The Battle of Lewisham on 13th August 1977 was a huge community mobilisation in South East London against a National Front march that was going through a Black working class area.
Below are reports from the time, news footage and an article from a month later in September 1977 dealing with the political debates of the day on how to stop the fascists.
What happened in Lewisham on 13th August 1977
The National Front, launched in 1967 and given a considerable boost by Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood‘ speech, was a growing organisation that pretended to be ‘concerned white patriots’ but were in fact violent fascists (sound familiar?). They had started standing in elections and were beginning to gain traction with different parts of the electorate. The NF national organiser Martin Webster made the NFs real intentions clear in 1977 when he said, “The Reds have had it all their own way and the only way you can fight Communism is to confront it. We believe that the multi-racial society is wrong, is evil and we want to destroy it.”
Lewisham in the late 1970s was an intensely political place. Like much of South London, the Black population faced over policing and under protection from the racist cops, some of whom were also NF members. In May of 1977, police had conducted dawn raids and arrested 21 young Black people accusing them of loitering and conspiracy to steal. There was a national panic at the time about mugging (as Stuart Hall wrote about) that was being used by the police to target young Black men in particular. A committee was set up to defend those arrested.
Running battles in Lewisham around the Clocktower had occurred between the left and the NF throughout June as the NF tried to sell their newspaper in public and confronted socialists also holding public paper sales. In July, a 300 strong protest in support of the Lewisham 21 was attacked by 100 NF members.
A march was called by the NF local organiser for August 1977, ostensibly against mugging. The local community knew this was simply an excuse to sow terror against the local Black population. A counter demos was called by All Lewisham Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (ALCARAF). A call goes out from a meeting in late July to call for a massive anti fascist protest, to meet at Clifton Rise in New Cross under the slogan ‘They Shall Not Pass’.
There is a battle in the courts and petitions to attempt to get the NF demo banned, but also all counter protests banned too. These all fail and the protests are allowed to go ahead, with an additional 2,000 police on the streets of Lewisham that day.
After starting off, the initial ALCARAF march is blocked by police and the organisers tell everyone to disperse. Ignoring the calls from the community leaders, many people refuse and leave the area to reassemble at the agreed meet up point at Clifton Rise. The police start to move the assembled NF protesters – around 800 strong – through the streets, violently forcing anti fascists out the way. This is the first time that riot shields are used in Britain – against anti fascists. The march is harassed and attacked throughout, at several points counter-protestors managed to get through the police lines and confronted the fascists directly.
At one point the NF were forced to march on the pavement but anti fascist protestors broke their march in two, a humiliation for an organisation that prided itself on being tough and standing in the tradition of the Nazi Brown shirts.
The NF march was partially completed but they were only allowed a quick rally in a car park before being escorted off to trains to take them away. The event was a huge set back for the fascists and showed the strength of a mass community mobilisation to isolate and demoralise the far right, but it also showed the policies commitment protecting their attempt to terrorise the local Black community, dressed up as their so called free speech.
Socialist Challenge: Special edition on anti fascism 1977
Labour leaders said ignore them… but their victims can’t afford to. So in Lewisham and Ladywood they said: WE’RE FIGHTING BACK!
What really happened at Lewisham…
Many people have been led to think the violence in Lewisham and in Birmingham was the work of ’extremists’. This is not true. What happened in both cases was more significant than that; something no left-wing group in Britain could organise; a justified explosion of anger and frustration by the Black communities in this country.
To the anti-fascists who gathered at New Cross to stop the National Front (NF) marching in a Black area, to those who assembled at Ladywood stop the NF holding meeting in another Black area, the police tactics were familiar. The police have attacked us with horses and snatch squads before. Generally. the cops have been met with linked arms, maybe a few fists, even the odd missile. But when thousands of people meet the cops with bricks, paving stones — in short with anything and everything that came to hand – and when thousands lay siege to police stations, then it must be obvious that something quite different is happening,
For this is the response not of individuals. but of a whole community, a community that feels itself under attack, a community driven to exasperation by years of oppression. Similarly when the cops get out the riot shields or charge their horses into the crowd at full gallop, then this is the response of police trying to crush, not a few ‘extremists’, but mass resistance and opposition – exactly the same as the British Army trying to put down the Catholic community is in Northern Ireland.
