Glasgow against fascism: a report on 7th September and thoughts on next steps

On 7th September, thousands gathered to oppose fascism in Glasgow. rs21 Glasgow comrades document the organising and offer considerations about moving forward.

After the Southport stabbing in August, online threats of violence were rife across Britain and the North of Ireland. In response, new chaotic group chats popped up, and existing ones became manic. It spilled offline and small groups patrolled looking for fascist threats that, more often than not, didn’t materialise. Many people were scared. The frantic energy spoke to a desire to do something, without really knowing the balance of powers or where to start. In Glasgow, there were two rallies called in August and antifascists showed up in their hundreds to face off a couple of fascists each time.

A new object of attention for antifascists crystallised when an anti-immigration rally was called for the 7th of September which quickly gained the applause of Tommy Robinson and other far right groups. Whilst this cobbled together a temporary antifascist project, ultimately antifascism in Glasgow has remained a reactive and underdeveloped phenomenon. 

This report will evaluate the organising for the autonomous counter-demo on the 7th and offer some thoughts on how antifascists in Glasgow can organise beyond it.

How did it all come to this?

The most recent memory of fascist action in Scotland was a protracted picketing of a hotel in Erskine, where fascists gathered every week for almost a year to protest the housing of asylum seekers. Every week, antifascists mobilised, sometimes organising gazebos, free food and football. In the dim background, fascist groups Patriotic Alternative and Homeland split up, had fistfights, and otherwise wasted their Sundays miserably outside the hotel. Scottish Defence League last mobilised for racist marches in the 2010s. Since then, they have practically fallen apart. The fascists in Scotland are far more online than organised. While the Orange Order is not a fascist group, it is a well-resourced organisation which exists to preserve a tradition of deep conservatism, patriarchy and racism.

Against the backdrop of far-right outrage in late July and following two abortive rallies in early August, a new rally was called, a full month later on 7th September. Date arranged by Orange Order member Johnny McGinnty, he was quickly joined by Stef Shaw, a reactionary influencer who goes by the moniker Glasgow Cabbie. Shaw popularised the event on Facebook as a pro-UK rally to ‘demonstrate against any Islamic extremist groups taking over any Scottish island,’ proclaiming ‘enough is enough’ and calling for an end to ‘mass illegal migration’ and public spending on asylum seekers. Soon after, Tommy Robinson announced support on Twitter, and then Patriotic Alternative and the Homeland Party fell in line too. 

The rally’s messaging claimed that £10 million per day is spent on hotels for asylum seekers and linked this to poverty for ‘ordinary British people’ and the Labour Party’s decision to cut pensioner winter fuel payments. They also positioned themselves as distinct from the August far right attacks by ‘playing the pipes of peace’ and rejecting any suggestion that there would be violence at the demo. In a bizarre display of opportunistic contrarianism, they went as far as calling the demo ‘anti-racist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ with a post saying Give Racism the Red Card.

Glasgow’s antifascist response: why an autonomous demo?

When Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) called a counter-rally, activists were wary of their collaboration with police and Zionists, and thought it likely that SUTR would leave George Square before the fascists, a blunder which last month left Belfast in a dangerous situation.

Against that nightmare, the dream was to have a large counter-demo that retained militancy in restricting fascist space and outwaiting them, did not collaborate with police, and brought different networks in Glasgow together. With this thought, autonomous activists called an in-person meeting to discuss organising an autonomous bloc for this counter-rally. Additional events were later held in other parts of Glasgow, and groups self-organised to flyer and sticker their neighbourhoods.

With the messaging, the autonomous group sought to popularise the language and politics of antifascism. Comrades wrote a booklet containing safety information, histories of antifascism in Glasgow, and debunking the myths deployed by fascists about immigration. It also included discussion questions, in the hopes that people would strike up conversations with each other and begin to organise going forward. However, the insistence of all other blocs to have speeches, and yell at the fascists, meant that the noise in the square was quite overwhelming and it was difficult for people to converse.

