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Concept
Anti-Fascist Action
Summary
Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) was a militant anti-fascist organisation, founded in the UK in 1985 by a wide range of anti-racist and anti-fascist organisations.
It was active in fighting far-right organisations, particularly the National Front and British National Party. It was notable in significantly reducing fascist street activity in Britain in the 1990s. AFA had what they called a "twin-track" strategy: physical confrontation of fascists on the streets and ideological struggle against fascism in working class communities.
Among its more notable mobilisations were violent confrontations such as the "Battle of Waterloo" at London Waterloo station in 1992 and non-violent events such as the Unity Carnivals of the early 1990s.
AFA was launched in London in 1985 at a large public meeting representing a wide range of anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations and individuals, including Red Action and the Direct Action Movement, Searchlight, the Newham Monitoring Project, and the Jewish Socialist Group. It 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 vanguardist front for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Jeremy Corbyn was either national secretary or honorary president of this first incarnation of AFA in 1985. However, 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." Although many Trotskyist groups, independent socialists, anarchists and members of the Labour Party were active in AFA in the 1980s, after its relaunch in 1989 the main members were from various anarchist groups and Red Action, a group founded by disillusioned militant anti-fascist ex-SWP members who had criticised perceived populist or popular front politics of the ANL.
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