Is it only the destitute that have dignity? – By Triixcayy.
May Day in Caen.
As parts of Britain wallowed in UKIP xenophobia, members of Solent Solidarity Federation joined our comrades in CNT-AIT Caen for their May Day celebrations as guests of the local. The annual parade through the historic town was well supported with a significant Anarchist bloc, though we understand general attendance was a little down on previous years.
The Babylon were mostly conspicuous by their absence, only a handful of cops about, in contrast to the enormous police operation that would inevitably accompany such a rally in the U.K.
Our parade was followed by a picnic in the sun; we enjoyed great hospitality, had many political discussions, sang a bit and generally had a good laugh.
This is what May Day is all about; the Working Class has no country, Solidarity Forever!
Meanwhile in Portland..
And Madrid:
Roundup from Stop MFE Brighton 2013.
On the other side of the road are several hundred of us who don’t care for cages.
As you all know by now, a neo-nazi front group called March For England comes to Brighton every year to incur the wrath of the inhabitants by shouting fascist slogans in a police kettle; in addition to the pathetic spectacle above, a handful of portly fashion victims called casuals united, NWI, CFX, ETC, ect went off-piste (off pissed?) to incur some proper wrath. After all their secret discussions we earwigged on, the best strategy they could come up with was dressing up as anarchists(?) Given that we all know them, and each other, this was clearly going nowhere… Oh, I’m bored with this.
Here’s a collection of accounts from participants and observers:
March for England 2013 - UK Indymedia
Brighton 24th April 2013 – Something For Everyone!!! - ANTI-FASCIST NETWORK
boneheads battered in brighton – East Midlands Anti-fascists
MOBS AND COPPERS ..an anti-fascist day out by the seaside. by Schnews
MfE battered and humiliated on the streets of Brighton – EDL news
Snapshots from Brighton – amilabosnae.
ENGLISH FASCISTS TOOK THEIR FIRST BEATING OF THE SUMMER IN BRIGHTON THIS WEEKEND – Vice Magazine
Fascists mistake Brighton Pavilion for a mosque and bleat about it on twitter.
Martin on Thatcher’s demise.
“You get better riots under the conservatives.”
Bristol Radical History Group at the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair Saturday 20th April, 2013
Bristol Radical History Group will be holding a series of talks at the Radical History Zone which will be based in the Hydra Bookshop.
| Sat 20th Apr | 12:00 pm | British armed forces’ strikes and mutinies in 1918-19 | British armed forces’ strikes and mutinies in 1918-19: a radical history project for the anniversary of World War I BRHG’s very own Roger Ball… | Roger Ball | More |
| Sat 20th Apr | 1:00 pm | Three Minutes to Midnight: The Women’s Anti-Nuclear Protest at Greenham Common | Elaine Titcombe. History PhD Student, The University of the West of England, Bristol. In 1984 the doomsday clock reached three minutes to midnight…. | Elaine Titcombe | More |
| Sat 20th Apr | 2:00 pm | Poor Man’s Heaven: The Land of Cokaygne and Other Utopian Visions | “We’ll eat all we please from ham and egg trees that grow by a lake full of beer? The landlord well take and tie to a stake and we won?t have to… | Alex (Past Tense) | More |
| Sat 20th Apr | 3:00 pm | Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power | Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Race, Class and Gender in the 60s U.S. This talk is based upon a series of books that… | Roger Ball | More |
| Sat 20th Apr | 4:00 pm | Running down Whitehall with a black flag | Running down Whitehall with a black flag. Memories of anarchism in the 1960s Di Parkin was a revolutionary activist from the early 1960s to the… | Di Parkin | More |
| Sat 20th Apr | 5:00 pm | Libres: Songs of the Spanish Revolution | Pilar Lopez’s performance about the Spanish Social Revolution of 1936 aims to draw inspiration from these amazing times, sharing the beauty and… | Pilar Lopez | More |
Day of action in memory of Dead Thing.
A group of us travelled up to London to attend the ‘thatcher’s dead’ party called by Class War about a decade ago. During the day we divided ourselves between UK Uncut’s ‘bedroom tax’ action at Lord Fraud’s house and North London SolFed’s workfare pickets in Wood Green.
