When Remembrance of the Past becomes Militarism for the Future

This was something that struck me then I saw it picked up by 'The Guardian' editorial last Saturday too.  I rarely agree with the editorials even if I do find journalists in that newspaper I share a viewpoint with.  However, it did seem to capture the unease that has been growing within me around the regimentation of remembrance.  Having been someone who in his youth argued for more remembrance, I am bitter now that I have come to feel that recent changes have taken things too far and it now needs reining in.

In the UK up until the mid-1990s remembrance was associated almost exclusively with Remembrance Sunday, the nearest Sunday to 11th November.  There would be sales of poppies by the British Legion and especially children and the elderly would buy them and the funds would go to help the wounded and their families and families who had lost husbands/fathers in war.  Of course, the iconography of the poppy is strongly related with the First World War, but though there is often a direct association with that conflict Remembrance Sunday is supposed to be about all conflicts.  Apparently since 1945 Britain has had deaths of service personnel in conflict every year except 1968 and I certainly know that growing up in the 1970s reports of deaths and maimings of soldiers in Northern Ireland were as regular as they are now from Afghanistan.  A friend of mine lost her brother in the Falklands conflict in 1982 too.  Despite the way we portray Britain, it is a very militaristic country, we have constantly been involved in conflicts in a way many neighbouring states have not, certainly since the end of the colonial empires in the 1960s-70s, now 30-40 years ago.  Much of this involvement I have disagreed with, but this does not stop me admiring those people who fight and are wounded or die and to raise funds for them, I feel is vital.

As someone always involved in history, in the 1970s and 1980s I felt too much was being forgotten about what earlier generations had experienced.  I still think this is the case especially when I hear that 'oh, the Holocaust, it was so long ago' despite the fact that survivors are still with us.  In that period aside from perhaps buying a poppy only those with a direct connection with the military or those who were regular church attenders tended to reflect much about what was being marked, even if just about the First World War, let alone any subsequent wars.  I felt we should move to what happens in France, where even now you can still see the marks of wars in so many parts of the country, but particularly the North which I have spent most time in.  From the Belgian border deep into Normandy you walk in the foosteps of millions of soldiers and almost every town is one that features in history books.  My view was that we should have Remembrance Day, i.e. have a bank holiday on 11th November no matter which day of the week that fell and have all the shops closed and all kinds of memorial activities, secular as well as religious.  People forget that many Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Jews died fighting for the British Army in the First World War and subsequent conflicts.  Britain still has Gurkha forces.  Of course, some people felt that remembrance was an element of the past and anticipated that in time it would fade as an activity.  Apparently the government considered dropping it after the Second World War.  However, to a large extent remembrance has always been driven by the public, from the building of the Cenotaph to local war memorials and events, it has been a public force of will not necessarily something officials have been able to control.

Having been driving through rural Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset in the past couple of weeks I constantly see memorials in even the tiniest villages.  War has impacted on all locations in Britain.  For me remembrance is about remembering that the people who die in wars are generally not heroes, they are simply ordinary people sent to fight by people who are not at risk.  This was brought home sharply to me in the early 1990s when I was in the Imperial War Museum, a large section of which is dedicated to the First World War and where they now have a database of war memorials.  A woman, a little younger than me, this was 1992 so I would have been 25, said, standing among all the materials about the First World War, 'I don't really know what all the fuss is about the First World War; none of my family suffered in it'.  I was rather stunned by that, especially as she was there with a school party and was apparently training to be a history teacher!  My mother's father and uncle both fought in that war and survived into the 1980s, due to a generational slip, my father's grandfather also fought in that war and died in the 1920s as a result of gas poisoning he had suffered during the war.  They experienced horrors, but I do not engage in remembrance for the specific personal connection, but more broadly because I mourn that young people were sent often to be slaughtered in futile actions.  I asked her what was the lowest rank that her ancestors in the war had been, and she answered colonel.  One of her living relatives was a serving brigadier.  In that instant I felt as much distance between her (though socially I have climbed far higher than my grandparents and great-grandparents) and me as I feel my ancestors would have done. 

My father's grandfather had served in the Boer War and had been decorated.  He was called up in 1914 and served an 18-month tour of duty.  He was a sergeant but was demoted twice for hitting silly officers commanding suicidal missions.  He was lucky not to have been executed.  He ended the war back as sergeant because all those above him were killed.  He was big man, a prime target, so you wonder if he was trying to stay alive.  However, I think that given his proven bravery, he was not afraid of facing the bullets but what he, as a very experienced soldier, was not going to let amateurs from a social class that had not seen hardship (40% of volunteers in 1914 were turned away on the grounds they were malnourished) and were willing to toss away lives.  To some degree, you might feel wrongly, this has left a rather class-orientated angle for me regarding remembrance.  I see it as a reminder to the elites that they should value life and not waste it as they too often do.  People from the upper classes do die in wars too and the elites of 1914 were stripped of many of their best and brightest as much as the working and middle classes were.  My referencing social class aspects in my remembrance is probably a bad step on my behalf because it politicises remembrance and that is at the root of the current difficulties.

