Renton - Never again: Rock against racism and the Anti-Nazi League, 1976-1982

I was gripped and loved the way it took me through different elements of popular culture, personal reflection and policy. It is the best account of the relationship between punk and the Anti-Nazi League/Rock Against Racism.

Lucy Robinson , Professor in Collaborative History, University of Sussex

A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the post-war history of racist and fascist movements and the strategies of resistance to them.

Hsiao-Hung Pai , author of Angry White People

David Rentons book helps us understand a pivotal moment in the defeat of fascism; it addresses the militant tradition of anti-fascism with real consideration.

Louise Purbrick , contributor to Physical Resistance: A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism

NEVER AGAIN

By 1976, the National Front had become the fourth largest party in Britain. In a context of national decline, racism and fears that the country was collapsing into social unrest, the Front won 19 per cent of the vote in elections in Leicester and 100,000 votes in London.

In response, an anti-fascist campaign was born, which combined mass action to deprive the Front of public platforms with a mass cultural movement. Rock Against Racism brought punk and reggae bands together as a weapon against the right.

At Lewisham in August 1977, fighting between the far right and its opponents saw two hundred people arrested and fifty policemen injured. The press urged the state to ban two rival sets of dangerous extremists. But as the papers took sides, so did many others who determined to oppose the Front.

Through the Anti-Nazi League hundreds of thousands of people painted out racist graffiti, distributed leaflets and persuaded those around them to vote against the right. This combined movement was one of the biggest mass campaigns that Britain has ever seen.

This book tells the story of the National Front and the campaign which stopped it.

David Renton is a British barrister, historian and author. His previous books include Fascism: Theory and Practice (1999), Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Britain in the 1940s (2000), This Rough Game: Fascism and Anti-Fascism (2001), British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State (2004, with Nigel Copsey) and When We Touched the Sky: The Anti-Nazi League 19771981 (2006).

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT

Series editors:
Nigel Copsey, Teesside University , and Graham Macklin, Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo

This new book series focuses upon fascist, far right and right-wing politics primarily within a historical context but also drawing on insights from other disciplinary perspectives. Its scope also includes radical-right populism, cultural manifestations of the far right and points of convergence and exchange with the mainstream and traditional right.

Titles include:

France and Fascism
February 1934 and the Dynamics of Political Crisis
Brian Jenkins and Chris Millington

Cultures of Post-War British Fascism
Nigel Copsey and John E. Richardson (eds.)

Tomorrow Belongs to Us
The UK Far Right Since 1967
Nigel Copsey and Matthew Worley (eds.)

The Portuguese Far Right
Between Late Authoritarianism and Democracy (19452015)
Riccardo Marchi

Never Again
Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League 19761982
David Renton

NEVER AGAIN

Rock Against Racism and the
Anti-Nazi League 19761982

David Renton

First published 2019
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2019 David Renton

The right of David Renton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-1-138-50270-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-50271-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14503-7 (ebk)

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The Carib Club got petrol bombed

The National Front was getting awful strong

They done in Dave and Dagenham Ron

In the winter of 79

When all the gay geezers got put inside

And coloured kids was getting crucified

A few fought back and a few folks died

In the winter of 79

Tom Robinson, Winter of 79

This book tells the story of the National Front (NF) and two of its opponents in 1970s Britain: Rock Against Racism (RAR) and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL). The Front was a rising electoral force, in competition with the Liberals to become Britains third party. The Front secured 44,000 votes in local elections in Leicester in May 1976. In March 1977, the NF beat the Liberal Party in a by-election at Stechford in Birmingham. At Greater London Council elections in May 1977, the Front secured just under 120,000 votes, beating the Liberals in 33 out of the 91 seats which both parties contested. With a paid membership of 13,000 people in 19761977, the party had around twenty times more supporters than the Ecology Party (the forerunner of todays Greens) and more than any of the Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish parties.

Indeed, the NF was more than an electoral machine. Part of its appeal came from its association with violence. The Front was feared by its political opponents and by the victims of racist attacks. To give just two examples: in July 1978, a report by the television programme World in Action claimed that the first six months of the year had seen twenty-three separate attacks by the Front on its opponents in Leeds alone. Bethnal Green and Stepney Trades Council documented a series of attacks by Front supporters in the East End over summer and autumn 1978, ranging from sending people in large groups to chant racist slogans outside local shops to attacks by Front supporters on black people in the street or in their homes. One Front fellow-traveller, 20-year-old Fred Challis, pleaded guilty to the murder of a white vagrant in the East End, in which he smashed the mans face in with a gas cylinder, after which he had used the blood to smear the slogan NF rules OK on a nearby wall. At his sentencing hearing, Challis admitted that he had carried out over three hundred attacks altogether.

The National Front was an early example of a kind of politics which has since become all too familiar, a group influenced by the anti-democratic politics of fascism but standing for election to Parliament. By the time of this books publication, it has become conventional to date the rise of such Euro-fascist parties to events in Northern France in 1983, Yet before the rise of the FN, it was the NF which seemed most likely to achieve a breakthrough. In 1973, Martin Webster won 16 per cent of the vote at a parliamentary by-election in West Bromwich. In July 1976, a council by-election in Deptford saw the National Front and the National Party (a smaller split-off from the NF) win a combined 44 per cent, more between them even than the winning Labour candidate. The opportunity which opened up for the far right in France was no greater than the chance available to its counterpart here.