners torn up and its followers dispersed. In the aftermath of this event, a second coalition was formed, the Anti-Nazi League. With the ANL launched, there were suddenly groups of people in every town getting organised, building the RAR events.
A second trigger was the development of punk itself. The Sex Pistols, having led the way through 1976 and spring and summer 1977, left Britain to tour the States. The band split, and punk had to evolve, with acts like Sham 69 and the Clash coming to the fore: both were RAR allies.
Rock Against Racism's first gig had been held in December 1976 with Carol Grimes playing. About 500 people turned out: a reasonable but unexceptionable number. Concerts continued through 1977. Each one, it seemed, was larger than the last. While RAR had begun really just in London it soon spread to Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds. An alternative music scene was emerging, based on new bands, new venues, and new labels.
The people who ran RAR and the ANL wanted to organise a political event on a scale not seen before in Britain: a first RAR carnival followed in April 1978. Jerry Fitzpatrick booked the bands: 'Two weeks before the carnival, we started trying to book the Clash. I went to a meeting with their manager Bernie Rhodes, then one with the band. I remember Mick Jones flicking ash in my hair. Finally Joe Strummer spoke, and said, "Fuck it, we’ll show them!" That was just two weeks before. The word went round.'
Red Saunders ran on to the stage, shouting: 'This isn’t Woodstock. It’s the Rock Against Racism carnival!', to a huge cheer. Bands followed: The Clash (joined by Sham 69's Jimmy Pursey), X-Ray Spex and Aswad.
One of the people in the audience was a young Billy Bragg: 'When I went to that gig, Tom Robinson closed the gig, and he has a song called, "Sing if you’re glad to be gay". And when he sang that song, all the geezers around me and my mates started snogging each other on the lips. My initial feeling was, "Why are these gays at this gig?" But it didn’t take me long to understand that the fascist, the racist, is afraid of anything that is in any way different, and that it’s all part of the same struggle. So I pledged from that day to be as different as I could, to ask as many questions as I could.'
Another person following the events was a young teacher John who'd been arrested and jailed following the Lewisham riots. He listened to the news on his prison radio: 'As the final numbers came through, we were told that 100,000 people, black and white, had marched from Trafalgar Square to east London. All the cons on my wing, many of them racist, cheered and banged on the pipes. It’s a memory I will take to my grave.'
The first Carnival was followed by others: 35,000 thousand came to a Manchester Carnival, 5,000 attended the next in Cardiff, 8,000 were in Edinburgh, 2,000 turned out at Harwich and 5,000 in Southampton. All these events saw black and white bands playing together: Aswad, Misty and the Roots and Steel Pulse alongside the new white punk stars. Under RAR's influence, punk was smitten by the sounds of reggae and dub: the Clash were the first to show this influence. Movements like Two Tone would follow.
The Carnivals were like a shot of adrenaline to the political campaign. The Anti-Nazi League became one of the largest mass movements Britain has seen. Between 1977 and 1979, around nine million Anti-Nazi leaflets were distributed and 750,000 badges sold. More than two hundred ANL branches mobilized some 40,000–50,000 members. On the strength of individual donations, the League raised £600,000 between 1977 and 1980.
As for Rock Against Racism, in 1978 alone, RAR organized 300 gigs and five carnivals. The following year’s Militant Entertainment Tour featured 40 bands at 23 concerts, and covered some 2,000 miles on the road. Probably around half a million people were involved in anti-racist activity, joining demonstrations, handing out leaflets or painting out graffiti.
In this same period, the National Front experienced an extraordinary turnover in its membership, with up to 14,000 people joining and then immediately leaving the party between 1977 and 1979. These people did not like to consider themselves fascists, and shuddered when the leaders of their party were photographed in full neo-Nazi regalia. Punk was in, anti-racism was cool, and the NF were losing ground. 'NF', the graffiti went up, '= No Fun' came the response, then the even more damning 'NF = No Future'.
