Uphold the Reich
Three men have been charged with crimes allegedly committed during an assault upon a Jewish man, Menachem Vorchheimer, in Melbourne last October. One has been charged with intentionally and recklessly causing serious injury, assault and using insulting words; another with theft and using insulting words; and the third with using insulting words. The three, members of the Ocean Grove football club, were on an end-of-season bus trip to Caulfield races at the time.
Unsurprisingly, the off-duty policeman who was driving the bus — and tried to piss off quick-smart following the assault — will not be facing charges; which is apparently partly why Vorchheimer has chosen to pursue a civil action of his own. In relation to the criminal case, it’ll be interesting to see if club coach Matthew Sproule will swear under oath that Vorchheimer’s hats were removed “accidentally” in a tussle through the bus window — which is what he claimed at the time of the incident; note also that the only reason the off-duty policeman in question wasn’t able to make a quick getaway after the (other) brave young men on board the bus shouted racist abuse is ‘cos some other driver blocked the bus with his car.
See ‘Three face charges over attack on Jewish man’, ninemsn, March 6, 2007; ‘Police charge three over antisemitic attack’, Melissa Singer, Australian Jewish News, March 6, 2007; ‘Trio charged over race attack’, Herald Sun, March 6, 2007; ‘Footballers charged over race attack’, AAP, The Age, March 6, 2007; ‘Officer cleared after witnessing racial attack’, Richard Kerbaj, The Australian, March 6, 2007.
Anti-Nazi League: 30 Years On
Ed Vulliamy has written an interesting article to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the ANL: ‘Blood and glory’ (The Observer, March 4, 2007). It’s worthwhile comparing his account with that provided in a pamphlet published by the Colin Roach Centre in 1995: ANTI NAZI LEAGUE: A Critical Examination: 1977-81/2 and 1992-95. Both recall the riot against police and non-uniformed fascists at Lewisham in 1977 as a key turning-point in the fight against the National Front.
Vulliamy:
Lewisham is carved on the heart of every British anti-fascist of that time, for it was the neighbourhood through which the Front intended to stage its ‘Anti-Mugging March’ on 13 August 1977, after a singularly vile police rounding up of black kids supposedly stealing wallets. [Paul Holborrow: “This was an area with a large black population, where some police operated a policy known among officers as PNH – ‘Police Nigger Hunt’.] But the NF’s march was assailed and ultimately stopped by a counter-demonstration of some 10,000 anti-racists. It was quite a moment: the ‘Honour Guard’ of thugs brandishing Union Jacks, their besieged route denied and then reforged by an advanced guard of police officers acting as official stewards, swinging into New Cross Road, where the running street battles began. [Maeve Landman: “And the police were really abusive. One said to me, ‘If I wasn’t in this uniform, I’d show you, nigger’.”]
Jim Kelly (Colin Roach Centre):
Lewisham was to become the largest violent political event in many years. Many thousands of people had turned out to oppose the fascists. This was despite an earlier march that took people away from the fascists’ assembly point. The CP was part of that march, as were the official labour movement. However the [Socialist Workers’ Party] were able to lead a significant part of the march to Clifton Rise, the starting point for the NF march.
Large numbers of police were mobilised to protect the march. As the march turned out of Clifton Rise a hail of bricks and bottles met it, but it still managed to continue on its route. There’s no doubt in my mind that, despite the artillery raining down on them, the police were still in control and disciplined enough to drag the cowering nazis to their destination.
It was at this point that the whole situation was transformed by one act of individual courage by Peter Chapel, a leading member of the ‘George Davis is innocent’ campaign. Peter, I believe, had recently joined the SWP. He launched himself into the front of the march. The sight of the Union Jacks shooting into the air and nazis scattering broke the impasse. Chapel was quickly followed by a group of his friends and counter demonstrators.
Within seconds our group of SWP members linked arms (a form of ritual left wing bonding much loved by the generation influenced by the events in Paris in 1968), and moved across the road. The march was breached just behind the so-called ‘Honour Guard’, a phalanx of nazi thugs. This was followed by a few minutes of vicious fighting, not with arms still linked I hasten to add. The nazis were physically hammered. Many were clearly terrified of what had just taken place. The NF march disintegrated, with fascists running around in blind panic. Most ran away, a few stood their ground and got overwhelmed by the sheer weight of anti-fascists, including many local Afro-Caribbean residents who had turned out…
Fast forward to 1992.
