Eve Rosenhaft’s work on the street fighting between German communists and Nazis is now available for free download.
Download here
Original link.
Thanks to Butchers1972.
Eve Rosenhaft’s work on the street fighting between German communists and Nazis is now available for free download.
Original link.
Thanks to Butchers1972.
After fighting Fascism – in the shape of Sir Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts – in Manchester, the 21-year-old Bernard McKenna went to Spain to join the battle against Franco’s troops. Despite being wounded he “never regretted going” and stayed involved in left-wing politics throughout his life. Bernard died in 2008, 2 years after this interview was carried out.
Born in Hulme, Bernard McKenna joined the Young Communist League at 18, attending meetings, educating each other about Marxism and political issues and supporting workers who were out on strike or suffering at the hands of their bosses.
There was always something to do, it was a busy time politically,” Bernard said of the 1930s. He himself worked in a clothing factory in Cheetham Hill, owned by one of the area’s Jewish businessmen. It was a ‘good company’ to work for, he recalled, and his jobs included stock-keeping and dispatch, making use of…
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Sam Wild, born in Ardwick, was one of the Manchester men who fought in the Spanish Civil War, eventually becoming the commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigade. Bessie Berry, his wife, was a pioneering women activist in British Communist circles.
Dolores Long, Sam Wild and Bessie Berry’s daughter, described their lives and politics in an interview in June 2009.
Unemployment in Manchester
My Dad was a working class man who had a really poverty-stricken childhood. He was born in Ardwick and left school at 14 with no skills and found it very difficult to get work. He got involved in the unemployed workers’ movement because he couldn’t find work in Manchester and so he joined the merchant navy. And he always said, I joined the merchant navy because I knew I’d get accommodation and I’d be fed.
His political education was in the merchant navy, I think…
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The following article on Fascist leader Oswald Mosley’s humiliation by anti-fascists at Belle Vue is reproduced by kind permission of Manchester University’s Centre for Jewish Studies, and is by Michael Wolf of the anti-fascist periodical Searchlight. The introduction to the article is based on an article by Yaakov Wise, also on the CJS website.
One of Manchester’s most unpleasant claims to fame is its connections to Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists and supporter of Hitler and Mussolini. Mosley Street in Manchester city centre is named after his family – although not after Oswald Mosley himself. Early meetings of BUF were held in Hyndman Hall on Liverpool Street in Salford and rallies held at Queen’s Park in Harpurhey.
In 1933 a BUF meeting at the Free Trade Hall descended into rioting between fascists and anti-fascist communists and was broken up by police…
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A new book detailing anti-fascism in Britain over the last 100 years is due out on the 25th January 2013.
Physical Resistance: A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism by Dave Hann (co-author of No Retreat) is a history of large-scale confrontations, disruption of meetings, sabotage and street fighting have been part of the practice of anti-fascism from the early twentieth century until the twenty-first. Rarely endorsed by any political party, the use of collective bodily strength remains a strategy of activists working in alliances and coalitions against fascism. In Physical Resistance famous battles against fascists, from the Olympia arena, Earls Court in 1934 and Cable Street in 1936 to Southall in 1978 and Bradford 2010, are told through the voices of participants. Anarchists, communists and socialists who belonged to a shifting series of anti-fascist organizations relate well-known events alongside many forgotten but significant episodes.
Combining scholarship with the knowledge that can only come from political experience this is a moving memorial to the late author and those who have fought fascism in Britain for almost a hundred years. Detailed accounts, eye witness testimony and a non-sectarian approach make this an engaging and fascinating account that should be read by activists and historians of all kinds. Dr Hilda Kean
This will be a list of academic studies which will be of interest to those wanting to study militant anti-fascism.
If you have written an essay which is of good quality or contains original research please email: antifascistarchive@gmail.com.
On the Principles of Political Violence and the Case of Anti-Fascist Action (The Archivist, 2012)
The National Front and British National Party on Merseyside. A Geography of Political Extremism
Blackshirts in Red Scotland: an analysis of fascism and its opponents in inter-war Scotland
Communists and the Inter-War Anti-Fascist Struggle in the United States and Britain (Copsey, 2011)
Anti-Fascist Activity in Manchester’s Jewish Community (Gewirtz)
“Class Before Race”: British Communism and the Place of Empire in Postwar Race Relations (Smith, 2008)
Conflicting Narratives of Black Youth Rebellion in Modern Britain (Smith)
A Bulwark Diminished: The Communist Party, the SWP and anti-fascism in the 1970s. (Smith)
Bridging the Gap: The British Communist Party and the limits of the state in tackling racism (Smith)
1968 – Too Little and Too Late? The Communist Party and Race Relations in the Late 1960s (Smith, 2008)
When the Party Comes Down: The CPGB and Youth Culture, 1976-1991 (Smith)
Witness Seminar: Anti-Fascism in 1970s Huddersfield (2006)
Anti-Fascist Action: Radical Resistance or Rent-a-Mob? (Hayes and Alyward, 2000)
Marching Altogether? Football fans taking a stand against racism (Thomas, 2010)
Glasgow Celtic Fans, Political Culture and the Tiocfaidh Ar La Fanzine: Some Comments and a Content Analysis (Hayes, 2006)
Neo-Nazism, Holocaust Denial and UK Law (Cohn-Sherbok, 2010)
The Swastika and the Shamrock: British Fascism and the Irish Question, 1918-1940 (Douglas, 1997)
Ulster Unionists in America, 1972-1985 (Wilson, 2007)
Shot By Both Sides: Punk, Politics and the End of ‘Consensus’ (Worley, 2012)
Patterns of Racism: Interviews with National Front Members (Billig, 1978)
Extreme music for extreme people? Norwegian black metal and transcendent violence (Phillipov, 2011)
Voice of our blood: National Socialist discourses in black metal (Olson, 2011)
Continental Divide: Immigration and the New European Right (Rosenthal, 2011)
Visions of Hate: Explaining Neo-Nazi Violence in the Russian Federation (Arnold, 2010)
Anti-Zionism and the Italian Extreme Right (Chiarini, 2008)
Right-Extremism in Germany: Recruitment of New Members (Braunthal, 2008)
Australian Fascism? A Revisionist Analysis of the Ideology of the New Guard (Cunningham, 2012)
Colin Jordan’s ‘Merrie England’ and ‘Universal Nazism’ (Jackson, 2011)
The EDL: Britain’s New Far Right Social Movement (Jackson, 2011)
Thanks to SM for these:
Do you have corrections? Dates? Additions? Stories? Images? Simply comment them beneath the post or email them to antifascistarchive@gmail.com and I will amend accordingly.
Related Posts:
Newspaper Articles on Red Action, Anti-Fascist Action and Fascists