What an incredible sight the police made at Lewisham! For years, every bourgeois and labour politician has been telling Black people there was a law making race hate illegal. Trust in law and order, they said. Yet, here in Lewisham, were the very instruments of law and order merrily escorting a band of racist thugs crying ‘w*gs out’, ’n*****s go home’ and worse, into the heart of a Black area, battoning aside all opposition.
Is the response so surprising? Time and again in recent years the NF have been allowed to march or meet in the Black areas. Time and again the police have defended their ‘democratic right’ to shout their filthy insults and mouth barbaric demands of the deportation of millions of people for no reason other than the colour of their skin. There are limits to what Black people can bear.
MESSAGE
That is the message that comes out of Lewisham and Ladywood. Black people are saying they are tired of these fascist marches, tired of the police frame-ups as with the with the Lewisham 21, tired of discrimination in jobs, schools and homes. They’re saying ‘We’re tired of taking the shit for the problems of this society. Get the hell off our backs!’
The press campaign against ‘left extremists’ serves to cover up these, the real issues. All the screams about left wing extremism, all the drooling about ‘democracy’, serves one purpose: to cover up the real culprits.
Like the culprits in the police in taking the Front into the Black areas and and being willing and prepared to ‘Ulsterise’ the district the command of metropolitan police must be either a complete incompetent or else sympathetic to the National Front. Either he is a blockhead, a risk to the public and his own men, or he shares the racial prejudices to which the NF give virulent expression. What other conclusion will people draw?
It must be added here that if [Met Police Commissioner] McNee doesn’t keep his men off the streets at Notting Hill Carnival this weekend, if he doesn’t withdraw and let Black people look after their own organisation and discipline, then either he is completely blind or deliberately out to provoke a riot.
Or take the culprits in the Labour government. For years now, these people have done nothing to support Black people against racism. The economic policies have created the conditions for the current wave of racialism. While denouncing the left as ‘enemies of democracy’, it is they who have made, in fact, the most vicious attacks on the democratic rights of Black people – splitting up families at the immigration ports and countenancing the midnight knock of the deportation officer. Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees is the real threat to democratic rights.
The themes of the capitalist press have been echoed by Morning Star, Tribune, and Labour Weekly. These papers have attacked the ‘violent elements’, and tell Black people to trust in peace, persuasion and the law to sort out their problems.
What a disgusting spectacle! These people imagine that the rest of the world is just like them. When you are threatened with disaster, with physical violence, deportation, with police frame up, you should steadfastly refuse to be provoked, turn the other cheek, and write wordy petitions to prove you’re a good democrat. And when people are forced by harsh reality to reject in practice the line of the reformists, these bureaucrats result to the explanation that everything is the fault of a few “ultra-left” demons!
But passive bleating never won victories. It never stopped racism or fascism. We says to the reformists: if you are genuinely concerned about attacks on Black people, and do us a favour: join us on the antifascist picket line. If you had mobilised your forces in their many thousands to stop the Front, then they would truly have been no violence in Lewisham. They would’ve been peace in South London and in Birmingham. It is only your chicken heartedness, you’re blind faith in the law and order of the bourgeoisie, that ensured the anti-fascists and Black people would be attacked by the police.
Yet these reformists are doubly pathetic. Tribune and the Morning Star mourn what happened in Lewisham. To them it was all a great tragedy. A step back. For these people, the task is now to ‘pick up the pieces’.
SELF-CONFIDENCE
Judging by the buckets of tears, some enormous defeat must’ve taken place. But where is this defeat? The demoralised anti-fascists? The thousands of Black people cowering in a new wave of fear? They can’t be found – because they don’t exist.
Far from discouraging the Black community, the events of last week did the exact opposite. The victims of racialism discovered a new self-confidence, new unity in struggle, one that no amount of petitions can give. New links in struggle between Black and white which are a hope for the future.
The events of last week also made it clear to the police and the NF that they had better stay out of the Black areas. It will not be so easy to intimidate Black people in future. The mobilisation in Lewisham was a defeat for the NF – to the fury of the cops. Even now, there is talk of a ban on the next NF march in Manchester.
There has even been a change in the assumptions of the capitalist press. Increasingly fewer people now try to deny that the NF are fascists. Thousands of people don’t throw bricks just because of their opponents ideas.