Vulliamy:
But where did it all go? Why, if it was victorious, did the ANL need to relaunch itself in 1992 and why does the BNP harvest with relative success and virtually unchallenged?
A statement by the ANL announcing its re-formation is available on its website.
Mark Metcalf:
It is not clear who took the decision to re-launch the ANL. The SWP CC did agree to its re-launch but this appears to have happened after the leader of the SWP, Tony Cliff, announced it at a SWP branch meeting in Stoke Newington, Hackney. It seems that Cliff discussed the idea informally with a very small number of close colleagues (Cliff was once quoted as saying that on really important decisions he would consult with only two other people in the SWP, Duncan Hallas being one) and then he decided it should be re-launched.
Whatever the exact circumstances, it is a fact that less than two months after their national conference at which no discussion or vote was taken on launching the ANL, the SWP leadership were sitting in the House of Commons with Labour MPs proclaiming the virtues of ANL Mark II.
Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), on the other hand, was established in 1985, collapsed as a national network sometime between then and 1989, was re-launched as such in 1989, and in 1992, the year of the ANL’s re-launch, was big enough and ugly enough to have staged both large demonstrations (5,000 in Tower Hamlets in November, 1991) and gigs (10,000 in London in September, 1991). Thus according to Metcalf:
The other factors in [the ANL’s re-launch] were AFA’s relative success in mobilising a number of young people, including from within the ranks of the SWP itself. In addition, in December 1991, a crowd of almost 1,000 went to Charing Cross to protest outside the hotel of French Front National leader Jean Marie Le Pen. Many young people turned out. The re-launch of the ANL thus became an attractive prospect to the SWP leadership…
A wave of media interest heralded the launch of the ANL Mark II and thousands of leaflets and posters reminded those who had missed it. Fascism became the key issue of SWP members. Young people with hardly any previous record of involvement became professed experts, almost overnight, about how to defeat fascism…
Of course, in September 1992, AFA also played a decisive role in Blood & Honour meeting its Waterloo:
In September 1992 the Blood and Honour music network announced that it intended to host a major gig involving Skrewdriver and six other fascist bands. Around 1,500 fascists and racists were expected, and for security reasons the venue was to be revealed only on arrival at Waterloo Station. AFA immediately called for anti-fascists to rally at 4pm, one hour before the majority of fascists were anticipated to arrive. Blood and Honour stewards were supposed to make the area safe and ensure that “music-lovers” could be transported to the pre-arranged venue.
Earlier in the day, the ANL held a demo in south-east London, attracting about 1,000. This standard activity of chanting, leaflet distribution and paper selling attracted no opposition from the fascists. AFA leafleted the demo and requested support for the later event.
AFA were able to mobilise over 1,000 anti-fascists to Waterloo and AFA security stewards were able to remove, at an early stage, fascists drinking in the bars of Waterloo Station. Fascist stewards were noticeable by their absence. Many anarchists turned out, as well as members of the Turkish Revolutionary Group, Dev-Sol, who had even brought their children. Their leader was to later remark that he hadn’t realised there was a difference between AFA and the ANL, and he thought Waterloo would be a re-run of the passive anti-fascist/nazi activities he had attended with the ANL.
In the events that followed, the fascist’s plans were severely dented. The large majority were scattered, a leading Millwall football gang leader suffered a heart attack, Waterloo Station and the area’s transport system was brought to a halt, and only by finally surrounding and imprisoning the main AFA group were the police able to control the situation, four hours after it started. The fascists did manage to hold a much smaller gig at which trouble broke out over who was most to blame for the fiasco.
The SWP/ANL brought at most, 100 to Waterloo, and they stayed out of harms’ way, preferring to stand close to the police rather than get stuck in to the fascists. This, however, did not stop them lying about events at Waterloo by listing it as one of their successes in the programme they produced for the massive (200,000) ANL carnival in south London in 1994.
A similar ‘success’ of the ANL was the battering of fascists at the end of Brick Lane in September 1993, which they also listed in their carnival programme. The reality was that the ANL/SWP were on the opposite side of the road to where the fascists sold papers with no plans to ‘take the fascist’s pitch’…
Fast forward to 2006/7:
While B&H in Belgium are killing people and planning to blow up others, in Melbourne, Blood & Honour Australia most recently staged a ‘secret’ gig last September to commemorate the long-overdue death in 1993 of Skrewdriver vocalist Ian Stuart Donaldson: subsequently, on the night of the gig, a local (black) woman was racially abused by a gang of boneheads. The venue was The Birmingham Hotel, and while the local council — dominated by ‘progressives’ (feminists, Greens and socialists) — has done bugger-all to address the issue of the existence of a fascist venue in Fitzroy (‘The Birmy’ has happily staged fascist gigs previously), a number of local ‘punk’ bands — The Assailants, The Blurters, Bulldog Spirit, Charter 77, Distorted Truth, Marching Orders, PBG, Slick 46 and The Worst — have responded by throwing their support behind the venue.
