Anti-Fascism in Britain

Nigel Copsey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317397618
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Fascism & Totalitarianism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Anti-fascism has long been one of the most active and dynamic areas of radical protest and direct action. Yet it is an area of struggle and popular resistance that remains largely unexplored by historians, sociologists and political scientists.

Fully revised and updated from its earlier edition, this book continues to provide the definitive account of anti-fascism in Britain from its roots in the 1930s opposition to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, to the street demonstrations and online campaigns of the twenty-first century. The author draws on an impressive range of sources including official government, police and security services records, the writings and recollections of activists themselves, and the publications and propaganda of anti-fascist groups and their opponents.

The book traces the ideological, tactical and organisational evolution of anti-fascist groups and explores their often complicated relationships with the mainstream and radical left, as well as assessing their effectiveness in combating the extreme right.

1

The origins and development of anti-fascism 1923–35

I

The roots of Britain’s anti-fascist tradition can be traced back to 7 October 1923, when Communists disrupted the inaugural meeting of the British Fascisti (BF). This rally of Britain’s first fascist organisation, attended by some 500 people, ended in ‘pandemonium’. Two further meetings, both held in November 1923 in London’s Hammersmith, were also disrupted.¹ The very birth of British fascism had encountered opposition – this before the hostility that was directed towards Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the 1930s. Until recently, antagonism towards the BUF’s precursors had passed historians by,² given that Britain’s early fascist organisations had been written off as ‘irrelevancies’, unimportant in both ideological and organisational terms. Even though there were no mass anti-fascist mobilisations on the scale of those that would take place in the 1930s, the antecedents of this later mass opposition originate in the previous decade.

The formation of the British Fascisti in May 1923 (acknowledged by the Daily Herald on 30 August 1923) gave rise to some concern that British fascists might reproduce the violence of their Italian counterparts. Italian Fascism had started out as a tiny movement in 1919 (the BF had just 15 adherents at the time of the Herald’s report), but had grown exponentially in a short space of time, facilitated by the anti-communism of the Italian political establishment. By early 1924 the BF had expanded to some 2,000 members (many of whom had dual membership with the Conservative Party). By the time the BF held a national rally in Trafalgar Square in late 1924, it could muster 1,800 activists in central London, with the security services guesstimating a total strength of around 30,000³ (helped no doubt by the absence of any membership or mandatory subscription fee). Threateningly, the BF’s ‘enrolment oath’ carried the open-ended pledge ‘to render every service in my power to the British Fascisti in their struggle against all treacherous and revolutionary movements now working for the destruction of the Throne and the Empire’.⁴ For those left-wing militants disrupting the earliest meetings of the BF, the founding of an Italian-style fascist organisation (the imitative name ‘Fascisti’ making the link with Mussolini’s movement explicit) had to be resisted, for a more mature form of fascismo might be turned loose on British workers if left unchecked.

However, since mainstream opinion paid modest attention to Italian Fascism, the founding of a domestic equivalent was largely ignored. Italy was a minor ‘Mediterranean land’ after all, and Fascism came across as specifically and stereotypically Italian (‘theatrical’ and ‘dramatic’). Although inclined towards lawless brutality, a point made repeatedly by the Rome correspondent of the Daily Herald and by Guglielmo Salvadori in the New Statesman, Fascism was praised for saving Italy from the anarchy of the left. Conservative opinion applauded Mussolini for restoring ‘order’ and this evaluation was even echoed in the Labour press, which had acclaimed Italian Fascism for a ‘bloodless revolution’. Despite Italian Fascism’s venomous assault on the left, Labour declared that ‘we must welcome Fascism half-way’ and concluded that left-wing militancy had brought about Italian Fascism by engendering disorder and political confusion.⁵ Labour was keen to stress democratic, legalistic credentials and was anxious to dissociate itself from the ‘irresponsible’ revolutionary agitation of ‘continental’ socialism. The effect was that initial opposition to the first growths of domestic fascism did not attract widespread interest or enthusiasm.

