How did we beat the National Front?

Police protecting the National Front as they attempt to march through Lewisham, south London on 13 August 1977

Britain’s streets often rumbled with the sound of marching boots in the 1970s. The Nazi National Front (NF) ran a “campaign of terror”—its skinhead troops rampaging through black and Asian areas attacking all who stood in their way.

And the party was having success in elections too, winning well over 100,000 votes in a Greater London election in 1977.

But within a few years the NF was smashed—its hardcore demoralised and split among themselves, its hangers-on fading to the background.

It was an expansive mass movement that brought together young punks, militant workers and activists from the revolutionary left that broke them.

The new movement confronted the Nazis in the streets and took on their arguments about immigration. Politicians and the state had created a climate that boosted the NF.

In 1968, Tory MP Enoch Powell made his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in which he predicted that black people would soon “have the whip hand” over whites. By 1976, then Labour chief whip Bob Mellish joined in.

He called for an end to immigration with the rallying cry of “enough is enough”. Every concession from the top drove on the NF’s campaign of terror. But anti‑racists were determined to challenge them.

The first significant clash came in April 1977 in Wood Green, north London. Spontaneous community defence by Asian and black communities combined with left forces to smash the Nazis off the streets.

The NF then planned to march in Lewisham, south London, on 13 August 1977. Thousands of local young black people mixed with anti‑racists from across London and beyond in a determined fight to stop the fascists.

But not everyone on the left was on board. The then influential Communist Party called the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) “adventurists” for organising to confront the NF. The governing Labour Party went further, calling the SWP “red fascists”.

Yet the ensuing Battle of Lewisham would mark a turning point for the anti-fascist movement. Anti-Nazis occupied the NF’s assembly point. And when the fascists turned up, violent confrontation broke out.

The police tried and failed to protect the NF’s right to march and used riot shields for the first time in Britain. SWP organiser Paul Holborow recalled, “The clash at Lewisham was absolutely decisive in shifting the atmosphere on our side.”

The party responded to the changed mood by initiating the Anti Nazi League (ANL). It aimed to combine mass propaganda against the NF with a strategy of physically confronting fascist marches.

The ANL pushed campaigns of education, persistently leafleting factories, offices and working class housing estates. And it helped found the Rock Against Racism (RAR) campaign which expanded the anti-fascist movement into popular culture.

In April 1978, some 60,000 Yorkshire miners wore the yellow ANL sticker on their helmets. The same month, the first ANL/RAR Carnival in London amassed nearly 80,000 anti-fascists.

Thousands of young people adopted the group’s slogans, “Nazis are no fun” and “The National Front is a Nazi front”. The strategy of confronting the Nazis directly was by now a commonsense on the left—its effectiveness proven in practice.

In town after town where the Nazis attempted to march, they met resistance. Two clashes took place in April 1979, one in Leicester and another in Southall, London.

In Southall, police were determined to defend the Nazi’s “right” to an election meeting. Cops set out to smash anti-fascists and the overwhelmingly Asian local community.

In the process they attacked and killed SWP member Blair Peach. But the fascists, now deprived of their marches and ability to organise openly, went into decline.

In the May 1979 general election, the NF failed to generate any significant electoral support. The ANL’s strategy of creating a mass movement against fascism had worked.