The more things change…
‘St. Petersburg: Activist Stabbed 20 Times’
Galina Stolyarova
St. Petersburg Times
January 15, 2007
A twenty-one-year-old antifascist campaigner was stabbed twenty times on Sunday night in south-western St. Petersburg in an apparent attack by [fascists].
Ivan Yelin was taken to the intensive care unit of St. Petersburg Hospital No. 26 on Ulitsa Kostyushko, where his condition is described as severe. Yelin underwent an operation for wounds sustained to his liver, kidney, solar plexus and other areas, suffering massive blood loss.
The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office has opened a criminal case for attempted murder. No suspects have yet been detained.
Immediately prior to the attack on Sunday, Yelin had been taking part in an international humanitarian initiative titled [Food Not Bombs] giving food to the local homeless people and street kids just outside Vladimirskaya metro station in central St. Petersburg.
The initiative takes place on a regular basis at several fixed places, including areas close to Vladimirskaya and Vasileostrovskaya metro stations.
The attack took place between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. near Yelin’s home on the corner of Ulitsa Ziny Portnovoi and Leninsky Prospekt in a south-western district of the city.
Antifascist campaigners are convinced that local [fascists] are behind the attack.
“Members of [bonehead] gangs routinely show up at antifascist and human rights meetings,” said Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg organization Democratic Russia. “[Fascists] take photographs of the participants and also follow human rights activists to their homes.”
“On Sunday, Ivan was more noticeable than the others: he was putting food into bowls and giving it to people, and naturally drew more attention,” said fellow antifascist campaigner Oleg, who asked that his real name not be used because of fears for his safety. “After they finished, most volunteers went to a rock concert in a nearby club but Ivan went home on his own, making himself an obvious target.”
Timur Kacharava, a frequent participant in antifascist meetings who was stabbed to death outside a bookstore on Ligovsky Prospekt in November 2005, was also reportedly followed after taking part in a “Food, Not Bombs” event.
As [bonehead] violence against foreigners and ethnic minorities rises in Russia, growing numbers of antifascist campaigners are considering giving up street politics, they say.
Not only do they fear physical attack by [boneheads], but they say they are treated with suspicion and hostility by the police, while adding that the political elite and general public are indifferent to their goals. Most depressingly, they say, at their own rallies they are usually outnumbered by police and [fascists].
“We have to face it: ordinary citizens prefer to stay away from human rights or antifascist meetings,” said Iosif Skakovsky of the human rights group Memorial. “It does not help things that the authorities and law-enforcement organizations both on a local and federal level demonstrate an outrageous lack of leadership and seem to be content with the state of denial they have adopted about hate crimes.”
As a result, many antifascist activists are losing faith that they can make a difference.
“More and more of us are strongly considering giving up the fight,” Oleg said. “I have personally been attacked by [boneheads] who kicked me in the head with their heavy boots. But it is not the fear of a physical assault that makes me doubtful about defending the cause. Rather, it is our failure to make a difference in the minds of ordinary Russians that is most frustrating.”
Those who want to continue their activism are thinking of changing strategies as street fights between antifascist campaigners and [fascists] are becoming increasingly common. The most recent clash between members of [an antifa] group and [fascists] took place in September. The street fights broke out when activists from Antifa [sic] tried to disrupt a meeting of the [fascist] Movement Against Illegal Immigration.
“After the murder of Timur Kacharava we figured that the only way to stop the fascists is to counter them physically,” said antifascist campaigner Mikhail. “If the authorities do nothing, we have nothing left to do but fight.”
Linkov is worried by the tendency of the authorities and the mainstream media to portray antifascist campaigners as yet another breed of extremist.
“They think things would look better if this were seen as the problem of youngsters drinking too much, rather than the problem of [fascist] groups getting stronger,” Linkov said. “They seem to be trying to spread the responsibility for street violence more evenly among various political forces.”
Below : A Russian pensioner expresses her appreciation for the efforts of a Russian policeman in safe-guarding Russian democracy from the vice-like grip of the Russian people, St. Petersburg, March 3, 2007. (Shake of balaclava : Lumpen)
