What can we learn from the Anti Nazi League?

A review of A People’s History of the Anti Nazi League (1977-1981) by Geoff Brown (Bookmarks, 2025), £12

The ascendancy of far-right and fascist forces in different parts of the world is one of the most significant features of the crisis-prone capitalism of the 2020s. In France, although Marine Le Pen, leader of the fascist National Rally, has been banned from running for political office for five years, her successor, Jordan Bardella, remains frontrunner for the 2027 presidential election. Another fascist party, the Alternative for Germany, is leading the polls in Germany. In Italy, a fascist, Georgia Meloni, leads the government. Her party, the Brothers of Italy, has its origins in the Italian Social Movement, created by Benito Mussolini’s allies following his ousting and execution. The second presidency of Donald Trump is increasingly defined by the brutality of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Under Trump, ICE has seen its deadliest year in two decades.1 It should be no surprise, given the tactics used by ICE—including kidnapping small children such as Liam Ramos to use as bait—that we have seen 32 murders during the opening year of Trump’s second term.2

In Britain, Nigel Farage and his far-right party, Reform UK, aspire to import many of the hallmarks of Trumpism to Britain, including ICE-style immigration enforcement.3 Their unprecedented success, now putting them at the top of polling ahead of the next general election, means Britain is increasingly heading in the same direction as the US and continental Europe. Reform UK has been the main beneficiary of the decline of the two parties dominating British politics since the first half of the 20th century. Its growth has emboldened far-right forces on the streets, as shown by the largest mobilisation led by a fascist in British history, when 100,000 people marched behind Tommy Robinson in September 2025.4

The current situation has provoked resistance—but also raised questions about the tactics for anti-fascist and anti-racist mobilisations. Geoff Brown’s A People’s History of the Anti Nazi League is a helpful contribution to these debates. The Anti Nazi League (ANL) brought together socialists, trade unionists, community organisations, unaffiliated anti-racists and some Labour Party members, forming a mass movement that would eventually break the fascist National Front (NF). The period covered by Brown runs from the ANL’s launch in 1977 to 1981. During the 1970s, the NF was the dominant political force on the far right, operating alongside a smaller Nazi group, the British Movement.5 Although there are important differences between today and the period discussed here, important lessons can be drawn from the successful fight against the NF.

More than just key battles

The success of the ANL, along with its partner organisation Rock Against Racism (RAR), is frequently seen as something to replicate today. For example, Labour MP John McDonnell, Your Party MP Zarah Sultana and various trade union leaders have made calls for a “new ANL” to confront the threat from the far right.6 To really apply the lessons of previous struggles, however, we need to understand the processes that produced these movements and the mass struggles against the NF. Two confrontations in 1977 would prove critical to launching the ANL, with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which would later be at the core of the ANL, playing a central role. The first was at Wood Green, north London, in April 1977, in the run up to local elections in May that year. The NF’s decision to hold its election rally in this area was a provocation, given Wood Green’s diverse make-up, with long-standing Jewish and Irish communities, alongside African-Caribbean, Cypriot and South Asian migrants. A temporary alliance was formed, involving 25 organisations, to stop the NF, resulting in a mobilisation in which anti-fascists outnumbered the NF two to one.7 Had it not been for the thousand-strong police cordon protecting the NF, the anti-fascists would have succeeded in stopping them from marching.8

In August 1977, a second battle took place in Lewisham, south east London.9 This would prove to be a turning point. As with Wood Green, an ad-hoc
coalition was formed to mobilise anti-racists and, crucially, African-Caribbean youth against a planned NF march. The coalition achieved its main objective: it stopped the NF passing through the centre of Lewisham, forcing them to hold their rally in a car park.10 Police tried to ensure the Nazis could march as planned, but it could not maintain control over the situation. The confrontation made national news, showing that the NF could be pushed back. The success on the day did not halt the NF, which continued to gain momentum on the streets and was still forecast to make a breakthrough in the approaching general election.11 It was in this context that many anti-racists and anti-fascists saw the need for a national organisation able to bring together various working-class forces in order to challenge the Nazis. A chapter in Brown’s book is dedicated to exploring how the ANL was launched, including the painstaking work involved in winning support from different forces, such as figures in the Labour Party, the Communist Party, which retained a large base in the organised working class, and other high-profile sponsors.

