Never Again
Page 14
Although members of the Communist Party had distinguished IS from the other ‘ultra-left sects’, and previously recognised at least the possibility of joint industrial campaigns,15 from the perspective of most Communists there was little to be gained from a joint anti-fascist initiative. The Communists were by far the larger party; if they were going to make an alliance with anyone, it would be with the Labour left. Moreover, the CP and the SWP had different ideas for how best to confront the fascists. From the CP’s perspective, the crucial task was to win over people in the middle ground so as to create the largest possible alliance against the right. Numbers alone would be the deciding factor; the key was to turn out the most people possible. Ever since events at Red Lion Square, if not before, the CP had been warning against those who sought to confront the NF, tactics the Communists regarded as ‘adventurist’ and likely to place ‘the whole demonstration in jeopardy’.16 Nothing that had happened in the intervening three years had moved the CP from this line.
The CP’s preferred approach was expressed in the plans put forward by the All-Lewisham Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism (ALCARAF). Faced with the prospect of the NF march on 13 August, ALCARAF proposed a large demonstration before and at some distance from the Front. The Morning Star ridiculed the SWP for pursuing what it described as ‘definitive game of Cowboys and Indians’.17
In that spirit, Bert Ramelson, the CPGB’s national industrial organiser, replied to the SWP, agreeing in principle that united action was needed but saying that it was the view of his party that the SWP’s ‘activity and propaganda is divisive and disruptive, making more difficult the development of united struggle’.18
On 2 July, members of the National Front attacked a demonstration in support of the Lewisham arrestees. One left-wing teacher was kicked unconscious. Although this time it was the left that was being attacked, the police still managed to arrest twenty-three anti-fascists.19 In Socialist Worker, Dave Peers warned his comrades to expect further attacks from the Front:
The attacks on the demonstration by the Nazis – and in turn by the police – are the culmination of a month of growing fascist and police harassment in the area. We have received well-founded reports that this represents a change of tactics by the Nazis . . . We have been informed that their South London branches have been given a free hand to attack left-wing demonstrations. This is a danger that no anti-fascist – SWP member or not – can ignore.20
Despite the divisions on the left, by late July, Jerry Fitzpatrick recalls, the mood in the area was hostile to the Front and supportive of confrontation:
There was one incident – it was a small, trivial thing, really. About three weeks before the demonstration, the police were chasing a black youth and he ran into our building. They grabbed him and me too, accusing me of providing him with a false alibi. In court, we provided him with a solicitor. He didn’t get off but it was a light sentence. In the days after, I had a really strong sense that the barriers had come down. The word went round that we would help people against the aggressive police.
Steve Jeffreys was another anti-fascist planning for Lewisham:
I’ve never been on a demonstration that was so well organised. We knew that coaches were coming from all over the country. We knew from Lewisham that there would be a kind of local uprising. We discussed hiring a lorry and using that to block the road but we thought that would put the organisational details in front of the politics. We knew we had the numbers.
The National Front, meanwhile, was well aware of the left’s plans but remained defiant about its capacity to turn out greater numbers than its opponents. At a final press conference before the demonstration, the Front’s national organiser Martin Webster told journalists, ‘We intend to destroy race relations here.’ Front branches across London were instructed to send their members to Lewisham for what was promised to be the Front’s ‘biggest ever . . . mass mobilisation’.21
Ted Parker’s duties included purchasing the rotten fruit to throw at the National Front: ‘We bought marine flares to signal where people were needed – we’d learned that from Wood Green. I went to the market and brought absolutely barrel-loads of rotten fruit. We gave that to people in carrier bags.’ By the week of the demonstration, Parker’s greatest fear was that the National Front would somehow pre-empt the demonstrators, perhaps by attacking them the night before. He was not the only one to consider that possibility. According to Jerry Fitzpatrick, ‘The day before the march, the police raided the centre. They were looking for megaphones, banners, the things we would need for the demonstration. But they found just two walkie-talkies. We were expecting raids and had already cleared out.’
Andy Strouthous spent the Friday evening touring around Lewisham with Kim Gordon and Tony Bogues from Flame:
We met people on the estates, black kids, gangs and their leader . . . We explained that tomorrow we’d be organising the biggest march that any of them had seen, that we’d take on the National Front and also the police. Some people didn’t know what to make of us – they were calling us this and that. But we talked to a lot of people. And the day after, you got a real sense. There was a large group of black people. Hundreds, thousands even. They were waiting.
If some were waiting in a state of eager anticipation, others were less enthusiastic. Maeve Landman was a young black teacher and exile from South Africa. She worked at a school in south London. In the run-up to the events at Lewisham, she recalls sticking up posters for the demonstration. She was convinced she would be arrested: ‘I washed my child’s teddy bear. I took him to my mother’s. I didn’t want my mother to say anything, if she had to look after him for several days.’
