Physical confrontation with fascist organisations is a controversial matter for the main strands of anti-fascism. For groups like Unite Against Fascism, on the deliberate calculation of the dominant left force within it, the SWP, such tactics are likely to scare off their media, religious and mainstream political supporters. Searchlight has a similar problem.
On the other hand, groups like Antifa appear, at least judging by their website and reported actions, to have elevated the idea of physically confronting the BNP and parties like them to a guiding principle.
There is a substantial degree of mistrust between these three groups — some of it based on the SWP/UAF’s sectarianism, some of it on antagonism towards the perceived recklessness of Antifa — which makes any honest accounting of militant anti-fascism problematic.
But historical examples of militant anti-fascism should aid us in understanding the place of physical confrontation in a working class, political anti-fascism. One example is that of the 43 Group, who campaigned against British fascists after the Second World war. In this issue we publish an inteview with Morris Beckman from the 43 Group.
In a future issue we will examine the record of the US Teamsters and their fight against fascist, union-busting gangs in Minneapolis. Interview by Charlie Salmon.
The notion that World War Two was a “war against fascism” is a popular myth used in the mainstream media and historical accounts as the ultimate justification for taking on Hitler’s Germany. This notion was held by a good many servicemen and women. Little could have done more to explode this idea than returning to post-war Britain and finding a resurgent fascist movement. Morris Beckman experienced just this after six years at sea as a merchant seaman.
“I’d been away for six years. On my return, I got the train to Paddington and a taxi to Hackney. My father and mother still lived in the same place.” Returning home, Morris sensed that something was wrong: “‘What’s the matter?’, I asked my father. ‘The Black Shirts are back, the fascists are back’. They’d been marching down the streets, chanting ‘we’re going to get rid of the yids’, they attacked synagogues. My mother and the neighbours were afraid to go out at night”.
For the Beckman family and the rest of the Jewish community in East London, the nightmare of the pre-war fascist movement was repeating itself. If World War Two was really a “war against fascism”, how could fascists still be marching through London?
“In the post-war period only two countries had large, organised fascist groups: Spain, where the fascists were in power; and Britain, where Oswald Mosley was attempting to re-start his British Union of Fascists. By this time everyone knew about the Holocaust.” The newsreels of concentration camp survivors, the horrific detail of the Holocaust and its consequences filled the newspapers but still, anti-semitism played a significant role in the post-war fascist revival.
For Morris and his friends there were just two topics of conversation: the fate of the Jews in Palestine and the threat to the Jewish community posed by Mosley’s re-constituted fascist group. The plight of the Palestinian Jews and those Holocaust survivors attempting to reach Palestine were influential factors in the 43 Group’s decision to fight back.
“Three years after the war thousands of Jews were still incarcerated in displaced persons camps. They could see Germans walking about free. This created an enormous amount of anger. The suicide rate in these camps was very high.” Those survivors who sought refuge in Palestine were continually blocked and harassed by Britain’s colonial forces. At the same time, the Jewish and Arab populations in Palestine suffered under a brutal colonial regime.
“The British had a habit in Palestine of flogging... one schoolboy, putting up political posters in Tel Aviv was caught by a British patrol. He was flogged”. In response, the Irgun (an underground, Zionist para-military organisation) captured and flogged four British soldiers.
On another occasion four Jewish students were sentenced to death by hanging. There was international uproar: “The French and Italians urged the British not to hang. Some MPs came out against the hanging. But Atlee ordered their hanging before the set date of execution”. In response, the Irgun captured three British soldiers and hung them.
The Irgun were certainly far, far removed from the politics of socialism — but their actions inspired Beckman and his friends to begin a fightback against fascism in Britain.
“We went up to the pub for sandwiches and saw an outdoor fascist meeting next to the Maccabi Sports Club. Jerrrey Hamm was on the platform. Britain Awake [by Oswald Moseley] was being sold. Instead of going to the pub we walked nine-abreast through the crowd, walked up to the speaker and said: ‘You’re doing a good job, I’d like to buy a couple of magazines’. Two fascists came towards us, we grabbed their heads and cracked them together. We dragged down the platform and smashed everything up.”