On the lawn at Iain Duncan Smith’s & down Lord Freud’s street – Report by Anarchist Federation
The workfare pickets continued both SolFed’s campaign against Poundland and supported Bristol AFed’s new initiative against Homebase; we were able to have some interesting conversations with staff and customers. The area is stricken by the government’s austerity programme with the crappiest jobs imaginable drawing hundreds of applicants. People here are in absolutely no doubt what is being done to them, why, and by whom. Homebase pickets were simultaneously conducted in Bristol and Bath.
I was going to buy something – but fuck it! Bristol Solidarity Federation.
Meanwhile in Bournemouth: Bournemouth Uncut took on the Tory MP’s and councillors of Bournemouth and Poole this weekend for their “Who wants to evict a millionaire?” action. Their homes were dressed as crime scenes with yellow markers, crime scene tape, evidence bags with ‘blood’ soaked cotton buds, and some lovely eviction notices. Some of the lucky recipients of our crime scenes were Robert Syms MP, John Beesley of Bournemouth Council, and other usual suspects like May Haines, Carol Evans, Ann Stibley, Mike White and Peter Pawlowski. At a time that people are facing losing their homes due to the bedroom tax, we thought it high time those architects of misery felt (for a few seconds) what it would be like to face eviction from their own homes. Very nice homes indeed…with plenty of spare bedrooms.
On to Trafalgar square, a picture circulated on twitter showing the square fenced off and surrounded by police proved to be bogus, trying to put us off? Not a hope, even the rain couldn’t do that, the vibe was joyful and good-natured, and solidarity was palpable. During the course of the evening a steady 3000 revellers divided their time between the square and surrounding pubs. A few incidents of police misbehaviour were swiftly and efficiently dealt with by the crowd, who had to clear them all out of the way from time to time; similarly, a smattering of fascists showed up to spoil the fun and got battered for their trouble. It’s worth pointing out that we can do this perfectly well without the ‘vanguard’ of press photographers that hurl themselves into the fray at the first hint of bother.
Of course this was not just about celebrating the death from natural causes of some demented old fascist (what was her name again?) who was admired in some circles for doggedly sticking to her principles of greed, self-interest and disdain for anyone who didn’t share her precise ethnic origins and social prejudices. Many present had their own lives blighted by the Dead Thing and had good reason to gloat; but far more importantly this was a positive affirmation of our determination to bury her mean-spirited ideology with her.
We, the working class will do this, we have no faith whatsoever in political or industrial representation, our future is in our hands, as the hangovers fade, let’s get organised!
That Trafalgar thing: Amila Bosnae
Thatcher Death Party, UK Uncut and DPAC Make It Personal – Johnny Void
Radical workers’ bloc at Tolpuddle 2013: Press release.
Download as pdf Download as word doc
Radical workers’ bloc at Tolpuddle; come and meet the Anarchists!
Martyrs’ festival and rally 19th-21st July 2013
In 2011 an anarchist-inspired black bloc stole the TUC’s thunder and dominated the ‘March for the alternative’. For a couple of hours, as Miliband set out his vision for saving capitalism – surrounded by bodyguards in case anyone remembered the last Labour government – militant workers in Oxford Street made a little piece of the country ungovernable.
At that year’s Tolpuddle festival a lonely red and black flag fluttered over the campsite. A small group of anarchists, who had basically come for the music, decided to join the Martyrs’ rally on the Sunday, but not wishing to march under the hammer and sickle or the Labour Party banner, scrounged a length of garden cane and tied a piece of plain black cloth to it. This image appeared on the front page of the Tolpuddle website.
The following year we decided to do it properly; local troublemakers Wessex Solidarity put out the following call through social media:
“Calling on Anarchists, Anarchosyndicalists, Libertarian Socialists, Revolutionary Unionists, Platformists, Wobblies, non-aligned working class radicals and all those who want to celebrate 200 years of class struggle without marching under the banner of a political party or the business unions that affiliate to them. Bring your red/black/(A)/pirate flags and let’s start putting the libertarian left back into the consciousness of our class. We’re portrayed as a disorganised rabble – show ‘em we can get organised and march together as a group.”
