Giving Up No Platform?

I was lucky enough to follow 43 Group founder Morris Beckman in speaking on anti-fascism at this years Anarchist Bookfair. This is the full text of my talk, where I argue that the success of the BNP makes no platform redundant as a strategy for defeating them, although we may still wish to use it as a tactic.

 

Speech To Anarchist Bookfair – Saturday 24^th October 2009

 

Thank you to the organisers for inviting me.

 

I have the rather dubious task of bringing things up to date, to 2009.

 

The circumstances for anti-fascists have changed radically over the past decade since Nick Griffin became BNP leader in 1999.

He and Tony Lecomber started the gradual modernisation of the BNP into what I think is still essentially a fascist party, but one that is willing to bend with the wind, to try out different ideas to see what will work, and is positioning itself as the type of Euro-Nationalist party that we have seen gain great electoral success in France, Belgium, Austria, Italy etc

 

1999 also saw probably the last successful riot by demonstrators in the UK – J18. Afterwards, the police promised a war of attrition against activists and have broadly delivered on that.

Virtually unlimited resources have been thrown at recording, cataloguing and following members and supporters of any organisation or current that may actually achieve anything. Anti-fascists have been high up on this list.

 

Nothing distracts from this task. Two days after the 7/7 bombing, Londoners may not have been surprised to see a large police operation at Kings Cross station. But this was not some follow up to the attacks – but police officers deployed to take pictures and compile intelligence of demonstrators returning from the G20 protests in Scotland.

 

A curious set of priorities.

 

But such police action, combined with the saturation coverage of CCTV in cameras in most towns and cities, make the sort of actions the 43 Group carried out virtually impossible to replicate successfully today.

 

 

No Platform

 

The dominant method of dealing with fascists in Britain has been the strategy of No Platform. We heard the type of tactics Morris outlined.

 

Street level activism was combined with a general distaste in the political mainstream and media for fascist or Nazi organisations. That did not prevent politicians occasionally copying the rhetoric or even policies of the fascist right, but in general they were denied normality. John Tyndall would never have got on Question Time.

 

I am going to argue today that No Platform is now a dead duck as a strategy.

 

It is not a viable strategy to defeat a party with scores of councillors, 2 MEP’s, 12,000 members and perhaps the most popular website in British politics.

 

With the exception of London, BNP membership is probably higher in most towns and cities than the numbers interested in actively no platforming them.

 

If we take the example of Stockport – the last BNP membership leak suggested 60 odd members in the town. The number of active anti-fascists in the town is probably in single figures.

 

A handful of people cannot no platform a greater number.

 

I do believe No Platform still has its advantages and uses as a tactic.

 

There is much to be said for harrying BNP stalls, and leafleting sessions. One of the things that continues to damage Nick Griffin are his bizarre public appearances surrounded by a security squad of wobblebottoms.

 

BNP security chief Martin Reynolds may be successful at his internet dating requests for ‘women who look like Dawn French’ but providing a discreet security presence is not his forte. No other public figure conducts himself in this way, surrounded by goons, and it was noticeable after one successful Antifa intervention in Yorkshire, Griffin turned up for a court appearance in a car complete with metal grilles over the windows.

 

So our pressure can have an effect on their behaviour. But there are other areas where anti-fascist pressure is simply side stepped.

 

In Barnsley in 2007 BNP street stalls were disrupted, tables smashed, papers stolen etc etc. The difficulty is, the BNP still stood in the subsequent local elections, still polling strong votes, and moving towards a position where they are seen as the alternative, or the radical opposition locally to the Labour Party.

 

So – anti-fascists managed to disrupt the BNP, to wound them, but not to kill them off.

 

Perhaps we need to think a little bit less about the BNP, and a little bit more about their voters.

 

Which brings us onto the next question:

 

Can We Defeat Fascism, Purely With Anti-Fascism?

 

This to me is the core issue, and the debate we need to have.

 

Morris and the 43 Group did.

 

The ANL and other currents who opposed the NF in the 1970s did.

 

Anti-Fascist Action and those opposing the BNP in the 1980s and early 1990s did.

 

I still think anti-fascists, using No Platform, are more than a match for those on the loopey fringe of the far-right – the British People’s Party, Racial Volunteer Force, Blood & Honour etc.

 

But in the long term, they are not the groups we have to worry about. The BNP is. And its electoral strategy, and electoral success, is something in the UK we have not seen before.

 

This question is a particular problem for Anarchists who by and large don’t vote and uncomfortable with organisations that are electoral.

 

If people think back to the formation of the Independent Working Class Association, I think that was one of the main reasons for its failure. A political current was not going to emerge from Anti-Fascist Action without the Anarchists.

Of  course no one was more poorly placed than Red Action to lead a political initiative of that type. Red Action had a disastrous record of failing to maintain working relationships with virtually everyone they came into contact with, but I suspect deep down the real problem for Anarchists was that the IWCA was clearly going to be an electoral beast.