Nonetheless, left-wing militants alive to a potential fascist threat in Britain quickly saw the need for specific anti-fascist organisations (possibly a response to the Fascisti gaining the upper hand in initial confrontations).⁶ One early anti-fascist initiative came in January 1924 when a defensive ‘anti-fascisti’ organisation known as the People’s Defence Force (PDF) was launched. From the 1917 Club in Soho, London, the PDF issued a statement on 26 January 1924. This maintained that the ‘existence of a militant body calling itself the British Fascisti obviously inspired by the example of the Italian reactionaries […] calls for a corresponding force pledged to resist any interference with the due operation of the constitution’. The PDF cast itself as a non-aggressive, legalistic organisation and even commended the police as a model to all its members. Declaring itself formally independent but aligned to the ‘workers’ movement’, it pledged to ‘keep a watchful eye on the activities of the Fascisti’ and ‘resist any attempt to break up meetings’.⁷ Special Branch reported that it was not known whether this defence group was officially connected with the Communist movement although key personnel appeared to be closely linked. One of the organisers, H. Martin, was Secretary of the London District Council of the National Unemployed Workers’ Committee.⁸ Another, H. Johnstone, was identified as the probable organiser of the West London branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).⁹

Alongside the PDF, a second anti-fascist organisation emerged, known as the National Union for Combating Fascismo (NUCF).¹⁰ This was based not in London but, curiously, in a bleak Yorkshire village near Hebden Bridge. Formed by poet and writer Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and her spouse Alfred, the NUCF published an anti-fascist newspaper, The Clear Light, which claimed a circulation of 5,000.¹¹ The NUCF saw itself as a ‘specialized branch of the Socialist Movement’ but declared no intention of building a numerically large counter-movement. Its policy was ‘not to present an organised opposition to the holding of B.F. meetings’.¹² Although ‘revolutionary socialist’, it was non-violent: ‘The advocacy of violence is reactionary. It plays into the hands of the enemy. It diverts the masses from the very weapon they are historically fitted to wield – their industrial organisations.’¹³ The NUCF recognised that the ‘B.F. are as much entitled as anyone else to air their views in public, and as much entitled to a fair and generous hearing’. Rather than break up fascist meetings, the purpose of the NUCF was ‘to watch the activities of the B.F. and similar organisations in their own Districts, and to report periodically to H.Q. In other words, the N.U.C.F. will became Labour’s C.I.D. [Criminal Investigations Department]’.¹⁴ The NUCF circularised all divisional and borough Labour parties in the country to warn of the fascist threat. The problem was that their intelligence relied on what the BF itself claimed, including a grossly inflated membership claim of 250,000 in 1925. It also rounded on Labour papers for making ‘only jokes about Mussolini and the beginning of the Fascist movement in this country. But it is pantomime which, if the Fascist Movement be not broken, will turn into dark comedy as far as Labour is concerned’.¹⁵ There is a tale of BF members, posing as Communists from Manchester, making threats against the editor of The Clear Light and the newspaper’s printer in 1925.¹⁶ However, it is doubtful that the organisation’s existence seriously troubled the BF’s London HQ. Although some NUCF branches were established outside Yorkshire, in Manchester and Burnley for example, and there was a corresponding address listed for the organising secretary (E. Burton Dancy) in Chiswick, in West London, and also a Scottish organiser in Edinburgh, it remained a largely local and provincial affair and soon folded.

Even allowing for the initiation of these two early anti-fascist organisations, and minor confrontations between left-wing militants and British fascists during 1923–4, majority opinion on the left was not unduly concerned by British fascism. The British Fascisti, formed by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, 28-year-old granddaughter of Field Marshall Sir Lintorn Simmons, was more an object of ridicule than dread. The BF was generally regarded as a something of a joke: an adult extension of the Scout movement rather than a well-oiled repressive machine; an eccentric and amateurish pressure group whose public activities were largely innocuous. That the British Fascisti displayed a badge with the initials ‘B.F.’ – ‘Bloody Fools’ – only added to this impression. Even on the far left this caricature of British fascism was widely received. The Marxist ‘Plebs League’ dismissed the BF as ‘a glorified Boys’ Brigade’ and proceeded to ridicule it as a ‘laughingstock’, an unsophisticated caricature of the Italian fascist movement.¹⁷ Rather than devote itself systematically to Italian-style anti-communist violence, the British Fascisti appeared more concerned about the party’s name (subsequently changed to the English-sounding ‘British Fascists’ in 1924 – presumably to offset negative associations with Italian Fascism). During the 1924 election there were reports of the British Fascists even offering to steward Labour Party meetings. The offer was rebuffed.¹⁸