There is a widespread misconception that mass physical confrontation against the NF was all the ANL did. This aspect was certainly important, both in launching the ANL and its subsequent work. However, exposing the NF was also important in eventually defeating it. Much of the day-to-day work of ANL branches involved contesting the idea that the NF was a democratic political party.12 In workplaces, schools, town centres and even at football grounds, wherever there were activists prepared to organise, material was distributed explaining that the NF and its leading members stood in the tradition of Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In the run-up to the 1979 general election, five million leaflets were printed against the NF, their distribution reliant on thousands of activists.13

Although some of the ANL’s detractors have argued that the ultimate defeat of the NF was due to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, draining support away from the harder right, this argument is severely flawed.14 First, as the book details, the NF was continuing to gain momentum after Thatcher became leader of the Tories in 1975. Second, as Brown points out, while Thatcher was a racist—as evidenced by an interview the year before the election in which she spoke of Britain being “swamped” by immigrants—the campaign of the Conservatives focused on economics rather than immigration.15 This calls into question the notion that the NF supporters, heavily motivated by the hardened racism of the organisation, simply switched to supporting the Tories as a more effective vehicle for their views.

“Let a hundred flowers bloom”

Today, many movements rely on the idea that “horizontal” organising offers the best approach, with “hierarchy” and “centralism” holding movements back and thwarting their creativity. However, the history of the ANL and RAR shows how creativity and centralism do not need to be in opposition. The ANL had a steering committee and a headquarters, but it was not the case that they exercised total control over every aspect of the ANL’s work on the ground.16 Brown quotes the ANL’s secretary, SWP member Paul Holborrow, who, paraphrasing Mao Zedong, wanted “a hundred flowers to bloom”.17 Local groups were encouraged to take up the ANL banner and run with it. This allowed the organisation to root itself among groups such as railworkers, bus workers, hospital workers, civil servants, council workers and coal miners. The ANL had offshoots in movements against women’s oppression and for gay and lesbian rights, and among football fans and school students. Such groups were typically initiated by activists on the ground, rather than initiatives coming solely from the ANL’s headquarters.

An important thread running through Brown’s book, which helps connect this welter of local initiative to the overall approach of the ANL, is the tactic of the united front, which informed its practice. Applying this tactic is, as Brown shows, as much an art as a science. The adoption of the united front was inspired by the work of the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who developed the tactic in response to the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. Trotsky’s argument was that a united front could bring together different forces within the working class, with a shared interest in stopping fascist movements, and a limited agreement to confront them in practice. To mobilise large numbers, Trotsky argued, it was critical that revolutionaries could work with people to the right of them, often reformist forces in the working class. This should not involve downplaying political differences but rather uniting in action around a limited objective while continuing to debate tactics and wider political questions.18

As Brown argues, the united front provided the SWP with a theoretical basis for the ANL. However, applying and maintaining it in the context of Britain in the 1970s was certainly an art. The ANL did not just fight for the affiliation of trade unions, the Communist Party or sections of Labour, recognising that forces beyond the traditional labour movement were concerned about the NF. Important to the ANL’s reach would be the support of well-known and recognisable sponsors, from actors and musicians to football managers.19 This was not a substitute for a large base of activists on the ground, but it could help reach such activists. The high-profile sponsors also mattered because of the NFs strategy of “kicking its way down the headlines” and its initial success in getting airtime on television.

The art of the united front was also evident when it came to maintaining unity between forces with disagreements over how to fight the Nazis. The ANL included individuals and groups with different positions, from those influenced by non-violent tactics to those relying on physical confrontation. Although the SWP favoured some form of physical resistance, it mattered that the ANL did not take a formal position on this question, as it would have significantly narrowed the organisation, preventing the SWP from making its argument to a large audience.20

Making the label “racist” a dirty word

Another criticism sometimes made of the ANL is that, while it cared about the racism of fascists, it was insufficiently concerned with racism beyond that. Early consideration was given to launching a united front against both racism and fascism. This was ultimately rejected, due to concerns that it would narrow the ANL’s base. As Brown discusses, opposing racism would have meant taking a definitive position on issues such as immigration controls.21 The SWP strongly opposed all immigration controls, then as now, but it did not see acceptance of this position as a prerequisite for people to confront the NF. There were many who held a genuine commitment to stopping the NF, including many who saw themselves as anti-racists, who did not yet oppose controls on immigration. The SWP retained and continued to argue for opposition to all immigration controls. In response to changing circumstances and struggle, however, positions evolved over time. The election of the Tories in 1979 saw a new wave of legislation against immigration, helping revive the confidence of fascists, including the NF. As Brown details, this led to discussions at the ANLs conference in March 1981 and the launch of the Campaign Against Racist Laws (CARL) with a number of sponsors and supporters.22 The shift of the ANL in 1981, to take up anti-racist campaigning, was a response to a shift in the political situation, showing the organisation’s tactical flexibility.