What began to happen in the mid-1990s was partly what I had hoped for in the preceding decades.  Whilst shops did not close on 11th November, suddenly, primarily driven by tabloid newspapers there was a two-minute silence (up from one minute) and not only on Remembrance Sunday but on 11th November too.  I remember the first time when travelling on an underground train and people were invited to be silent at 11 o'clock; a couple of years later I was in a shop.  I used the minutes to reflect on people I knew had died in the First World War whose records I had seen at the National Archives (only 40% remain as the rest were burnt as a result of bombing in the Second World War).  This seemed the right way: remembrance now was impacting on everyday lives for the bulk of the population. 

Fifteen or so years on, things may now beginning to go too far.  Remembrance is now being very mixed up in political issues.  I commented earlier in the year about how the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin had been asked not to wear a poppy outside of the remembrance period, because he seemed to be trying to associate it with his racist views.  Military leaders attacked his used of particular imagery because they are aware he does not see many British service people as legitimate, despite the fact that the British military has always had a range of ethnicities and religions.  This trend of the BNP would be easier to contain if there was not a parallel pressure from the tabloid media.  I am not accusing them of backing the BNP but they certainly are seeking the regimentation of remembrance.  There have been demands that footballers should wear embroidered poppies on their kits.  A lot of this stems from an attitude that a 'real' man backs the military and is in line with other things such as a Veterans' Day.  These trends seek to move away from a sombre, sober remembrance of conflict to something more celebratory of the military.  The rise of the charity Help for Heroes, is not a bad thing in itself and they do good work, but that more exclamatory title as opposed to the calmer, British Legion, unfortunately is being hijacked by those who feel that we should all be compelled to celebrate the military.  It is interesting the shift in the British Legion's poppy campaign this year to using more of the current photographs that Help for Heroes does.

The issue is particularly poignant at present because every week British soldiers are dying.  Things are reducing in Iraq but Afghanistan is dragging on as a British soldier from the 1840s or a Soviet one from the 1980s could have told you it would.  The Retreat from Kabul in 1842 may be seen as a shameful action on the British Army's part but it did prevent thousands of men dying there in subsequent years.  The mixing up of remembrance with celebration of the current military now is almost becoming, if you do not support the current battles then somehow you are shaming the previous dead.  This is a difficult leverage to contest and it was particularly notable that in pictures of parliament not a single MP was not wearing a poppy and absolutely everyone on television wears one.  It has been a uniform that everyone in the public eye must wear or face being challenged that they do not care about Britain's military; not even that they do not remember previous sacrifices. It has been great for the British Legion who have sold record numbers of poppies and the funds are useful for those soldiers coming back wounded from Britain's various current wars, but to some degree, the whole thing is becoming regimented even mechanised.

Politicians feel pressured by the media as they know that any one of them who has no poppy will be ridiculed or severely attacked in the press.  Any complaints around militarism and certainly initiatives like the white poppy movement which arose in the 1980s are now excluded from debate.  As was noted in 'The Guardian' civilian casualties of war are ignored entirely in this process, partly, I imagine because of the resentment against asylum seekers who are blamed for so much, but of course, in many cases are fleeing from the wars that the tabloids want to celebrate.

Militarism now dominates the media; it is a baseline assumption for so much of what we are presented.  Of course, while I was hoping for for greater attention to remembrance, the right-wing has been more successful in using remembrance to leverage participation in militaristic attitudes.  Some generals are seeking to separate out these different approaches, but these are subtle things that the bulk of the population does not have the time or inclination to work on.  Alongside the assumption that immigration is wrong, that racism is acceptable, that the EU (or insert whichever international body you favour) only does Britain harm, that the death penalty is naturally right, we now have the assumption that militarism is good, it makes Britain strong and anyone who does not support that line is weak and a traitor.  Such characteristics are seen in all authoritarian and Fascist states.

Remembrance has been taken by the popular media and those people who run it to promote militarism and this trend has stepped up a gear in 2009.  This creates fertile ground for extremism.  It also betrays the bulk of the people who have died fighting for Britain.  The bulk of them never went to war to defend an ideal of a militarised Britain, they went because they had to or at least because they felt it made their families safer.  Many of the people who died fighting for Britain were not white and were not Christian but they still died fighting for a country that seems increasingly likely to deny their right to be acknowledged as Britons.  We need vigorous steps to depoliticise remembrance, to bring militarism out into the open and keep it away from the proper remembering of those who sacrificed so much.  Otherwise this trend will simply create a country eager for a larger military and even more battles across the world which will lead to even more mutilated and dead service people and civilians.

