With a turnout comfortably above 100,000, the Love Music Hate Racism carnival was the biggest anti-fascist event in British history. It was also a great musical day out, too, The Good The Bad and The Queen put on the closest thing I’ll ever see to a Clash gig, followed by an epic orchestral version of Ghost Town led by Jerry Dammers late of the Specials. I was also pleased to take part in chants of “Fuck the BNP”. With Stop The War, we rarely get to swear.
Hopefully, this will have boosted the anti-fash voter turnout enough to keep the Nazis from getting their seat on the Greater London Assembly, and the Left List had a big enough presence to win around a lot of those otherwise too disillusioned by Labour to bother voting. A bit more news coverage would have been welcome; I’m getting used to the news blackouts of popular protest, but come on, throw us a bone…
See Lenin’s Tomb for more detail on the anti-fascist vote and the left.
It’s as good a time as as any to commemorate the August 1977 Battle of Lewisham, a confrontation in which the Nazis were effectively broken for a generation, and in which Blair Peach became the Socialist Worker Party’s only martyr thus far. link.
“Fuck the BNP” is a nice sweary slogan but it does conjour up some terrible images…
Perhaps the Left List would be doing better if a quick pre-election link-up with Respect and Unity for Peace & Socialism (the CPB’s electoral front).
Wasn’t Blair Peach murdered by police at another anti-fascist demo after Lewisham?
A slight correction to the first comment - Blair Peach was killed by the Special Patrol Group on a anti-fascist demonstation, but he was killed at Southall two years after the Battle of Lewisham.
I also doubt whether it’s true to say that the Battle of Lewisham broke the NF for a generation. I think it was a significant step down the road that led to them being broken, as Dave Renton’s article that you link to says
“Thus Lewisham forms part of a longer history, which includes the formation of the Anti-Nazi League, the growing opposition to the National Front, the great Rock Against Racism carnivals of 1978, and the decisive, low vote achieved by the National Front in the elections of April 1979; a defeat from which that party and its successors were unable to emerge for years.”
Doug, A-R: I stand corrected.
Charlie: In principle, perhaps, but really I’m not sure any of the three would be up for that.
PS: anyone know how to deactivate wordpress’s related posts thing? ‘cos that link is rubbish