 

Of course the BNP’s is not a purely electoral strategy – there is a cultural element present, a desire to build up a cadre of members – Larry O’Hara, if he writes the book he should have written years ago on the British far-right - has the best analysis of this, (although in the meantime you can read some of his thinking in Notes From the Borderland) but the BNP are very much engaged in a war for position, attempting to take advantage of each opportunity that arises.

 

Multi-Culturalism

 

In the case of the ANL, a mixture of methods were used here – from No Platform, to the development of a cultural strategy that brought together white, black and Asian youths around shared interests, music and football in particular.

You had even as late as the early 1990s a generation of broadly secular Asian youth who had cut their teeth in such politics – the Asian Youth Movements.

 

What we had in that era was a sort of voluntary multi-culturalism was practicesed that is and was very different to the type of top down funding based multi-culturalism to be practiced by councils like the GLC, Bradford and Birmingham City Council’s and Ken Livingstone’s London.

 

Kenan Malik has analysed this better than I could.

 

I think that brand of politics has been very damaging to our cause. After all if there is such a thing as the black community, or a Muslim community, or a Vietnamese community, there is by definition surely a white community. And just as ‘community leaders’ emerge to represent the Muslim community and to lobby on its behalf, we cannot  proclaim ourselves to be shocked when someone steps up to say they represent the ‘white’ community. Whatever that is.

 

This is what happens when we abandon class politics, or we have sometimes well intentioned politics foisted onto our communities by government. We need to move away from the idea of communities fixed by race or religion, and raise the banner of class politics.

 

In doing this our enemy won’t only be the BNP – it will actually be those in the state, in local government, in faith groups and in the establishment  parties who gain from the current system, ignoring the long term damage it does us all.

 

 

So Where Do We Go From Here?

 

Well the answer to that question in my 17 years in the Anarchist movement has always been the same – to the pub.

 

But there is a point when the drinking stops and we have to ask ourselves – do we have an Anarchist movement, do we have an anti-fascist movement that is – in management speak – fit for purpose.

 

I don’t think we do.

 

I do think we have potential. There are more than enough people passing through the doors of this bookfair over the course of today to form a successful campaign, group or resource if people put their minds to it.

 

The problem is we have to look beyond harrying the BNP, being against them, and instead look towards replacing them.

 

And that requires an Anarchist movement, socialist movement, community campaign – call it whatever you want – that does things, and does things that are relevant to people’s lives and aspirations.

 

We can do better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[TomC]

Well said, I totally agree with your analysis of were we are, yes we have bags of potential but how do we harness this potential?
At the book fair I talked to people who I wouldnt call Anarchists in the old days Id call them hippys or life stylers who seem to have abandoned the notion of class, who though active wouldn't necessarily be supporting fellow anrchists on a picket line if it work supporting workers in say the mining industry. We have to engage in Class politics if we are to take on the BNP in our comunities we cant do it by staning on the fringes.
We need to start putting our own house in order and modernise for the future,and I think your outline for dealing with the right is a good starting point

[Larry O'Hara]

I agree, the need is to replace the BNP with something more radical, & recognise changes in the BNP--the latest Notes From the Borderland sketches out a few pointers, as well as underscording how GLC 'multiculturalism' directly created political space for the BNP. And yes, that book on the far right is on my mind...

[Barry Kade]

Paul makes some very good points here.

But the real meaning and origins of no platform was not about state or media bans. It was about not allowing them on the platforms we create by our own efforts - in our communities and our unions. This means trades unions, but also students unions... and it is this I want to concentrate on here:

this issue might now come up in student unions in the colleges, raised by naive liberals who want to follow Question Time.... and the BNP would love to be allowed to organise on campuses, recruiting a generation of articulate young activists...

We need to say the following loudly and clearly:

Students unions - and Trades Unions - have one main task - to UNITE people in the fight to defend their basic rights. This means uniting people of all races and religions. Fascists, organised racists and other hate groups have the opposite principle - to DIVIDE people against each other on the base of race or religion. They are therefore in essence opposed to the basic mission of the union. We should not let them use our organisations, our community media, our community centres, venues and meetings halls as a platform to spread their division and divide us and undermine us. On the contrary, students unions and trades unions must use these resources to continually oppose and expose the fascists and organised racists. This means not allowing the BNP to organise in colleges, and stopping any attempt by them to set up BNP student societies. Such societies would have one aim - to organise and divide students on racial and nationalistic lines - thus sounding the death knell of students unionism. The BNP are not there yet - lets keep it that way.

While we need to rethink some aspects of 'no platform' - confusion as to what it means might mean that we give away too much in this 'rethink'. Thats the colleges for a start. Any other areas need mentioning?

[darren redstar]

The only use have I have ever found for my NUS card is a discount at Dominos

[Paul Stott]

Barry - I can see where you are coming from, but I don't see the struggle in student unions or academia as key.

Put simply, Marxist and socialist ideas arguably dominated social science and many student unions for a generation. That coincided with the collapse of Marxism as a viable alternative in wider society, and its isolation from the wider working class.

The fight against the BNP will not be won in student unions. Indeed student unions could well stand united against the BNP, without it making a jot of difference - it is wider communities, particularly in working class areas - that matter.