Nick Griffin on the BBC

What is interesting about the appearance of the leader of the fascist British National Party (BNP), Nick Griffin on the BBC political programme 'Question Time' on Thursday, is how it has actually made politics headline news. The particular episode of the programme attracted 8 million viewers, three times the normal level and for the first time exceding the popular entertainment show on BBC1 on Saturday nights, 'Strictly Come Dancing'. If you missed the programme a lot of it is available online (for the moment) at: Http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/default.stm

Everyone seems upset about the event. The BBC said it went ahead with featuring Griffin because it feared that if they did not feature the BNP on the programme they would be sued. At present, though its policies on the race of members has been condemned as illegal, the BNP is a legitimate political party in the UK and it has two MEPs in the European Parliament. The BBC thus seems to have acted out of fear. You could also argue that any party that attracts sufficient votes to get two MEPs is sufficiently significant that it could be ignored and if it had been then the BBC could not have featured other small parties such as the Green Party.


Others fear that featuring Griffin gave free publicity to his racist views. Peter Hain, MP, a strong campainger against apartheid condemned the decision to let Griffin appear. Ministers are concerned it has given publicity to the BNP's views. Listening to BBC radio it was clear that of those who rang in, more supported the BNP's views than those who opposed them. Griffin and his supporters were far from happy about the event despite getting the widest coverage the party has received. The questions on 'Question Time' come from the audience and the BBC over the thirty years the programme has been running has always tried to get a balance of gender, ages, ethnicity and political perspective from audience members no matter what part of the country the programme is coming from (it moves from town to town each week). In my view the real left has always been under-represented, but I respect the BBC's efforts. Griffin complains the BBC put together a 'lynch mob' that only had questions directed at him and in a negative way. Clearly, very arrogantly, he had expected to go on the programme and be able to expound his racist views with minimal challenge. I think because the BNP feels its views are 'common sense' they think the bulk of white British people will accept them without challenge, whereas in fact the majority of us are abhorred by them.


Griffin whines that only a couple of questions were not directed at him. Again, he shows terrible naivety. Members of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties appear weekly and people like Jack Straw (currently Justice Secretary) have been on the programme numerous times; there has been loads of opportunity to question them on this programme and in other places. This was the first occasion anyone from a neo-Nazi party has appeared on a British political programme, no wonder people are going be fascinated. Even if he or one of his colleagues appears again in the future, I imagine they will never have such a fascination for the audience as he did on this first occasion. In addition, of course, Griffin sees his policies almost as bland, common sense and seems oblivious (wilfully or not) to the fact that they provoke a harsh reaction from people across British society. Griffin does not consider blacks or Asian British people as British, he gives them no designation, but say he sees them as foreigners, would he expect any different response to his views if he was speaking to a French audience or an American one? Griffin's horizons are so narrow that he does not realise the implications of the arena he is wanting to step into.


Griffin claims that the particular episode of 'Question Time' was 'not a genuine Question Time' and that it was distorted to discredit him. He is angry that it was held in London (though he would have known this in advance) saying the city was 'no longer British'; he feels that London is 'not my country any more' which seems a bizarre statement. He says it should have been held in Burnley, Stoke or Thurrock, places 'where there are still significant numbers of English and British people and they haven't been ethnically cleansed from their own country'. It is clear Griffin lives in some fantasy world. Ethnic minorities make up only 17% of the UK population, the large majority of Britons are still white and the bulk of the audience, even in London which Griffin sees as some strange country, rather than housing 10 million (71.2% of whom are white) of Britain's 65 million people. Does this suggest that Griffin envisages a UK like South Africa was under apartheid with different 'tribal' groups assigned to 'homelands'? Or does he, even more sinisterly, envisage tufing millions of Britons, at least 7 million of whom are white, out of their homes in London to 'bring it back into' the UK. Now we are moving into the realm of ghettos and deportation so characteristic of Nazis.


It is clear that the programme was a shock to Griffin who clearly believed if he could get his message across he would be welcomed with open arms. The BNP claim that since the programme they have gained 3000 new members. That is not surprising, fortunately the BNP does not get much coverage so simply appearing is going to stir people who support his views to join him, I am sure the same would happen if a member of the Green Party or the Scottish Nationalist Party appeared.


