The Fight Against Fascism

From the Morning Star:

If you are inspired by stories of resistance, this is the book for you.

It contains many, starting with the 1936 attempt by Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists to rally at The Level in central Brighton. They were resisted, as “working-class people would pour from the small fisherman’s houses in the Hanover district opposite to deal with them.”

The Level earned a reputation as the people’s park and, at the same place in 1948, a fight between Mosley’s fascist revivalist Union Movement and anti-fascists lasted over an hour and became known as “the battle of The Level.”

The book’s great strength lies in the chapters on the 1970s and 1980s, the period when its author Tony Greenstein began a long period of activism in the anti-fascist struggle.

One account, not initially a story of success, contains everything you might need to know about anti-fascism – how to respond when you are outnumbered and the role of political and physical resistance, as was the case in Tunbridge Wells and Brighton in the summer of 1980.

Undeterred by an arson attack on their meeting place less than a month later, Brighton’s anti-fascists began a leafleting campaign outside school gates and the football ground, stopping National Front members selling papers in the city centre.

“There was no occasion when they were able to do so unhindered,” Greenstein comments, “though on occasions there were running battles.”

The fact that this is such a good read is less important than that it is so timely. It is impossible not to notice the lessons from the past that apply to the present.

Greenstein’s work makes a very valuable contribution to radical local histories and certainly helps understanding of why Brighton as a centre of resistance to fascism has maintained its reputation as an “alternative” city.

Yet its relevance extends much further afield than the south coast. The author reminds us that the origins of fascism lie in the early 20th-century combination of religious intolerance and opposition to immigration.

The anti-semitism of the 1920s and 1930s was as politically expedient, acceptable and widespread within right-wing establishments and their popular followers as Islamophobia is now. The new English fascism, the EDL and its anti-jihadist European allies, pose no lesser threat than Mosley’s Blackshirts.

Read The Fight Against Fascism, enjoy it, then put it into practice.

To order a copy of the book please make cheques out to BUWC and send to 4 Crestway Parade, The Crestway, Brighton BN1 7BL. The launch of the book takes place at 12 noon on Saturday March 17 at the Brighthelm Centre, North Road, Brighton BN1.

ADDENDUM

The book launch was opposed by seven fascists, who were easily outnumbered by a huge contingent of cops. For more on that see SchNEWS.