Fascist. This is a word with sinister connotations. To mention it musters images which represent the darkest side of humanity. It brings to mind the jackboot, the goosestep and the gas chamber. Fascism is an ideology of hate which reached its peak in the 1930’s and, through a war which cost over fifty million lives, faced its destruction in 1945. At its height fascist flags flew over Hitler’s Berlin , over Franco’s Madrid and over Mussolini’s Rome . It is popularly believed that fascism was a European phenomenon, with Britain ’s only involvement being in its destruction. However, on Sunday October 4^th 1936 over 300,000 people of London’s East end rose up, stood fast and defeated the British Union of Fascists in what became known as the Battle of Cable street.

On that Sunday afternoon, seventy one years ago, the east end working class locked arms and stood in solidarity with the local Jewish community and with Anti-facist protesters to stop Oswald Mosley's British Union of Facists from marching through the poorest areas London . Together they built barricades, formed a human wall and stood fast against the marching black shirts. The battle that followed marked the beginning of the end for main stream fasism in Britain. Simultaneously thousands of British volunteers had joined the international brigade to fight in the Spanish civil war against General Franco’s fascist forces. In solidarity to the freedom fighters battling in a war raging across Spain the anti-fascists of

Cable Street

carried placards emblazoned with the slogan ¡No Pasarán!, “they shall not pass”. This was only three years before Britain stood together with other free nations to wage war against Hitler’s Nazi war machine. The British people, and indeed the British left, have a proud history of standing against facism and now the time has come when we must all stand together, not only to remember cable street but to fight fasicm once again.

 

 

Today the British National Party are the face of modern British facism and of modern British Nazism. The BNP attempts to present itself as being a party of the working class, a party of the people but in reality its stands on a manifesto of pure hatred and of racism. Their current leader is Nick Griffin, a man whose facist credentials are beyond doubt, due to his connection to the National front and other far right organisations. On Monday the 26^th November 2007 Nick Giffin will speak, alongside Holocaust denier David Irving, at Oxford universities’ freedom of speech debate. Oxford have invtied Griffin and Irving to speak, arguing that freedom of speech should have no barrier. Indeed many have argued that the arguments of facism should be allowed open forum so that they can be discussed and defeated. There is no doubt that the ideology of facism must be discussed, it must be deconstructed and then it can be destroyed. However, this must be done in a objective and academic fashion, by giving a platform to Griffin, by facilitating his tirade of hatred, his views and those of all facists are given legitimacy. Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right, it is enchrined in the 1948 UN declaration of human rights, it is the keystone of democracy and it is the foundation upon which civilisation is built. Whilst this is true and I would argue this with passion and determination it is also true that one persons freedom ends when another persons beings. Therefore we all have the freedom to say what we believe to be true, we have the freedom to shout it from the rooftops if need be, but we do not have to right to abuse our rights to free speech in order to jepodise the freedom of others. By giving Griffin and Irving a platform Oxford University have decided to place at risk the freedom of all those people who Griffin hates and who his tirade of hate targets.

 

 

The fact that Griffin has been invited to speak at Oxford shows that the rules of the game have changed significantly since the dark age of the 1930’s. Whilst fascism has not changed as an ideology, the method of presenting it has changed dramatically. True the BNP do not openly publicise their Nazi roots and similarly the BNP is not as straight forward to identify as the National front of the 80’s and 90’s. Whilst their fascist beliefs remain the same, it is the method of presentation which has evolved. The BNP leaders of today are, publicly at least, not knuckle dragging and brick throwing skin heads, although these types exist sure enough and they continue to make up the rank and file of combat 18 and other neo-nazi groups including the BNP. Today’s BNP leaders are graduates of Cambridge and Oxford and so attempt to present a suited, smiling and electoraly acceptable face of fascism. Their style is more subtle and their messages are more complex but their hate and their lies remain the same. It may be intellectually lazy to constantly compare the BNP to Hitler’s Nazi party, however as Griffin claims that the roots of the BNP can be found in the fascism of the 1930’s it is worth pondering on the parallels. On Mein Kampf, Hitler’s own autobiography, Griffin states that “the chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation - there were some really useful ideas there.”  So whilst to the cameras Griffin attempts to distance the BNP from its nazi legacy, privately he looks back to the dark days of European fascism with nostalgia. Indeed Griffin admitted in an interview in 2006 that the Nazi era has given “fascism a bad name” yet still works tirelessly to defend dictatorships of Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. One example of this would be the fact that Griffin infamously denies the Holocaust. In an interview Griffin once stated that “it's well known that the chimneys from the gas chambers at Auschwitz are fake, built after the war ended.” This distortion of history, this attempt to forget the deaths of six million innocent people is reflected in the BNP’s core beliefs arguing, as they do in their manifesto, that denying the holocaust should be a priority of the British education system.

 

In December 2006 I travelled to the London borough of Barking and Dagenham to take part in an anti-fascist protest. Barking and Dagenham has become the centre of the BNP’s recent election success, having recently elected twelve BNP councillors. At this protest, which coincided with the first public BNP rally in London for years, I was able to see the true face of BNP voters and I began to understand why someone would vote for a fascist party. Barking and Dagenham is an area which has suffered from the post-industrial decline of Britain . There is unemployment, there is poverty and there is crime. This despair is coupled with a growing sense that the main political parties offer nothing to the real man on the street. Indeed the big three parties are now narrow reflections of each other, there polices differ marginally and it is true that they are now the parties of big business rather then parties of the people. In to this disillusioned and apathetic picture steps the BNP. They claim to be a party of the working class and they offer straight forward reasons and solutions based purely on lies and hatred. They target immigration, they demonise Islam, and they exploit base ideals of nationalism and race to rally around. The average BNP voter is not a Nazi, the average BNP voter is a person who feels let down by the main political parties and has been duped by despair into believing the lies and the hatred.     

 

 

 

Once this is understood it must also be understood that we must work to win people back away from the hatred spewed by the BNP. Whilst it is crucial that we all come together, as those Londoners did seventy one years ago, to fight fascism in all its forms, it is simply not enough to stand up and shout about what you are against. Shouting “Auswitz no” or chanting “Nazis off our streets”, as we did at the protest at Barking, will only get us so far. In order to successfully destroy fascist ideology we must make it known what we are standing for, we must shout it from the rooftops and then we must stand face to face, toe to toe with every last racist, and with every last fascist so they know what they are fighting. We must stand up for multi-culturalism, for peace, for cooperation, for collectivism, and for a better world for all.   

 

So, I will be travelling to Oxford on Monday to continue a proud tradition of standing up against the evil of fascism. Supporting us on that cold Oxford night will be the heroes of the British anti-fascist movement, the ghosts of

Cable Street

, the memories of the international brigade, and all those who fought and died to defend us against Fascism. We must not, and I will not be going simply to shout in vain, or to perpetuate my own hatred against Nazism. I will be going to fight for the rights that Nick Griffin would deny and to show that whilst an alternative is needed in this world, that alternative is not to be found in the darkness of fascism.