On the other hand there were hardliners in the organisation, like future Lord Haw-Haw, William Joyce (the BF’s Chelsea District Officer), who were more combative and organised themselves into a physical force section intent on heckling and breaking up Communist Party meetings.¹⁹ There were also reports of raids on the Glasgow office of the Sunday Worker in 1925 in which local fascists were implicated. For those few on the militant left who had taken the threat of fascism seriously, the kidnapping of Harry Pollitt, a leading figure in the Communist Party, by a group of British Fascists in March 1925 finally brought some vindication. Where previously, concerns about domestic fascism had been restricted to a minority of activists, the kidnapping of Pollitt from a train at Edgehill, Liverpool, prompted the highest echelons of the CPGB to focus attention on the possible dangers of fascist provocation in Britain. Disturbed by incipient fascist activity, the Political Bureau of the CPGB urged the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress (TUC) to launch an enquiry into the strength of the fascist movement and suggest possible anti-fascist counter-measures. Yet these warnings were met with derision from within the mainstream left, which judged the Communist Party unnecessarily alarmist. The Labour Party interpreted the kidnapping of Pollitt as nothing more sinister than a publicity-seeking stunt. All the more so because BF activities ordinarily revolved around political meetings and relatively innocuous social and leisure pursuits, such as dances, dinners and whist drives.

The four fascists charged with kidnapping Pollitt were acquitted following (spurious) claims that they merely wanted to take Pollitt away for a weekend in North Wales, but where as this acquittal met with Labour Party silence, the CPGB continued to sound the alarm. In July 1925 the CPGB’s leading theoretician, Rajani Palme Dutt, called for urgent preparations against fascism. He stressed that the prevailing tendency to ‘laugh at the Fascists in this country’ was ‘stupid’. British fascism was not an ‘isolated freak phenomenon’, according to Palme Dutt, but part of a wider and deeper social movement rooted in the petty bourgeoisie and unorganised proletariat. Ominously, for Palme Dutt, fascism was developing in two directions: ‘guerrilla escapades’ against the left (i.e. the Pollitt incident) and ‘strike-breaking’ preparations. He predicted that this development would continue, warning that given its potential support base, fascism constituted a significant threat to the entire labour movement. Moreover, for Palme Dutt, the Pollitt case confirmed the close connection between the state and fascism, and it was now clear that the working class could not put its trust in the state for protection. Rather than rely on ‘bourgeois legality’, Palme Dutt called on the working class to organise against the fascist danger. He suggested ‘publicity and exposure of fascist movements and plans of the enemy; and secondly, local defence organisations of the workers to prevent disturbance’.²⁰

Palme Dutt’s warning was given further prescience when, shortly afterwards, the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) was established. The OMS, launched towards the end of September 1925, was ostensibly a ‘non-political’ organisation sponsored by the Government to ensure the delivery of essential supplies in the event of a general strike. Yet the CPGB interpreted it as ‘the most definite step towards organised Fascism yet made in this country’.²¹ The Communist Party accused the OMS of being violently anti-working class, a ‘strike-breaking’ organisation with direct links to the Government. Hence it was denounced as a ‘fascist-type’ operation. However, this view of the OMS was not widely shared. Despite a belief that ‘fascists’ were ‘more or less associated with Conservative politics’, the official Labour leadership passively accepted the OMS.²² Faith was retained in official assurances that the OMS was neither ‘political’ nor ‘aggressive’ and that it had no connection to the British Fascists. Labour leaders were further reassured when the Government refused the offer made by the British Fascists to assist the OMS.²³ In any case, soon afterwards the BF split. Many conservative ‘loyalists’ left the movement whilst the residue, having failed to become an approved...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The origins and development of anti-fascism 1923–35
• 2. Opposition to British fascism 1936–45
• 3. ‘Never again!’: anti-fascism 1946–66
• 4. ‘The National Front is a Nazi front!‘: opposition to the National Front 1967–79
• 5. Fighting fascism in the eighties and nineties
• 6. Opposing fascism in the twenty-first century
• Conclusion
• Index