The pages of Front publications were dominated by increasingly bizarre explanations of why support was being lost. Much blame was put on the members of the Socialist Workers Party, led by the Palestinian Jew Tony Cliff. The SWP had provided several early members of both RAR and the ANL (but a majority of neither). The NF smeared this party and the movement by describing the 'psychopathic stares' and 'alien features' of its leaders.
In the April 1979 elections, the Front won a mere 1.3 per cent of the vote. Failure led to the resignation of John Tyndall as NF chairman in January 1980. Demoralized, the Front split into three rival factions. Only in the last ten years have its successors begun to recover from their defeat.
Those who cut their teeth on the anti-fascist campaign include Mick Rix, the former General Secretary of ASLEF, who helped build RAR in Leeds and Billy Hayes of the postal workers’ union who joined the Anti-Nazi League on Merseyside. The first political step taken by Andy Gilchrist, the leader of the Fire Brigades’ Union, was going to watch the Clash play at Victoria Park.
'Everyone on the left in my generation remembers the symbols of the Anti-Nazi League', recalls the Guardian's Jackie Ashley,' Thousand of Labour activists, trade unionists and students ... marched against the National Front. Immigrants were welcome here, we said. No platform for racists and fascists, we shouted. And back then, it seemed to have worked.' It's not just a matter of appearance: the movement did work. RAR and the ANL set a template, that culture and politics can mix, that fascists can be confronted, and that parties such as the NF or today's BNP can lose.
The fact that the fascists have revived since then shows only the need for today's generation of activists to organise anew.

Interview: A movement to smash fascism. May 2006
Socialist Unity Network published a short interview looking at why I wrote the book, and the differences between anti-fascism in the 1970s and today. The Socialist Unity blog has also published some responses to the piece.

Here's an article I wrote setting the book in the context of the recent elections: it was published as 'We beat them once, we can do it again', Morning Star 17 May 2006
The worst news in the local elections was the high vote gained by the British National Party. Some 33 BNP councilors were elected, bringing the BNP's total to 48. This story swamped the better news of gains for the Greens (20 new candidates, 91 in total), Respect (15 and 16), the Socialist Party (2 and 7) and other left votes elsewhere. Both the BBC and ITV both made the news of BNP gains in Barking their second lead story, after the Cabinet reshuffle. The media announced a BNP breakthrough, and that unfortunately is the message that most people will have heard.
The BNP is often described in the press as 'far-right' party. The problem with this phrase is that it mixes the BNP up with parties like UKIP or Robert Kilroy-Silk's 'Veritas'. All may indeed appeal to similar voters at election time, but the structure and history of the BNP are very different.
You couldn't imagine UKIP proudly showing off its private army of bodyguard's, as BNP TV did after Nick Griffin's acquittal on incitement charges earlier this year. Nor could you imagine Veritas urging its members to blockade the Commission for Racial Equality and the National Union of Journalists, as the BNP did in 2004. Nor indeed have either UKIP or Veritas provided a home to arsonists, bombers and other criminals, as the BNP did to London nail bomber David Copeland.
The BNP is a fascist party, founded by former members of the National Front, and led currently by Nick Griffin, a previous leader of the NF.
One irony in the election results is that the BNP gains, outside Barking and Dagenham, were relatively modest. In the North East, the BNP vote in Gateshead fell by around half compared to 2004. The BNP vote in Sunderland was around a third less than in 2004. Also in Bradford and Calderdale, the BNP actually lost councilors.
Of the BNP's thirty-three new candidates, 12 were elected in Barking. Margaret Hodge's remark before the election that 8 in 10 white voters in her constituency were likely to vote BNP proved especially destructive. Other MPs have warned before of the BNP threat and used that danger to turn out the anti-fascist vote. The problem with the way Hodge spoke was that she almost seemed reconciled to the idea of BNP gains. She didn't attack the BNP. She talked up that party's chances. She gave the impression she was comfortable with a high BNP vote.