Griffin is going to whine because that is what he does. Everything about the politics of the BNP is based on a distorted view of people and of the UK and then whining about it. What was more worrying was Conservative Baroness Warsi also on the programme telling Justice Secretary, Jack Straw that the mainstream parties need to be 'more honest' about immigration policy to see off the spread of the BNP. Personally I feel that the current government already distorts the news about immigration in favour of the racists and the policies of the Border Agency have helped to whip up racism. However, it does show that any future Conservative government is liable to be tempted to adopt even more racist policies and poor Peter Hain is likely to find himself living in a country increasingly like the South Africa that his family fled.

The danger, shown by Warsi's comment is that the Conservatives, who many are assuming will form the next government, are the ones most in fear of the increase of the BNP (and probably even more so of the less-racist nationalist party UKIP which has 17 MEPs) and so will begin introducing mild racist legislation as a way to draw support away from the BNP.  Of course, there have always been racists in the Conservative Party but they had tended to be kept under control by moderates within the party and by those who actually believe in multi-cultural Britain (which the BNP denies is reality).  However, in the context in which the BNP might be appearing to win support from the Conservatives it will allow the extremists within the Conservative Party to press for discriminatory policy.  Whilst that will not bring on the dystopia the BNP want, it will lead to tens of thousands of individual tragedies and will stoke up racist attacks and discriminatory behaviour rather than defuse it.


Anyone of my generation (I am now 42) can probably remember the 'no platform' dispute of the 1980s. This was the argument at colleges, polytechnics and universities over whether people expressing racist views should be allowed to speak at campuses. The argument from groups like the Socialist Workers' Student Societies (SWSS) was that to allow such people to speak was to give them 'the oxygen of publicity' which would attract support to their cause. Others such as the Labour clubs, argued that in a democracy you had to let everyone speak however vile their views, because otherwise you were imposing censorship something you were fighting against fascists to prevent happening. Policies ebbed and flowed with various speakers barred or allowed to speak. I always favoured letting these people speak so that everyone could at least see what their views really entailed rather than making judgements on assumptions and rumours. In addition, it meant those who opposed them had to have policies that addressed the kind of concerns that such speakers raised. If left-wingers and moderate right-wingers do not face challenges then they get complacent and do not work out or articulate policy (part of the problem with the Conservative Party at present).


Extremists are often their own worst enemies, particularly as so much of their policies tend to be one dimensional and simply complaining about how they feel things are rather than offering any positive alternative. Griffin was caught out when asked about his previous denial of the Holocaust and his persisting dispute over the number of people killed by Nazi Germany and its allies. He admitted he did not know why he thought about it the way he had before (outright denial) which for a politician seemed very weak. To natural BNP supporters even if they were not already in the party, no matter how weak Griffin's performance had been they would have seen it as wonderful and now are complaining that effectively he was not able simply to make a party political speech based on his distorted assumptions of history and of Britain today. However, to more wavering viewers, I can expect that at least some have seen that Griffin is simply full of hatred founded on a perception which bears relevance to the actual UK we live in.


Naturally the focus is on his policies on ethnic minorities, but no-one I have heard has asked him, assuming the BNP came to power, it would treat the Irish population of the UK. He keeps on mentioning the British and the English forgetting that one of the four components of the UK, Northern Ireland, actually has English and British (Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales; the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) minority. Would people from Northern Ireland be barred from coming to the mainland? Would they be barred from jobs in Britain? That is just one element in the many holes in Griffin's nasty set of policies.


I am happy for any BNP member to appear on political programmes because they cannot but help show how mentally weak they are and that all they do is based on policies of complaint and destruction of British society and its economy. They have to learn that their previously privileged position of being able to stand above the political scene and simply snipe is over and that they will face hostility when they speak in public arenas. These are not closed BNP meetings where Griffin and his cronies are speaking among friends, these are places where an audience exposed to virulent, hateful policies are more than likely to respond equally as forcefully, just as we saw on Thursday. Grow up Nick Griffin, you are in real politics now, do not expect the easy ride you have had up until last Thursday to last any longer.

The Return of Battles on the Streets of Britain?