Another booklet was produced to engage directly with myths about migrants, to debunk fascist talking points and argue for a solidaristic response to impoverishment. 

What happened on the 7th?

The bloc’s ground game was to arrive at 11am, well before the fascist rally scheduled for 1pm, and—depending on numbers—potentially prevent their entry to the square, or else to outstay them. Glasgow Genocide Emergency Committee (GGEC) and other groups agreed to rally around the 11am start ahead of SUTR’s 12pm start. The police plan was to split the square in half, awarding the fascists their precious cenotaph to the East, with a large fenced gap separating the two sides.

By 9.30 that morning, a small number of SUTR organisers had begun constructing a small stage on the Western edge of the square. The autonomous bloc and Palestine bloc assembled closer to the centre of the square at 11am, near the barriers. Early on, the autonomous bloc collaborated with the Palestine bloc to ignore the barriers and take up the centre of the square, which forced police to later reposition the fences and shrink the fascists’ available space. SUTR stewards tried to convince people to respect the barriers and return to their designated pens. They were unsuccessful.

The autonomous bloc had organised a welfare table with water bottles and masks, which gave out 100 litres of water across the hot afternoon, as well as a stewards team. Food Not Bombs provided lunch. All Under One Banner had cancelled their Edinburgh demo in order to join. There was a Red Bloc organised by the Scottish Socialist Youth, rs21 and Young Communist League (YCL). GGEC brought a large Palestine demo. 

All in, about 2000 attended the counter-rally at its peak, against 300 fascists. The police presence was huge and disproportionate, with 150 cops by the end of the day, including a contingent of 15-25 at both major train stations, 8 police horses, a Forward Intelligence Team with cameras, specialist public order officers with orange lapels, unmarked officers throughout the antifascist crowd, and police dogs kept in vans nearby.

When the Green Brigade (Celtic football club’s antifascist ultras) arrived, they were immediately kettled by police, who tried to get them to take their masks off. For lack of experience, the counter-rally couldn’t break the kettle. Instead, Irish tunes were played in solidarity and the kettle was dispersed by police at the end of the day.

At multiple points, SUTR stewards clashed with autonomous stewards, sided with cops to push them back, and at one point identified an antifascist to the police who had thrown something over the barrier. When confronted by witnesses about their collusion, SUTR stewards lied; an established pattern of behaviour that has contributed to ongoing confusion amongst activists about the organisation. The reason the Palestine bloc was separate was due to SUTR’s insistence on working with Zionists amidst an ongoing genocide – which raises questions for how low we need to stoop for united front work when the fascists are so small. Principles don’t set us back. 

It indeed came to pass that SUTR ended their demo well before the fascists had dispersed. GGEC dispersed early too, leaving the autonomous bloc to see the far right off, who had substantially thinned out by 4pm.

A line of police eventually pushed the fascists to the edge of the square to get them to leave. When asked why they had to leave before the counter-rallyist, one officer replied: ‘the only reason they are here is because you are,’ perhaps a point in favour of the counter-rally’s legibility. More pragmatically, it was far easier for the cops to disperse the smaller crowd first.

The Pro-UK rally was called for 1pm, so it’s worth noting that fascists actually began to arrive at 11.30am. Their numbers peaked at 1pm at about 300. Notably, neither the Glasgow Cabbie nor his puppet master Tommy Robinson summoned the courage to show up but other fascist organisers, from Patriotic Alternative, the Homeland Party, other groups, and people with white supremacy tattoos were all seen. It’s plausible that some came from neighbouring towns and Edinburgh, as did counter-rallyists. 

At one point, a 40-strong fascist black bloc escaped the square and the police to attack an Irish pub a few streets over, throwing bottles at two racialised people and attempting to break in before being chased off by punters. Luckily there were no reports of further violence the rest of the day.

What to make of it all?

The fascists were outnumbered 5 to 1, and their plans to recruit at the demo were thwarted, as a number of less committed attendees turned away from the square when it became obvious they were in a fringe group of hostile and conspiratorial sieg-heilers.