Beckman and friends returned to the Maccabi Sports Club to discuss what had just happened. They concluded: “The government won’t stop the fascists. The Board of Deputies won’t stop them. Only the communists are trying to stop them. There’s nobody else.” Thirty eight Jewish ex-servicemen and five women turned up to a subsequent meeting organised by word of mouth. “We had a discussion about what to do. We’d already made one attack, we decided to do it again. The meeting was a success!”
After numerous assaults on Jewish homes, shops and buildings — including a number of attacks where elderly Jews were thrown through plate-glass windows — an opposition organised itself. “The fascists didn’t expect the Jews to attack them. They didn’t expect Jews to be more violent than them. We deliberately went so hard at them that we filled A&E with very badly damaged fascists.”
Soon the original forty-three were joined by over one thousand others. “We were turning people away. We wanted seven to eight hundred who’d be an elite fighting unit. We had about 60 gentiles in our ranks. We had some contact with the Communist Party of Great Britain. Of our members, we had more than eighty different trades and professions, including doctors... We published a broadsheet called ‘On Guard’ for eighteen months. Non-Jews wrote for it including Douglas Hyde, editor of the Daily Worker... On Guard was sent out to trade unionists and some MPs.”
The 43 Group didn’t rely on stumbling into fascist activity. Their activities were very well planned and coordinated: “We infiltrated nineteen small fascist units by 1946. We had moles inside of them... We had about one hundred women who’d been in the war. They collected all the information that came in. By this time, the 43 Group wasn’t just based in London, we had branches in Newcastle and Derby.” Information came in from across the country. When the Group heard of some planned fascist activity, the organising committee met to discuss a response. Everything was planned, risks assessed and preparations made well in advance.
“When decisions were made we had six to seven hundred people ready to act. We never walked towards the fascists, we ran at them! This unhinged them. When we received information and decided a plan, we’d dish it out to our commandos who’d assemble a team. We never let up on the fascists.”
This consistent approach took its toll on the fascists: “Basically, what beat them was the fact that we were very disciplined and very flexible. We could put out ten teams of commandos all together, at the same time. We had loads of information. It worked out very well!”
As the momentum of the 43 Group grew, conditions around them changed: “By 1947 there was a tremendous surge of support from the grass-roots Jewish community. We had regular contributions coming in. At the same time, the first fascists started to come up to us, they said ‘no more fighting, we’ve finished with Mosley, can we talk?’ Sometimes we’d talk to them and they’d ask to join! We always replied ‘you’ve got to be convinced first’.”
One of the most prominent successes was the defection of Michael McClean, who left Mosley and started to speak on 43 Group platforms. “The fascists became afraid of us, they knew they couldn’t stop us. When I interviewed some of the fascists in the 1950s they told me ‘if you hadn’t destroyed us, nobody else could have’. We were the only consistent opposition, we took the only way possible to destroy them.”
The 43 Group was not founded with working class politics and was not rooted in the trade unions and political organisations of the working class; but it was a grass-roots — mainly communal — response to the regrouping fascist movement in Britain.
Its actions severely disrupted the unity and strength of Mosley’s supporters, destabilising their activities and driving a wedge between competing fascist leaders. It played a defining role in snuffing out the embers of pre-war fascism.
Although the main thrust of its efforts was the physical protection of the Jewish community and retribution for attacks on that community, none of the work would have been possible without sophisticated organisation, intelligence gathering and coordinated action.
Beckman and his colleagues started out with just forty three, and managed to build an organisation over one thousand strong. They responded to physical threats, intimidation and murder in the most effective way open to them. They met like with like.
• For more information see: The 43 Group, by Morris Beckman, Centreprise (1993). The Spiro Ark community group will hold a celebration of the 43 group early next year. www.spiroark.org