I did think of titling this 'Panic on the Streets of Britain' but thought that would imply this was something about records by the band The Smiths. Ironically I was recently told about a single released by comedy trio The Goodies (Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie) in 1975 called 'Panic' which apparently sums up the British response to crises which seemed as prevalent in the 1970s as they do today, notably concerning over-population, oil prices and industrial unrest and as a response to all three, shortages. Today's topic is very much about the concerns of living in Britain and is more serious than these media examples focus on. This is the potential for street battles involving fascist groups, notably the English Defence League (EDL) and anti-fascists and the police (who sometimes take up a position in the middle). The well-known plan last Sunday was for the EDL to disrupt the annual Quds Day march from Marble Arch to Trafalgar Square in London, concerning the Palestinian situation notably by the Islamic Human Rights Commission. You can read reports on what happened all over the internet. The Metropolitan Police skills in handling demonstrations may not be highly skilled as the murder at and the poor handling of the anti-G20 demonstration this year showed, but fortunately were capable enough of keeping the small groups of EDL away from the demonstration though they were still able to shout abuse at the marchers. There were about 40 anti-fascists who had arrived to interpose themselves, and appear to have been welcomed by the marchers (who themselves included members of the Stop The War (in Iraq) campaign) and the police said they could not guarantee their safety, but fortunately the day passed off without the violent clashes that the media had feared.

An interesting eye-witness report from one one of the anti-fascists can be seen at: http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/09/another-washout-for-english-defence.html The blog is called Lenin's Tomb and seems to be run by an old-fashioned British Communist (or maybe more accurately Bolshevik) but does not get hysterical. The report by Sadie Gray in 'The Independent' gives quite a different impression of what happened: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/antiislamists-target-palestinian-rally-in-central-london-1786622.html indicating that the Quds March ended up in Pall Mall on police direction with the fascists holding Trafalgar Square. Fortunately the numbers of EDL seem to have been limited.

Obviously there have been fascist movements in the UK bubbling in the background and flaring up as in the 1970s and again in the early 2000s. I am sure that the degree of success of the BNP (British National Party) in the last European Parliament elections and Nick Griffin their leader scheduled to appear on BBC1 political show, 'Question Time' in the next few months, has given heart to fascists. It is a shame that the BNP has not been faced with legal challenges on the basis of its racially restricted membership, as was raised back in 2004. However, as we have single-ethnic professional groups (as the BNP pointed out itself in reference to the Black Lawyers' Association) as well as single-gender ones, I guess that it would have been hard to make such cases stick.

Current developments seem to be alarming politicians. I suppose that this is because the EDL is a new kind of fascist grouping, not seeking the respectability of the BNP and yet far more visible than terrorist (or would-be terrorist) groups like Combat 18 (the 18 comes from the numbers of the letters AH in the alphabet; AH standing for Adolf Hitler). The fact that the Greater London Authority (GLA) diverted the Quds Day march from Trafalgar Square where it has assembled since 1982 indicates to some extent the fear of racial battles. To some degree the GLA under Boris Johnson is a captainless ship and never knows how to cope with real issues as opposed to sentimentalist, headline grabbing initiatives. The GLA's playing with control of the Metropolitan Police and so many of Johnson's aides having to resign must be distracting them from effective approaches to the issues which are arising as the recession persists.

John Denham, Secretary of State for Communities, so in charge of governmental response to racial issues did point to the history of fascist marches in East London through Jewish areas in the 1930s, notably the so-called Battle of Cable Street. I used to live very near Cable Street, though in fact the 'battle' was spread right over a large area of East London from Aldgate underground station, North-East to Victoria Park and then South to the Burdett Road-Mile End Road junction where a tram was turned over and farther South to Cable Street itself, now a quiet street primarily distinguished by the commemorative mural (interestingly there had been race riots in the area as early as Summer 1919). Back in 1996 I took part in an anniversary march through Whitechapel then round to Cable Street. It attracted a wide range of people and I was most privileged to meet three German volunteers who had fought on the side of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War thus risking death both in Spain and if they ever returned to Nazi Germany.

The Battle of Cable Street is a complex event. The battle was not really between Sir Oswald Moseley's British Union of Fascists and anti-Fascists but between each of these two groups and the police. Anti-Fascists secured Victoria Park as the rule was whoever was speaking there first had the right to remain there, so they occupied it from 6 a.m. to keep the Fascists out. The park had long been used for political rallies, especially around dock strikes and is still a venue for liberal-minded events. Police were seized by anti-Fascists and some had hot water poured on them from houses, some were locked in garages and had their helmets confiscated. The police remain as popular in the area today! However, the fact that police persuasion and direction kept the two groups apart actually reduced the danger of a full-scale riot. What could have happened was seen after the war in the Nottingham and Notting Hill race riots of 1958. Of course, the absence of full-scale riots tends to blind us from the day-to-day racially motivated violence that happens against individuals and small groups. We also seem to have very short-term memories about race riots and those of us not living in the particular towns have already forgotten the riots in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in 2001. The pattern of racial riots is also becoming complicated by fighting between British Asians and newer immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe. Denham is right to remind us of Britain's troubled history, but there are more recent examples he can point to as well.