The annual celebration of working class struggle is meaningless without us, and allows reformists and reactionaries to claim the union movement as their own. Despite initial hysteria from some of the organisers, we conducted ourselves with dignity, even behaving magnanimously towards a bunch of tankies who pushed in front of us, they have only the past; we’ll take the future.
On the day, we were joined by members of the Anarchist Federation, Solidarity Federation, IWW, Class War and non-aligned Anarchist groups, from as far afield as Brighton, Bognor, Portsmouth, Thames Valley, Swindon, Bath, Bristol and the Midlands, many of us fresh from the counter – EDL action in Bristol. We also picked up some supporters along the way and got the thumbs up from quite a few people.
The 2013 bloc is going to be massive; this initiative has the formal support of AFed and SolFed and other groups are making plans to take part – with a bit of effort we could easily be the largest contingent there.
Stop by our stall in the Martyrs Marquee, or see us on the campsite for a cup of tea and a chat, and march with us on Sunday. If you or your group want to get involved, get in touch via the contact forms on SolFed or the Wessex Solidarity blog.
“Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!” – Otto von Bismarck
Far right humiliated in Nottingham. From East Midlands Anti-fascists.
In spite of national call outs and attendances by the North West Infidels, Paul Pitt of the South East Alliance, Casuals United, the English National Resistance, Nottingham EDL and the EVF, barely a dozen people bothered turning up for Tony Curtis’ demo at Nottingham Uni yesterday. After plotting up at a nearby Toby carvery the pitiful crowd weren’t even allowed onto the campus and had to stand around in the road outside listening to Tone the Moan. Casuals United reckon they go where they want but as usual they meekly went exactly where the police wanted them. They didn’t get close to the event they were supposed to be protesting or speak to the general public so the whole thing was a waste of time.
This is further proof that without the EDL these hangers on are nothing. It looks impressive to have alliances of about 10 different groups until you realise that each group has about 3 people in it and most of them are keyboard warriors. These big mouths spend more time designing elaborate logos and posting on Facebook than actually doing anything in the real world.
This is the second humiliation this week for Curtis who foolishly thought he could hold his own against “the left” on Indymedia. When his badly thought through arguments were torn to shreds he quickly surrendered, pretending he’d been banned, even though as one commenter pointed out, you can’t be banned from Indymedia. As one poster noted “typical fascist, making loads of noise but unable to back it up when effectively challenged”.
Part of Curtis’ whingeing was about being called a racist. Well here’s a tip – if you don’t want people to think you’re a racist it’s probably best not to give Nazis a hug. Curtis was recently pictured with his arm around Shane Calvert, leader of the NWI who are notorious for calling for the killing of “Pakis”, the gassing of Jews and murdering of immigrants. Calvert was recently in attendance at the neo-Nazi White Pride Worldwide event and regularly does demos alongside the National Front. Other NWI activists include Liam Pinkham, who likes to pose in jackboots giving a stiff-armed salute.
Paul Pitt, Shane Calvert and Tony Curtis yesterday
Shane Calvert
NWI activist Liam Pinkham
Anti-fascism is for everyone! New AFN leaflet.
On here we’re mostly preaching to the choir, or the enemy, and it can be hard explaining to your nearest and dearest why you do what you do, and why they should get involved. So our Dr Kilfash has come up with this friendly leaflet, suitable for your partners, your workmates and your gran.(Double sided A5)
Shameful – Pure Drop Inn hosts Nazi gathering in Poole.
As reported by the Anti Fascist Network, the recent fascist manifestation in Poole was traced to the Pure Drop Inn at 7 East Street, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1RY [map], described by locals as ‘a crapper’.
On the 23rd of March the pub played host to the lunatic fringe of Britain’s far-right; Dave Smeeton, organiser of March For England, teamed up with various other Neo-Nazi splinter groups, ‘English volunteer force’, ’Infidels’ and ‘Friends of golden Dawn’ to plan for this year’s forthcoming humiliation in Brighton, Barnet’s ginger gurner was there too. The Pure Drop sits in an overwhelmingly working class area, there is no place here for our class enemies and class traitors. Time for Poole residents to stand up and say: Not on our Manor!
Folk against fascism
Anti-Fascist Network
Come and meet the Anarchists!
