AFA was partly a reaction to the perceived inadequacies of the original
Anti-Nazi League (ANL), which had recently wound up its operations. AFA members accused ANL of failing to directly confront fascists, of allying with moderates who were complicit in racism, and of being a front for the
vanguardist Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Jeremy Corbyn was either national secretary or honorary president of this first incarnation of AFA in 1985. According to historian Nigel Copsey, "this original AFA unravelled due to internal tensions between militant anti-fascists and more moderate anti-racists... By 1988, fractured by in-house sectarianism, AFA had all but collapsed." In 1989, though, it "was resurrected as a militant, physical force anti-fascist group." In 1986 and 1987, thousands of people took part in AFA mobilisations such as the
Remembrance Day demonstrations. In 1988, AFA formed a musical arm, Cable Street Beat, named after the
Battle of Cable Street, a 1936 confrontation between fascists and anti-fascists, on similar principles to the Anti-Nazi League's
Rock Against Racism. In May 1989, there was an AFA mobilisation against a
Blood and Honour gig, "the Main Event". In early 1989, Cable Street Beat launched a magazine,
Cable Street Beat Review. Among the artists who performed for early Cable Street Beat events were
Blaggers ITA,
Angelic Upstarts,
Attila the Stockbroker,
The Men They Couldn't Hang,
Forgotten Sons, and
Blyth Power. In 1989, there was a split in AFA between militant anti-fascists and other members, such as the Newham Monitoring Group, whose views were closer to
liberal anti-fascism. The militant groups relaunched AFA that year, with the affiliates Direct Action Movement and
Workers' Power, as well as several
trade unions.
Early 1990s In the early 1990s, AFA continued the pattern of twin-track physical and ideological confrontations with fascism. Examples of the former include the first Unity Carnival in east London in 1991, with 10,000 participants, and a demonstration in
Bethnal Green, with 4,000 participants, under the slogan “Beating the Fascists: An old
East End tradition”. Cable Street Beat continued in the early 1990s, with the involvement of bands including the reformed
The Selecter,
Bad Manners and
Gary Clail. Physical resistance to fascism also continued. In 1990, three AFA members were jailed for a total of 11 years following an attack on a neo-Nazi activist. In May 1992, AFA's militant approach to anti-fascism was given media airing, when the
BBC screened a documentary,
Fighting Talk, as part of its Open Space series. On 11 September 1992, a long street battle between AFA against
Blood and Honour supporters,
skinheads,
hooligan firms and far-right groups, was dubbed the Battle of Waterloo, as it was centred on
Waterloo station. There were stabbings, and 36 people were arrested. By this time, there were 21 branches of AFA listed in
Fighting Talk, in locations including
Birmingham,
Brighton,
Glasgow,
Edinburgh,
Bristol,
Cardiff,
Oxford,
Exeter,
Leicester,
Liverpool,
Manchester and
Norwich.
"Filling the Vacuum" strategy In 1993,
Derek Beackon, a candidate from the
British National Party (BNP), won a council seat in
Millwall on the
Isle of Dogs in
Tower Hamlets, under the slogan of "Rights for Whites". This signalled a turn in the BNP's policy from confrontation on the streets to a bid for electoral respectability, partly as a response to their defeat on the streets by AFA. In 1995, London AFA responded with its
Filling the Vacuum strategy, which involved offering a political alternative in these communities, instead of concentrating on challenging the fascist presence on the streets. After 1995, Red Action and its allies campaigned within the AFA Network, for AFA as an organisation, adopting the "Filling the Vacuum" strategy. Given that AFA contained a number of political groups, with differing political programmes, this, and the decline of street action by the BNP as it embraced "respectable electoralism", contributed to the breakup of much of the AFA network, with much internal recrimination. After 1995, anti-fascist mobilisations still occurred, such as ones against the National Front in
Dover in 1997 and 1998. The number of AFA branches across the UK peaked at 38 in the mid-1990s, with regular national conferences and an active Northern Network. A new AFA National Coordinating Committee was set up. In 1997, an official AFA statement forbade members from associating with Searchlight. In 1998, the committee expelled
Leeds and
Huddersfield AFA for ignoring this policy. There were some local relaunches of AFA groups, such as in
Liverpool in 2000, but by 2001, AFA barely existed as a national organisation. In 2011, some re-formed in the Anti-Fascist Network to recreate the "two-track" approach of AFA. ==Politics==