STUC and the affiliated trade unions backed SUTR’s response, but many other activist organisations did not, notably the organised Palestine solidarity movement, smaller anarchist, revolutionary and communist groupings, and the climate movement. The classic analysis of antifascist organising splits it into two opposing parts: massive but passive, versus tiny and frenetic and secret. However, the organising for the 7th broke with this pattern. The combined autonomous and Palestine bloc was just as big and yet more militant: most obviously, it openly showed solidarity with Palestine, which SUTR shied from, and it also took extra space and blocked police movements. This restricted the fascists’ ability to gather and recruit. It also protected the antifascist demo somewhat, when an autonomous line formed to block the police from moving westward on horseback along the south side of the square.

Whilst there are many lessons to be learned and ways to improve, the successes of the 7th give reason to be more ambitious about whole-movement organising. The planning work for the counter-rally allowed greater collaboration across many various organisations in Glasgow, including activists from the climate movement—something that should be continually encouraged in the wake of XR’s mass mobilisations—and comrades from other towns and cities in Scotland. It proved that it is possible to mobilise a large amount of people under the auspices of a more militant strategy and tactics.

Critiques levelled at the counter-rally fall into two major categories: not punchy enough, and not rooted enough. Some have implicitly suggested it wasn’t kinetic, confrontational and autonomous enough, so it couldn’t be called antifascist; it was liberal. There’s no doubt that this counter-rally was limited. Fascists were able to gather for several hours and some street violence did occur, with no effective intervention from organised activists from inside the square. Unfortunately, unlike antifascist movements in Athens which are characterised by the organisation of affinity groups, who are capable of acting together, taking risks, and looking after each other, Glasgow activists are for the most part not organised on that basis. Therefore, the autonomous bloc felt it necessary to have stewards in high vis who could point people toward resources and suggest tactics.

The second major critique is that the counter-rally wasn’t rooted in the slow community organising which is necessary to create transformative change across the city; therefore it was a reactive mobilisation, by the activist layer for the activist layer. This critique wasn’t necessarily borne out in the diversity of the crowds who showed up, but it is true that reaching out to community organisations was limited given the autonomous demo was planned with 3 weeks’ notice. There had been an intention to facilitate discussions about antifascist organising whilst on George Square, but the noise levels and lack of capacity ultimately prevented this from substantively happening. Comrades have been discussing the need to move toward longer term community organising to strengthen Glasgow’s antifascism.

Going forward

A counter-rally is a limited tactic, because fascists do more than simply rally. Only organising when there’s a visible threat makes for a complacent antifascist movement, only defined in terms of reaction. But what about the lonely dad who’s getting latched to right-veering YouTube algorithms, or the grandmother who’s pulled into watching GB News? Fascists use media in a broader strategic context to engage in ‘anti-poverty’ campaigns which answer the everyday problems of their base with ethno-nationalist drum-beating.

In an antifascist frame, the counter-tactic to this is to build a culture of resistance—but the terrain is not Twitter. As long as material needs go unmet, the far right will race to narrativise the reasons by punching down. Instead, out-organising in neighbourhoods and workplaces withers the roots of their ideological appeal. A different kind of popular analysis can be forged through collectively organising for better conditions, which can create community self-defence which is psychological as much as it is material.

There is also building capacity for community defence in a more direct sense. This would require skill sharing to proliferate a culture of active resistance, including affinity groups who can autonomously and rapidly respond. When the Green Brigade got kettled, or stray fascists wandered into our side and started filming people, there was no collective instinct to jump in and help a comrade out—something which can be changed.

Questions remain about how to concretely engage substantial diverse working-class struggle in Glasgow — labour, housing, fuel, health, debt. This is how to discredit shortcuts like the false solidarity of fascist politics which are exclusive, shallow, and mystifying. There may not be another fascist rally in Glasgow for a year but there’s no reason to wait for this work to begin.