Unlike the BNP, the EDL established by football hooligan groups, notably from Luton, is looking for confrontation by carrying out marches and notably contesting Islamic and Islamist demonstrations. Their focus is very much anti-Muslim rather than anti-Black but this may simply reflect the nature of the towns members are drawn from. The BNP has distanced itself from the EDL but unsurprisingly former BNP members are members of the EDL. As the BNP becomes seen as more 'respectable' those young men who want an excuse for a fight will turn to other more active groups. There have been clashes in Luton, Birmingham (on two occasions, leading to 125 arrests) and London, notably in Harrow which has a large South Asian population. At the Harrow Central Mosque 2.000 Islamic youths gathered to defend the location from an EDL march.

It is unsurprising that as in the 1930s, with unemployment high (today reaching 2.47 million, the highest since 1995), there are numerous young men around, brought up in the very macho culture for males (ironically influenced heavily by rap culture from American blacks) and now with little hope of work. They see foreigners as being to blame and easily equate local Asians with recent immigrants. Of course, propagandists from the fascist groups give them that easy lie. In fact people from ethnic minorities can be four times as likely to be unemployed as their white equivalents, but may have more family support. Football hooliganism always appealed to such men, especially in the 1970s before it became an issue of dressing in designer wear to carry out violence as it became in the 1980s, but the desire for violence remains. Give the tacit racism which is so prevalent in the UK, these men can even feel they are doing 'the right thing', something noble that will be respected by their white neighbours. For these men, to some degree unlike the 1930s Fascists, there is not really any political creed just a hatred that has been stoked up. Social networking sites can make members feel they are part of a large and sophisticated organisation which may keep them loyal and active whereas in the past their interest may have wavered.

In addition, the government has played right into the fascists' hands since 2001. By trying to alarm us to the supposed dangers of Islamist terrorism as basis for a war to secure Iraqi oil, they have legitimised racist attitudes towards Asians, whether they are Muslim, Hindu or Sikh or even atheist. When you see the prime minister going on about the threats and you hear about policies to make entrance into Britain harder and teachers and university lecturers are expected to monitor their students for extremist activity you are almost compelling British people to be prejudiced. Naturally this fans the flames of anger and violence in those predicated to being racists anyway. When the government says it is alright to combat Islamists and to a great degree suggests that anyone from an Asian background can be under suspicion, then naturally fascists feel they have no need to curb their behaviour; they have a green light from the government.

Are we going to see a repeat of the 1930s as Denham expects? These things were never as severe in Britain as they were say in France or certainly Germany of the 1930s and the British never seem to adhere to any kind of political extremism for long. Rioting in Britain typically occurs during hot summers and the desultory weather of the past couple of years has probably dampened the kind of violence we might have seen if the promised heatwave had actually appeared this year. What happens next depends on many factors, not simply the weather. If the war in Iraq really begins to wind down, and more importantly people like Gordon Brown and even Tony Blair who has recently been whining on about how terrorism remains the greatest threat, stop seeking to scare the population and using Islamic people as an easy target we may stand a chance of dousing the current fad for anti-Islamism. There will always be extremists in any population, they reckon at any one time 3-4% of the UK population is on the extreme right and the same percentage on the extreme left politically, though that balance seems to have shifted a great deal and the fascist figure is probably climbing well above the revolutionaries' one. Of course, only a fraction of this fraction will be out of the street with the others being sympathisers providing funds and succhor to the real radicals.

Referring back to the 1930s, Denham forgets one key factor, one that was even present in the 1970s and that was popular anti-fascism. I came across an Anti-Nazi League badge from the 1970s in a retro shop the other day. I remember slogans like 'Black and White Unite Against Racism' and that is an important element, it cannot simply be white liberals (if there are any left) to oppose racism, there needs to be an alliance across races and generations. This is what the commemorative Cable Street march showed in 1996 and why we have seen success with campaigns as diverse as opposing power stations, the Iraq War and even in support of fox hunting. Of course, the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) formed in 1977 and still in existence today is an adjunct organisation to the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) a Trotskyite revolutionary party, but an incredibly visible and active radical party in the 1970s and 1980s not least in being the key supplier of placards for protest marches. SWP have a broader revolution than simply contesting fascism but formed a bedrock for such activity.

