On this day, 28 July 1985, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) was officially launched at a meeting in Conway Hall, London, attended by 250 people with representatives from Red Action, Class War, Jewish Socialists Group, Newham Monitoring Project, Workers’ Power, Searchlight and various local anti-racist bodies from across the country. Its dedication to ‘physical and ideological opposition’ to the fascism would see it drive numerous far-right groups off the streets.
For example, the fascist British National Party (BNP) had been growing in confidence in Liverpool, launching violent attacks on left-wingers, including trying to burn down a bookshop run by feminist collective. Within a year the BNP had been beaten from the streets, and later admitted they “were driven underground” by anti-fascists. And in London, after the neo-Nazi record label Blood and Honour tried to organise public events in the city, they too were smashed off the streets by AFA members who took over their redirection points for shows in Marble Arch in 1989 and Waterloo in 1992.
AFA mostly wound down in the mid-1990s after the BNP had been forced to change its strategy from trying to control the streets to running in local elections.
We have some anti-fascist books and merch available in our online store which you can check out, proceeds help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/anti-fascist
Pictured: the AFA logo, designed by Clifford Harper https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1771040323081110/?type=3
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