The day began at 11 a.m. with a march called by the Communist Party, Catholic organisations, councillors and members of ALCARAF. Lewisham’s Mayor Godsif and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark, led the protest. The Tories, Labour and the Liberals all brought delegations. ‘This is the voice of the Lewisham people,’ Mayor Godsif told the crowd. ‘We come here to show what the ordinary, decent reasonable citizens of Lewisham think of their borough being turned into a battled ground by fascists and the National Front.’ The 4,000 people who took part expressed their opposition to the Front after which many left the area, but not all of them.
According to the Sunday Times:
The [marchers] wanted to demonstrate peacefully against the National Front by marching from Ladywell Fields along Lewisham High Street and Lewisham Way to Railway Grove. Although this was close to where the Front was due to assemble, Alcaraf argued that its march would be over at least ninety minutes before the Front assembled.22
The police, having previously accepted ALCARAF’s proposed route, on 13 August changed their mind and ordered ALCARAF to disperse. The moderate anti-fascists, to their credit, refused to go. Numbers of people milled around the area, easing the task of the SWP and others calling for the left to reassemble at the NF’s intended starting point of Clifton Rise.
Dave Widgery was gently dismissive of those who took part in the first demonstration:
The official protest march, including the Catholics, the councillors and the Communists, made indignant speeches against fascism in Lewisham and carefully avoided going within two miles of the fascists who were assembling behind the British Rail station at New Cross where the atmosphere was less forgiving.23
Briefly joining the first demonstration, Ted Parker and Jerry Fitzpatrick distributed a leaflet calling upon the demonstrators to join a second protest, which would assemble at the Front’s planned assembly point. In Fitzpatrick’s words:
We tried hard to persuade the other groups, the Communists and the church people, not to call a counter demonstration at the same time at a different venue but to organise theirs in such a way that if people then wanted to march with us, they could. In the event we succeeded because their demo finished in time for the bulk of them to join us at Clifton Rise.
Meanwhile other of Widgery’s comrades were doing all they could to persu
ade the Communists and other moderate anti-fascists to remain in Lewisham.
A leaflet put out by the Communist Party expressed that group’s hostility to any physical attack on the Front:
Those who insist on the ritual enactment of vanguardist violence only damage the hard, patient work that has been put in over the years in the area by anti-racists and anti-fascists . . . We totally oppose the harassment and the provocative march planned by the SWP.24
Yet hundreds did go from the first march to the second. According to Parker:
We knew one pivotal thing was to get as many people as possible from the first march up to Clifton Rise. We had lorries on the first march, telling people what the plan was, urging them to join us. The fascinating thing was that people wanted to march to Clifton Rise but they just wouldn’t line up behind a Socialist Workers Party banner. You could see it. We had the numbers. Eventually, we found some members of some other group like the IMG with a banner for some united campaign against racism and fascism. People agree to group behind that. It taught me a lesson for later – many people would support a united campaign, they didn’t all want just to line up behind the SWP.
Red Saunders was part of the crowd who joined both demonstrations:
There were all these Christians and Communists, telling us to go home. Most people stayed. But we were all just milling about, when this old black lady, too old to march, came out on her balcony. She put out her speakers, as loud as they could, playing ‘Get up, stand up’. That did it for me.
Angus MacKinnon was reporting for the New Musical Express. He arrived at Clifton Rise, the starting point of the second anti-Front assembly:
I arrived at New Cross and couldn’t get any further. It was about eleven o’clock and there were already a lot of people there – most were trade unionists. It said in the press the next day that there were three thousand but it must have been twice that number. They said it was the standard rent-a-mob. It wasn’t.
Footage of the Front demonstration at its start shows a couple of hundred people waiting for reinforcements. Martin Webster can be heard thorough a megaphone, his voice rising with the anxiety of the situation:
The only chant today is National Front, nothing else. We don’t want any backchat with the coppers, we don’t want any backchat with the Reds. We don’t want anybody leaving the columns. We want you all to behave yourselves, take orders from your stewards, take orders from the police, behave yourself . . . No leaving the column for fights.
According to Parker, the anti-fascists had a clear plan:
We would try to get as many people as possible to Clifton Rise, New Cross Station. We knew the police would try to keep the groups separated, on each side of the railway lines. We’d make some effort there, at the beginning but it was a feint really. If we couldn’t stop the Front at Clifton Rise, we would let the Front go . . . along New Cross Road. Smaller groups would ambush them . . . Our largest number would turn round and march quickly along Lewisham Way. That’s where we were going to make a real effort.
Einde O’Callaghan, a student at City University, was at the junction in New Cross. It was at the top of a hill and he could see the day’s events clearly:
There was a huge police cordon between us and the NF’s meeting place. As the Front march set off, it had to come out on to the main road at the bottom of the hill. We had linked arms by this stage and were facing the police cordon that stood between us and the NF march. I was with the comrades from the university in about the seventh or eighth line. To be quite honest I didn’t want to be in the first row as I knew what was supposed to happen.
The first step was simple. The fascist march was below the anti-fascist contingent. On hearing a signal, anti-fascists would charge down the hill.