Not associated with any political party, it is vital to mention the monthly anti-fascist magazine 'Searchlight' which started in 1975 and has links across Europe to anti-fascist groups and UK trade unions: ACCORD, ANSA, AMICUS-AEEU, AMICUS-MSF, AMO, ASLEF, BFAWU, BECTU, CWU, CYWU, CONNECT, FBU, GMB, GPMU, MU, NAPO, NASUWT, NUM, RMT, NUT, PCS, PFA, T&GW, TSSA, UCU, UNIFI, USDAW and UNISON, helped by their Trade Union Friends of Searchlight (TUFS) campaign which began in 2004 and which has its own periodical. It has support from people like Glenys Kinnock, MEP and the General Secretary of the TUC (Trades Union Congress). For more information see: http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php

From this site I followed a link to Philosophy Football, a company which makes political teeshirts: http://www.philosophyfootball.com The ones I find most interesting are those with designs drawn from banners and slogans of the Soviet side of the Eastern Front of the Second World War (which seems rather hypocritical as even though Stalin was fighting Nazis, he was a tyrant and racist). More appopriate appear to be those from the Spanish Civil War, I imagine Clement Attlee (UK prime minister 1945-51) never envisaged he would have his name on a teeshirt in the 21st century via the Banner of the Number 1 Major Attlee Company, British Battalion of the International Brigade. Attlee had been a major and was leader of the non-National Government Labour Party at the time of the Spanish Civil War. Someone said that fascism often wins supporters by its 'glamour' and so I suppose in attracting young people anti-fascists have to at least appear 'cool'. Money from the sale of these teeshirts goes to the International Brigades Memorial Trust.

Since beginning this posting I have been looking at the group, Unite Against Racism (founded in 2004; acronym UAR), possibly sceptically because I feared that they might be a front for another revolutionary party, but given the backing of various unions (who are usually not revolutionary, in fact can be pretty conservative in outlook): Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), National Association of Schoolmasters and Women Teachers (NASUWT), National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), National Union of Teachers (NUT), National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), University and College Union (UCU) and UNITE (many of whom also back 'Searchlight') and the fact that the email connects to a UCU email address suggests this is really a Guardian-reading kind of group. They even have a list of pop bands who are allied to the movement, more mainstream than those that backed Rock Against Racism (RAR) in the late seventies and early eighties. Some I have never heard of and some you would expect like Madness, Bernard Butler, Jarvis Cocker and Franz Ferdinand; perhaps David Gray and the Kings of Leon are less expected. I have also just noticed that there is also a list of MPs which usually suggests it is not a Trotskyite body!

The point I was going to bring out about the difference from the 1936 or 1977 to today is how little political activity there is today. The people selling 'Socialist Worker' newspaper on Saturdays in shopping precincts or at campuses have long gone. In student elections there are no political parties, just individual independent candidates. Grass roots political parties seem non-existent. The most political activity is focused on environmental concerns such as power stations and airport expansion and conversely opposing wind farms and in support of fox hunting. In some ways environmental concerns, though vital, are apolitical and certainly can straddle across a wide spectrum of people. What I fear is lacking over contesting fascism in the past are the people to get out on the streets and oppose it. I am not saying we should have street battles as in Germany of the early 1930s, what I am saying is that people need to show that fascism is unacceptable in every town and that people opposing it are not just from ethnic or religious minorities but from all sectors of every community. The absence of that kind of resistance means that it is more likely that violence will appear. In addition, the police attitude seems to remain as ambivalent as when ANL member Blair Peach was murdered in 1979. I am not expecting special privileges for the anti-fascists over the fascists, just equitable treatment and to not see every protest as inherently violent and thus needing to be met with pre-emptive violence as was the case at the G20 protest. However, I think that in our apolitical age, when people are referring to Socialism as extinct and thinking about your society and people in it does not even cross the mind of the bulk of the population, the EDL and other extremists will find minimal or no resistance to their marches and if they do it will only be on the basis of self-defence from minorities rather than founded on disgust on the part of broader society.

UAR is not a cool, radical group that young people want to be part of, partly because our society has had politics flushed from it and they simply think about their own comfort. Even students now have to worry about getting to their job to pay their fees rather than protesting against prejudice and injustice. Middle Britain, never happy with anything politicised, thinks it likes it that way, but seems oblivious to the fact that it has drained away the balance that extremism has to face if it is not to spread further and so, in turn, those Middle Britons will find cars in their street smashed, they will find the corner shop burnt out, they will find strict police regulation that they will get caught up in. Thus, to John Denham's statement about a risk of returning to 1936, I would argue that if it went back to what happened in 1936 it is not going to be half as bad as what I fear may happen in 2009 with only 40 protestors against rising numbers of fascists. I am not one for censoring fascists, they can hang themselves by their own statements, but the government is wrong if it thinks that as in 1936 popular resistance and time will make the problem go away.


