Balloons won't stop BM nazis

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Red balloons were the order of the day on the enormous anti-fascist demonstration called at short notice through Westbourne Park a week ago.

We can only assume that these were a cunning ploy to disarm the Nazis of the British Movement into thinking the carnival atmosphere posed them no threat. They would not have been far wrong!

The police-led march went the opposite way to the BM and got hemmed in at the end after safely protesting to the strains of "We all hate the Nazisdada da da, dada da da"

Not even the obvious manoeuvre by the police at the end to box everyone in and stop them even catching sight of the fascist scum had been anticipated by the organisers.

The ANL lollipopers at the front walked happily into the jaws of the law and the 'Militant' LPYS were entreating people to keep walking and keep together right to the end.

You had to look carefully to check that the police had not taken over the megaphone.

The biggest group on the march who did show their determination not to get sucked into protest politics was the East London • Workers Against Racism.

The police were obviously aware of this as 13 of its members were picked off at prearranged points during the march.

Workers Socialist League members and supporters had forseen the obvious police tactics and did not walk into the blockade.

They were therefore able to get to where the BM was actually marching.

Serious

'The hundreds of people we saw from then on consisted largely of groups of black you th and socialists who had not been on the ANL march, and were serious about trying to stop the British Movement march rather than simply airing an empty protest.

The police, as usual, were out in force to protect the small group of fascists and allow them to march at any cost.

Only a few flags and ba nners were visible inside the fourdeep lines of police.

Estimates of 400 exaggerated.

Out stinking corpse the Some of the fascists did get the beating they deserved but the ANL demonstration played no part in providing the means to do that.

3,000 people were marched up the hill by the ANL Dukes of York and not even down again!

Such pacifist protests will not stop the British Movement which-to a greater extent even than the National Front-is built on the basis of attracting unorganised and backward youth to a campaign of street violence against black commun ities and the labour movement.

The BM is not dependent upon electoral success. It is an openly Nazi-style gang of Jumpen thugs that can be halted not by protest and propaganda but by the organisation of workers' defence squads with the specific task of driving them off the streets.

The politics of the ANL were inadequate to counter the NF in the period prior to the last election: but in the struggle against the present campaign by tascist groups it is criminally wrong.

Socialists must take up the fight for 'active preparation by the workers' movement to crush the BM and its fellow fascists wherever they show their faces.