Quite apart from this, the ANL did help push back racism. One legacy of the ANL is its proof of the viability of black and white unity in the fight against fascism. The experience helped demonstrate that white workers are willing to fight racism, exposing the lie that fascist movements represent “ordinary” workers. In fact, as the experience of the Nazis of the 1930s shows, such organisations are violently hostile to workers’ organisations and, once in power, seek to atomise workers. Similarly, Brown gives countless examples of how the NF would blame black and Asian people for issues such as the lack of affordable housing or poor pay and conditions, while actively supporting strike-breaking or cooperating with employers against union militants. This affirms Trotsky’s analysis of fascism as a counter-revolutionary movement, even if it can present itself as in opposition to elements of capitalism.23 Understood in this way, for white workers, black and white unity against fascism is not only a moral matter but one of solidarity against a common enemy.

Community organising and the united front

Another argument frequently encountered comes from activists who counterpose united fronts such as the ANL—or Stand Up to Racism today—to community organising. However, Brown gives insights into how community organising and united fronts can strengthen one another.

For instance, when Bangladeshi garment worker Altab Ali was murdered in east London in May 1978, the ANL, alongside the local trades council, the Tower Hamlets Against Racism and Fascism campaign and, crucially, local Asian community groups, organised a demonstration to demand justice.24 Some 7,000 people, many of them Bangladeshi, marched. Attacks and murders continued in the NF’s East End stronghold, with the organisation selling their publications on Brick Lane and, later in 1978, opening an office in nearby Hoxton, Hackney. Brown details the consistent campaign against them by the ANL, alongside newer local formations such as the Bengali Youth Movement Against Racialism and the more long-standing Bangladeshi Youth Front (BYF). The NF was eventually forced to cease its Sunday paper sales on Brick Lane and was pushed into fourth place in the area in the 1979 general election—particularly embarrassing for it as one of its leaders, John Tyndall, was the candidate for Hackney North & Shoreditch. In 1980, the NF closed its office in Hoxton.

However, there are also limits to community organising. No community is a monolith, and, among any community, political, social and economic tensions can emerge. For instance, there were disagreements over how to respond to three racist murders in Southall in the space of two weeks in May 1976, including that of the engineering student Gurdhip Singh Chaggar. Within the South Asian community in Southall at the time, the tendency was for elders to be more conservative and urge restraint, even in the face of horrific racist violence. By contrast, youth within the community tended to be more radical and willing to confront the fascists. On one of the marches following the murder of Chaggar, there was a clash over which chants to use on the demonstration. As Brown reports, the elders at the front of the march raised conciliatory slogans such as “heal the wounds” and “cooperation not conflict”. This contrasted sharply to the more militant slogans raised by the Asian youth on the march: “Adolf Powell is a murderer” and “we will beat up racialist thugs”.25 Such tensions were not unique to Southall; they existed in communities across the country. As Brown documents, the ANL tended to work closely with the most radical and militant layers of the community in order to push back the threat from the NF.

Conclusion

A People’s History of the Anti Nazi League is a welcome contribution to discussions on anti-fascism and anti-racism. The scores of archives and original interviews on which Brown draws offer insights and lessons from a key struggle in British history. These lessons ought to be carried into the anti-racist movement generally but also into united fronts, such as Stand Up to Racism today.

The book shows the continued importance of unity across racial lines and the impact common struggle has on those involved. This is best summarised by filmmaker Gurinder Chadha, describing her experience of seeing “white, English people…marching, chanting to help me and my family find our place in our adopted homeland” at the 1978 Victoria Park Carnival organised by RAR.26 Like Chadha, for many black and Asian people, the impact of the ANL was to show they were not alone and that there were people willing to stand with them against the NF.

The late giant of the anti-racist movement, Darcus Howe, similarly described the experience of raising his five children. He talks of how the first four grew up “fighting all around them”, whereas his youngest child grew up “black and at ease”, attributing this to the impact of the ANL.27 This points to tangible political change in Britain, breaking the idea that racism was politically acceptable. Additionally, it is part of the reason why fascists today not only try to distance themselves from historic fascism but sometimes go so far as to deny that their positions are racist.

The ANL, alongside the other forces with which it worked, succeeded in its objective of defeating the NF. Yet, the impact of the ANL and the mass movement documented in the book extends far wider. It changed the landscape of British politics. Confrontation with the fascists, consistent campaigning to expose them, building in schools and workplaces, and cultural initiatives in football or the carnivals in conjunction with RAR—all this meant “racist” became, for many, a dirty word. Brown offers readers an example of how mass movements can change mass consciousness and the “commonsense” of a society.

Nadia Sayed is a member of the Socialist Workers Party in London who was actively involved in
the Black Lives Matter movement in Britain.

Notes