Researching this posting I noted that Garry Aronsson, a leading member of the BNP lists as one of his hobbies: 'devising slow and terrible ways of paying back the Guardian-reading cunts who have betrayed the British people into poverty and slavery. I AM NOT JOKING.' So I have a lot to look forward to if he ever comes to power! It is funny to think that reading 'The Guardian' is an act of defiance and begs the question: are readers of 'The Independent' exempt? I wonder who Aronsson thinks he is enslaved to that he can make such horrific statements without being arrested or silenced? As to the poverty, well, I think he should knock on the door of many white American mortgage lenders before he looks elsewhere. In the current climate, if he was black he would be four times more likely to be unemployed than he is as a white man. In addition, Aronsson seems to have a low opinion of the British public if he thinks that they could be 'betrayed' by people like me, I certainly wish I had the power. Looking at the history of Britain the country over the past decades has been run by readers of the 'Daily Telegraph' and more recently 'The Universe' rather than 'The Guardian'. Of course they have all done a great deal more for this country than Aronsson could even dream of achieving.

Nick Griffin and the Poppy

You may have seen the open letter from the British Legion to Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP (British National Party) and now an MEP. For those who do not know, the BNP is Britain's largest Fascist party who believe that anyone who is not purely Caucasian cannot be British. Some members of the BNP have said that Griffin and his fellow MEP, Andrew Brons should not represent non-white constituents in their area. The BNP has labelled Dame Kelly Holmes, Olympic gold medal winner and a real role model in sport (and served in the British Army for a number of years) as not being British because she is of mixed-race origin. The BNP are happy for these people to die fighting to defend Britain's interests but will not give them the recognition of being British. The BNP refer to British citizenship as legal concept unrelated to what they see as the 'indigenous population'. As I have said before, that means expelling everyone who arrived since the Celts were dominant in the British Isles; Welsh/Gaelic/Cornish should become the national language.

This sense of the BNP that black, Asian and mixed race people are good enough to die for Britain but not good enough to be British comes particularly to the fore in Nick Griffin wearing the poppy. I accept that any person can wear the poppy symbol (and it is not the real flower, it is the plastic/paper ones produced by the British Legion to raise funds for disabled service people and their families) around the time of Remembrance Sunday in November, but in June and associated with an election it is wrong. Remembrance has always crossed all political boundaries. People might disagree about going into the particular wars but they do not disagree about the sacrifice. The vast bulk of people who have been maimed or died in Britain's wars have not been professionals, rather they have been ordinary people pressed into fighting and have generally died horribly and in a state of terror that few of us could comprehend. Griffin walking around with the poppy, clearly trying to draw some of the machismo associated with the armed forces to him, is incredibly offensive. We know that he views people's lives as having different values. He sees a white person's life as worth something and a black person's life as worthless. When that person is blown to pieces by a shell or a landmine in Afghanistan and their blood and bone is sprayed all over a road, can you tell whether that person was black or white or mixed race? A person defines themselves as of value by how they act not by whose legs they came past when being born. Everyone can take their lives far away from their roots or cling firmly to them; it is not pre-defined. What defines them as contributing to the UK or not is how they live their lives.

Fascists naturally assume that they have a monopoly on all the things they see as 'strong' notably patriotism and anything connected with the military. What they forget is that the bulk of patriots and certainly military personnel actually disagree with the stance people like the BNP take. If you are being shot at by insurgents in Basra, you are not going to check the colour of the skin of the men around you who are helping you stay alive. This is not to say that there are not patriots and military personnel who are racist, it is just to challenge the easy assumptions people like Griffin make about others views, based on their own perceptions of these things. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to give it, its full title means different things to many people but to the bulk of them, not the twist the BNP puts on it. To assume, 'oh yes, of course everyone in the British Legion must support our views, because they were in the military weren't they' is a massive error on the part of the BNP. They forget that hundreds of thousands of Britons died killing Fascists and Nazis and bringing down their regimes. The British Fascists took no part because they were imprisoned, rightly be suspect as potential traitors: that is the heritage of BNP not the real sacrifice of ordinary people in war to free the world of their brand of politics.

Nick Griffin's life is worthless. He simply brings misery wherever he goes. He insults the millions of men and women of so many ethnicities without which Britain would have suffered far more in its history than it did. The recent case of the Gurkhas shows that Britain possibly even more than any other country in the world has had armed forces drawn from an incredibly wide range of ethnic groups. Nick Griffin has no honour in him, because he cannot bring himself to honour non-white people who have fought to defend the country he pretends to love. I am glad that the British Legion have spoken publicly at him hijacking their symbol for his own sordid activities. They are honourable, they wrote to him privately first, but being the low-life that he is, he ignored them. Of course, Fascists are highly arrogant and believe the rest of us see the world wrongly. As they were shown in the Second World War, it is they who have the view of the world wrong and we need to be robust in emphasising that there can be no successful world if there is no tolerance of all the peoples living on it.