Yet in the aftermath of the elections, all is not lost. For the last five years, one of the difficulties we've had in movement has been the geographical unevenness of fascism and anti-fascism. The BNP vote was highest in the North, but anti-fascists had their strongest organisation in London. The BNP was always 'somewhere else'. We were in cities, they were in small towns. If you lived in a BNP target area, then it was obvious that something nasty and sinister was at work. If you didn't live in such an area, though, it was relatively easy to imagine nothing was going on.
Ironically, the BNP seats now concentrated more than previously – and in area closer to the areas of anti-fascist strength. There is a chance then for anti-racists and anti-fascists to go on the offensive, to take up arguments about what the BNP stands for, and to win back ground.
We've been here before. In the 1970s, the National Party had two elected councillors and in 1976 and 1977 the National Front won levels of support in elections in Leicester, Birmingham, Bournemouth and Ilford that was very similar to the votes we saw in the recent elections.
In response to the rise of the National Front, an enormous protest coalition was launched. The movement took in workers in factories, women, artists, musicians, students. There were great anti-racist Carnivals in London, Manchester, Leeds and all over Britain. People organised against the threat, and on the terraces and in the estates they won an argument that racism was wrong and fascism should be stopped.
Having gained electoral momentum, the National Front then lost it, so that while in each of the preceding three elections, the NF vote rose: in 1979, it fell dramatically, and only in the last five years has the British National Party begun to recover from that reverse. We need to learn from this experience that parties like the BNP have suffered reverses in the past: so long as you make the campaign vibrant, dynamic and colourful, anti-fascism will work.

Review: 'When we Touched the Sky', Paul Mackney, The Lecturer, April 2006
British fascism has gone through many changes. Thirty years ago, the members of the National Front were most often seen in skinhead and bovver boots, while today the leaders of the BNP are never seen without their suits. But through all its history, the violence against black people and trade unionists has never properly gone away.
In the 1970s and 1980s, supporters of the NF attacked houses in East Birmingham, and in one incident torched the socialist bookshop next to the college annexe where I worked in Digbeth, using a blazing car to do it and killing the kidnapped female motorist locked in the boot. When I became Birmingham TUC President in the early 1980s supporters of the NF threatened to attack me and my wife and to burn our house and engaged in telephone threats.
NATFHE Equality Support Official Dave Renton's very readable new history of the anti-Nazi campaign of the 1970s brings to mind some of the events which mattered to us then, and some of the people who formed the chief barrier to fascism last time around.
In August 1976, Eric Clapton interrupted a concert in Birmingham to make a speech supporting Enoch Powell the racist Tory MP. Seven months later, the Front came third at a bye-election in Birmingham Stechford.
Many of us campaigned to stop fascism in its tracks. Maurice Ludmer was then President of Birmingham Trades Council and editor of Searchlight magazine. As a soldier, he'd witnessed the liberation of Belsen. Maurice made sure that we affiliated to the Anti-Nazi League, as soon as it was launched.
Also key was foundry worker Avtar Jouhl, later a leading light in NATFHE black workers struggles, but then General Secretary of the Indian Workers' Association. It was the support of the IWA that enabled us to turn out 5000 people when the National Front threatened to march through Birmingham early in 1978.
Dave describes Rock Against Racism, the Anti-Nazi League, and the other campaigns that worked with them as some of the largest mass movements that this country has seen. By 1979, it was clear that the Front had been pushed backwards, and their derisory votes in that year's elections marked the beginning of an end.
Today, the task is the same but the threat greater as the BNP builds against the background of the success of the far right in Europe. The BNP have more elected councillors than the NF ever managed, but they are still capable of being stopped. Since it was launched in 2003, NATFHE has been one of the chief sponsors of Unite Against Fascism, which set itself the same goals of rooting out fascism. This book should inspire a new generation of activists to play their part in the campaign.