The Anti-Nazi League’s 1970s battle against the white supremacist National Front was one of the most fiercely fought political clashes of recent British history.
Now it is the subject of a new book being launched in Dalston this week.
The author, Geoff Brown, who was himself one of the prime movers behind the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), and responsible for organising its landmark 15,000-strong march in Manchester in 1978, will speak about his experiences at the Halkevi Café on 19 March.
For Brown, his book – A People’s History of the Anti Nazi League – is especially pertinent now: “Clearly the far right are on the rise in a very serious way; it’s still going on.”
The author played a crucial role within the ANL in Manchester’s 1978 march, which culminated in a partnership with the Rock against Racism group and amassed 40,000 people in Alexandra Park. The Buzzcocks headlined the performance. “We sold badges by the bucketload. You couldn’t walk through Manchester without seeing people wearing our badges,” Brown tells the Hackney Post.
“There was a great deal of far-right violence, people were quite literally murdered. We should remember that.”
Hackney itself had great historical importance to the ANL’s cause. In the late 1970s, the National Front had its HQ, ‘Excalibur House’, in East Hoxton. “Hackney was a storm centre for what was going on, there was nowhere where the far right was stronger than in Hackney,” said Brown.
“There was a great deal of far-right violence, people were quite literally murdered. We should remember that,” he added.
In his book, Brown investigates public pressure against the National Front in Hoxton, drawing attention to the 20,000 signatures that were secured to assist in the eviction of the fascist group from their HQ in 1980.
During this period the ANL’s 40,000 members contributed to the humiliating defeat of the National Front in the 1979 general election.
The book launch will be hosted by Hackney Stand Up to Racism, which according to Brown is “in a very real sense the successor of the Anti-Nazi League,” serving as a “united front” which “insist[s] on defending the rights of people to organise and have democratic processes, speech and assembly.”
Crucially, the author wants to appeal to the youth: “to be honest, the real question is whether we manage to get young people involved. It’s a question of making the shift from talking to doing things,” he added.
Is an MA newspaper journalism student, reporting on Dalston for the Hackney Post.