The press campaign may serve to cover up for the police. However, the political, physical defeat of the cops is the subject of profound anxiety in the councils of the bourgeoisie. That’s why there is now a lot of talk about bans, they don’t want a repeat of Lewisham or Ladywood.
BANS
Let’s be clear about bans. If bans are made against the next NF march, and it is a big if, it will be the product of the struggle of the antifascist and Black people at Lewisham and Ladywood. But the main point is this. Who is going to enforce the ban? The police? What a joke! So what happens when the NF march illegally or find some way of invalidating the ban? Are the police going to do battle with the NF? And if a ban stops one march, how long will it be kept up? No – we must keep up the mass mobilisation. All out on 8th October in Manchester!
Nor will a ban on fascist marches stop the physical assault on Black people, their homes, families and social centres. The only real guarantee is Black self defence. Recent experience shows clearly that we cannot rely on the law and the police in Britain.
Naturally, the bourgeoisie will manoeuvre to defeat these big steps forward in the anti-racist, anti-fascist struggle. Some sections of bourgeois opinion, such as Whitelaw and Griffiths, want to go on a big campaign of repression against the left – creating new penalties such as a minimum term of two years imprisonment for assaulting a police officer on duty. Others want to use the occasion to hit the left as well as the right by giving new powers to the police to ban rallies, a move which will undoubtedly be used by police against the left. Coupled with these potential threats to the whole labour movement, there is of course the disturbing militarisation of the police already seen last week in London and Birmingham.
But neither the labour movement nor the Black community must be deterred by these new developments. Lewisham and Ladywood, the self defence of the Grunswick picket line – all these experiences vindicate the message we heard chanted on the streets of Lewisham and Ladywood: The Workers UNITED will never be Defeated!
… and those who choose to ignore it.
“Ignore them in the street and vote against them at the ballot box.”
This is the advice of Merlyn Rees, Labour Home Secretary, on how to respond to the fascists of the National Front. Unfortunately, if you are Black, or a labour movement activist, it is getting more than a little difficult to ignore the fascist on the streets. Just take the Lewisham area as an example.
Deptford: Bola Femi, a young Nigerian, was attacked outside a pub by racists. His head was smashed and both his arms broken. A busman who went into his aid had to have 12 stitches in his head.
Lambeth: a disco run by Lambeth Council for Black and white youth was smashed by a gang of white youths armed with knives and a sawn-off shot gun. Five youths were badly injured and taken to hospital.
Lewisham: a public meeting held by the Lewisham 24 defence committee formed to help a group of mainly Black defendants to face challenges of ‘conspiracy to rob’ ‘was broken up by the National Front. One woman was beaten unconscious.
New Cross: a few weeks later members of the NF launched a savage attack on a demonstration in support of the Lewisham 24.
This is the real face of the National Front and other fascists. Like Kingsley Read who declared after the murder of an Asian use in Southall “one down – one million to go”. If Black people will not leave Britain of their own accord then they must be beaten, attacked and intimidate until they change their mind – that is their policy.
Nor will the fascist attacks stop at Black people. White labour movement activists are already coming under attack. Like the Communist Party day school attacked in Leeds, or the Trades Council member in Tower Hamlets marked down by the NF to have his kneecaps smashed.
Yet Rees tells us to ignore the fascist on the streets and confine ourselves to a vote against them at the ballot box. The labour movement will heed such advice at its peril.
NO PLATFORM
The National Front are no ordinary political party – they are fascists, intent on making Black people the scapegoats for the economic crisis and destroying the organisations of the working-class – its trade unions, its political parties. The labour movement must be prepared to organise, along with the Black community, to defend itself against the fascist attacks.
Part and parcel of that is denying the fascists a platform to spread their racist filth and provoke attacks on the left and Black people. The demonstration in Lewisham called by the NF’ for example, was openly aimed at intimidating the Black community and encouraging racist attacks in the area.
Those people who are attracted to the apparently tough solutions to the crisis offered by the fascists must be shown that the labour movement means business too – that it can and will defend itself and defeat the Front not just in the ballot box, but on the streets and wherever fascism tries to strike out.
