Fascists caged, humiliated and driven out of Liverpool


Tony Mulhearn, Liverpool Socialist Party

There was a great result for anti-fascist activists in Liverpool on 15 August who opposed far-right group National Action and their planned ‘White Man March.’

The presence of hundreds of anti-fascists ensured that the 20 or so fascists who turned up never left Lime Street station. They were eventually caged in the left luggage office for their own safety, and smuggled out of the city in the back of two police vehicles. A truly humiliating defeat for this pernicious sect.

The number of young people participating, marching alongside veteran trade union campaigners, was incredible.

To see Mayor Joe Anderson depicted by the local media as the champion of the anti-fascist forces and to hear Labour councillors, fresh from implementing the most savage cuts for a 100 years, speaking on anti-fascist platforms, can only sow confusion.

Cuts

The cuts programme of the Tories, implemented by Labour councils, can create the conditions where the forces of reaction can gain when jobs and social provision are in short supply. Cameron, Farage and other assorted reactionaries use racist language to provide a scapegoat for the problems facing the working class.

History shows the necessity of uniting the forces of anti-fascism and linking it to the fight against austerity.

Every Labour councillor should be told loudly and clearly that the next time they vote to diminish services they are creating the conditions for the far right to sink its poisonous roots.

On this occasion the anti-fascists outnumbered the fascists by 20 to 1.

They threaten to return to Liverpool later in the year. The Trade Union movement should organise to harness the anti-fascist movement into a mighty force capable of not only driving the fascists off the street, but equipping the working class with a socialist programme which ditches all elements of the far right into the dust-bin of history.