Anti-Fascist - Martin Lux

 ANTI-FASCIST - MARTIN LUX

My only criticism of this book is in regard to the cover as it makes it look like one of those 'books for teenagers' that you see in sections of libraries and bookshops under the same name. The fact is, however, that actually it's what might be called in the vernacular 'the dog's bollocks'. Anti-Fascist by Martin Lux is the real deal.

I should hold my hands up here and declare I've met Martin Lux on a number of occasions. I've sat and drank with him in pubs where he's regaled me with tales of hardened skinheads on their knees begging Martin for mercy. I was at the launch for this book at one of the London Anarchist Bookfairs, and I publicised Martin's mini book tour of Holland as I was living there at the time when he went over to do some readings. The Dutch, by the way, loved him.

Anti-Fascist is a book that needed to be written because if it hadn't then the stories and the history it records would have been written out of history. Rubbed out like all the images of Trotsky from photographs during the Stalin purge. Quietly and conveniently forgotten by polite society. Martin's story, you see, is one that is often frowned upon by certain sections of society if not outrightly condemned. It's about violence on the streets. It's about going head-to-toe with the Far Right and tackling perpetrators, supporters, advocates, enablers and exponents of Fascism head-on.

Rather than writing devastating articles in The Guardian critiquing the conduct of Nazis, it's about going at them instead with baseball bats, knuckledusters, bricks and any suitable weapon at hand, and simply doing the bastards. It's about chasing them physically off the streets and not allowing them an inch. It's about removing them from any platform and denying them any space. Martin's book is about anti-fascism in the raw, in the here and in the now.

The book starts with a description of Martin's background and how he arrived at being a somewhat fearsome anti-fascist streetfighter, and it's an interesting one. Born into poverty with a natural anarchist-like aversion to authority and conservatism in all its manifestations, Martin's political education was fuelled by reading the underground press at that time such as Oz and IT, along with weekly visits to Speakers' Corner. His working class, street-level take on society combined with the then alternative culture's advocacy of revolution, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll made for a heady cocktail.

There was also the little matter of 1968 and the failure of England to partake in the revolutionary upheaval spreading around the globe from Paris, Germany and Italy to Czechoslovakia, America and Japan. But not England, remaining instead as Martin puts it 'a bastion of dull conformity and reactionary crap'.

Martin not only sought to escape from miserable, impoverished conformity but also ways to fight the prevailing ethos; finding suitable tools for the job in the possibilities offered through riot, looting, burning, occupations, barricades, insurrection and revolution.

His story is mapped-out by various confrontations with the Far Right throughout the 1970s, the most significant of these being in Lewisham in '77 where he witnessed the first use of police riot shields on the UK mainland, and Southall in '79 where protester Blair Peach was murdered by the police.

He also records the constant criticism and ostracisation from anarchist circles dominated at that time by what he describes as 'bearded pacifists and their floppy chicks', all telling him that 'racists and fascists are human beings too' and rather than being all 'macho' and 'sexist' could Martin not 'just try talking to them'?

The book culminates with the now infamous story of Martin acting as security at a Crass and Poison Girls gig at the Conway Hall in London where the venue is invaded by forty plus Far Right skinheads. Martin keeps a lid on things before help arrives in the form of a dozen fellow anti-fascists who launch a pulverising attack on the skinheads, turning the concert into a veritable bloodbath.

There are lessons in Anti-Fascist for the taking though it all depends where on the political spectrum you sit as to what those lessons are. The main one, obviously, is in regard to the effectiveness of violence when it comes to dealing with fascism or politics at street level generally. Martin lays out his stall though at the same time concedes that any violent momentum cannot be maintained forever and that other tools and tactics are also demanded. It's always horses for courses, essentially.

The disturbing thing about Anti-Fascist, however, is in how the circumstances, events, situations and racist tropes of the 1970s that Martin writes about are all back with us again now today - with a vengeance. All that has changed are the names of those espousing racist and Far Right rhetoric and the doubling down by the Right-wing media in its support of it along with the demonisation of its opponents.

These are interesting but very unsettling times that we now find ourselves in but unlike the night of the Crass/Poison Girls gig at the Conway Hall there's no sign of any anti-fascists of the (as described by Martin) 'right heavy geezers' kind coming over the hill to help deal with the problem. In fact there's no sign of them even on the horizon. Which means that unfortunately it's going to be down to us and no-one else to step up in whatever way we feel able and in whatever way we see fit.

John Serpico