Those like Labour Party General Secretary Ron Hayward, or Labour’s Ladywood candidate, John Sever, who joined with Tory Michael Heseltine MP who denounced the ‘lunatic elements of left and right’, offer no defence for the labour movement against the fascists.
[Labour left leader] Michael Foot spends all his time attacking ‘so-called socialists – those who resort to violence – who are not socialists at all’, thus claiming that the anti-fascists who meet fascist violence with organised self defence are as bad as the fascists. This is the old trick of trying to lump together the attacker and the victim, if the latter dares to fight back. Its glosses over the real difference between the violence of the fascists and the anti-fascists – that the fascists are out, through their meetings and demonstrations, to incite violent attacks by bands of thugs upon Black people and labour movement activists; the antifascist of fighting for organised mass action by the labour movement as a whole, to defend the labour movement and the Black community.
Far from offering any defence for the labour movement, Rees and Foot supported McNee in using 4,000 police in an attempt to allow the fascists to go ahead with their march.
The paper of the left MPs in the Labour Party, Tribune, offers equally dismal gems of wisdom. First, a propaganda campaign against the fascists by the Government and the Labour Party. Excellent. But why does Tribune not call for the Labour Government to repeat the racist immigration laws, as is the policy of the last Labour Party conference? This would show a real willingness to campaign against the ideas of the National Front. Condemning the Front whilst pursuing racist policies is pure hypocrisy.
Tribune’s real position can be seen from their refusal to support the counter-mobilisation against the fascists: ”If there had not been a confrontation would the NF have got the amount of publicity it did?’, Tribune asks. Well perhaps it would not. But we would ask – is it not only because of consistent mobilisation to deny a platform for the National Front that the press finally – now almost unanimously – admits that they are fascists? Was not the effect of Lewisham – the outrage displayed, not just by members of the far left, but by the whole labour movement, and local Black people, to finally pin the fascist label on the Front and tear away their veil of respectability. And did it not show to fascist sympathisers nationally that the Front offers no easy way out, because it will be met with the most determined response from the labour movement itself?
COMMUNIST PARTY
The Communist Party on the other hand do claim to offer a means of defence – ‘Never again must the NF be allowed to parade its racist poison through the streets. Its marches must be stopped by the police.’ However, until the police do that the Communist Party are content to retreat in doors leave the fascist to route their hate marches through Black communities as they sought to do at Lewisham.
Instead of denying the fascists a platform, the Communist Party calls for a “broad democratic alliance”, like that with church figures in Lewisham, saying that it is by the development of this ‘political mass action’ that the NF will be defeated. We have seen only too well what this meant in Lewisham – limiting action against the Front to that which is acceptable to the church figures, and dispersing the anti-racist forces as soon as the police stepped into defend the fascists.
We too are in favour of political mass action to stop the Front. We too are in favour of imposing a ban on the fascist marches. But we start from mobilising the labour movement to impose that ban. The CPs tailing behind local church figures leads them to ignore this task.
There is an easy way for all these leaders of the labour movement to implement their calls to defeats the fascists with a minimum of violence – by mobilising labour movement to make sure that tens of thousands of workers turn up next time, in Tameside in October, to stop the announced National Front march. We can be sure then that the fascists won’t dare show their faces, and the police won’t waste their time trying to clear a way for them.
Fascists attack Labour meeting
Socialist Challenge, 15 September 1977
Last week, 40 National front members broke up the Labour Party ward meeting in South London that was due to be addressed by right-wing Labour MP Tom Cox. Wearing anoraks, black shirts and leather jackets, the fascists marched into the meeting where about 20 people were waiting to hear Cox speak in support of the government’s record. Continuous chanting of “National Front, National Front” soon forced the outnumbered and frightened Labor Party members to leave the room.
Later the Lewisham NF organiser Richard Edmunds stated that the disruption would be repeated at other Labor Party meetings in protest against Labour Councils banning the NF from hiring public halls. “If we can’t have meetings then will take over theirs.” This sort of move marks the breakdown of the respectable image the fascists have tried to create in the past. No doubt it will give certain Labour Party members more opportunities to make peaceful protests against the Front. But maybe when it’s themselves rather than Black people under attack they will begin to change their tune….
For more on the battle of Lewisham in 1977, you can read this local history blog which was created by local historians and activists to commemorate a great victory over the forces of fascism.
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