The sign to attack was delivered by Jerry Fitzpatrick. He and the other stewards had decided not to confront the National Front honour guard, composed of the hardened street fighters, marching at the very front of the NF contingent. Instead, their attack would be aimed at the middle of the fascist procession. O’Callaghan remembers Fitzpatrick standing on a box, by the traffic lights, waiting for the Front as they crossed the road at the bottom of the hill. As the NF approached, the SWP contingent could be heard chanting, ‘The workers united will never be defeated.’ Fitzpatrick set off a flare; the signal to advance.
O’Callaghan was among those who followed:
We charged down the hill against the police cordon. The rows of demonstrators in front of me broke under the strain of the pushing but by the time our line came to the front, the police cordon had weakened sufficiently and we broke through into the middle of the march. I can remember that we grabbed an NF banner and in a tug of war we managed to get it off them, all the while maintaining linked arms – how we did it I don’t know. Eventually the police managed to push us back but I remember that there was a hail of bricks from some convenient building sites alongside the route of the march and assorted other stuff, including at least one dustbin.
Dave Widgery was also there:
In New Cross Road, just down from Goldsmiths’ College, a crowd of 5,000 anti-NFers had assembled by midday. People gently milled; here surging forward under banners that sprang and swooped like kites, there breaking out into feminist war whoops, elsewhere shouting recognition in noisy South London patois . . . At the front, a ram-packed contingent of South London Afro-Caribbeans cordially but expertly blocked off the police’s first attempts – uphill and on foot – to open a way for the NF . . .
An officer with a megaphone read an order to disperse. No one did; seconds later the police cavalry cantered into sight and sheered through the front row of protesters.
So, continues Widgery, the day might have ended:
Except that people refused to melt away from the police horses and jeer ineffectually from the side-lines. A horse went over, then another and the Front were led forward so fast that they were quickly struggling. Then suddenly the sky darkened (as they say in Latin poetry), only this time with clods, rocks, lumps of wood, planks and bricks . . . The Front found it most difficult to dodge this cannonade while upholding the dignity appropriate to a master race inspecting soon-to-be-deported underlings. The NF march was broken in two, their banners seized and burnt.25
Syd Shelton photographed middle-aged Front supporters reeling from this first attack. They held their wrists over their faces, afraid of appearing in the next day’s papers. One man buried his face in handkerchief, his comb-over having collapsed. A female companion was led demoralised from the fray.26
Another of Shelton’s photograph shows three black Lewisham youngsters, in tight jeans and denim jackets, cheering as they clutched a piece of braid fabric which had been ripped from the banner of the Front’s Honour Guard.27
‘Up on a traffic bollard’, Widgery continued, ‘a Trinidadian giant with a hand megaphone [the black writer and campaigner Darcus Howe] was thoughtfully advising the crowd, rather as a cricket captain might place his field.’28 It was not a traffic bollard but the roof of a toilet bloc, which Howe in jeans and a polo shirt was occupying together with around a dozen other protesters.
The Front were just about able to reassemble and march east along New Cross Road in the direction of Deptford. Crowds threw fruit as the NF passed. Smaller groups attacked them from the side streets; while the remaining forces of the NF’s honour guard, short men with moustaches dressed in combat gear, did their best to kick and punch their assailants away. The anti-fascists’ chants gave way to an incoherent roar, punctured with shouts of ‘bastards’ directed at the police.
The majority of anti-fascists meanwhile were heading east along Lewisham Way. Their direction was similar to the National Front, albeit along a shorter route and without the fighting that slowed down the NF march. By 2.30 p.m., most anti-fascists had arrived at central Lewisham, about the midway point in the NF’s planned route. They were able to hold the area around the Clock Tower.
According to Charli Langford, a member of the IMG:
/> We were the first banner and marching with no police ‘escort’ at all but by the time we’d done half a mile there was a group of black youth, generally in the 14 to 20 age range, demoing ahead of us and this group grew until it was maybe 400-strong as we went along. Big contrast between the all-black youth ahead of us and the 95 per cent plus white contingents from the original demo. There were people hanging out of windows and waving and cheering.
At around 2.30 p.m., the bruised remnants of the National Front march reached Lewisham train station. The marchers could then look south, where the whole of Lewisham was occupied by the largest group of anti-NF protesters, outnumbering the police and the Front several times over. Not daring to continue along their planned route, the Front headed north towards Blackheath, where they stopped in a deserted car park and Chairman John Tyndall gave a short, downbeat speech.
We regret the inconvenience that has been caused to many people in the Borough this afternoon. We wanted to have a peaceful and orderly march in a part of our capital city . . . The fact that there has not been peace and order this afternoon, the fact that people have had to board up their windows and shut themselves in their homes, the fact that businessmen have had to close down their shops and lose money, these are all things we enormously regret . . .
The police did a splendid job. They could have done an even better job had they been allowed to go in with tear gas, with rubber bullets . . . When we get in, the police are not going to go unarmed into these affrays.29
By 3 p.m., the Front had been removed. Yet the euphoria that greeted the news of the Front’s defeat was diminished as people realised that the police were still determined to clear the anti-fascists from the streets. Ted Parker was now at Lewisham clock tower and recalls ‘A tide of people blocking the road’.