Antifascism in Epping: turning the tide?

Following weeks of increasingly large fascist demonstrations in Epping, east London rs21 mobilised alongside others for an anti-fascist bloc on Sunday 27 July. Fraser Amos reports from the day and reflects on some shared lessons comrades drew for the anti-fascist movement.

On Sunday 27 July around 700 anti-fascists dwarfed around 300 fascists protesting at the housing of asylum seekers at the Bell Hotel in Epping. This was the fifth fascist demonstration outside the hotel In recent weeks, organised by the neo-nazi group Homeland and bolstered by fascists from out of town. The groups have seized on allegations of sexual abuse against someone staying in the hotel to whip up anti-migrant racism in the community. 

Up to 1,000 fascists were reported to have turned out in the previous demonstration outside the hotel, facing barely 100 anti-fascists organised by Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) and protected only by the police. During the week, sporadic demonstrations targeted the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf on false rumours that asylum seekers had been moved there from Epping. With Tommy Robinson rumoured to be coming and a fascist demonstration called for the following Saturday at the Thistle City Barbican hotel in Islington, Sunday was shaping up to be a test of the balance of fascist and anti-fascist forces, set against the threat of a return to the pogroms of last summer. 

While other anti-fascist groups stayed away over safety concerns about a repeat of previous small demonstrations, SUTR appeared to be building for a much more substantial mobilisation. Judging this and the strategic importance of the day, east London rs21 worked with the London Renters Union (LRU), Waltham Forest for a Free Palestine (WFFP) and others to mobilise the days up to Sunday, and over 3 days we were able to mobilise well over 100 people. The day itself was an overall defeat for the fascists, Tommy Robinson stayed away, and we demonstrated our ability to out-mobilise them at least in towns surrounding east London. 

Epping itself does not have a well-organised anti-fascist movement, it was hard to judge how many local people joined the march however there was a good turn out of trade unionists from across Greater London, including banners from the NEU, RMT and UCU. Many other small towns which saw pogroms last summer and where asylum seekers continue to be housed in hotels cannot draw on antifascist mobilisation from London. Saturday’s demonstration in Islington was led by local community groups. In many places outside big cities, such community groups are few and far between, and often SUTR is the only organised antifascist resistance going. This is the result of many years of work to build SUTR into a national organisation, no mean or swiftly replicable feat. Confronting the rising tide of fascism on a nationwide basis means strategically engaging with SUTR as well as building militant confidence and capacity among antifascists.

There is cause for hope that the formation of a new left party could help cohere anti-fascist forces across the country. In places where there is barely an organised left, the new party would serve as a focal point for fragmented left forces, bring new people into activity and establish branches with the capacity and orientation for street mobilisation. This, of course, is something which must be struggled for – treating electoral contests as opportunities for agitation to build organising beyond elections.

While we cannot substitute ourselves for local organisations in towns such as Epping, we must not be afraid of mobilising people from outside areas where possible and necessary. This, in turn, demands discipline and sensitivity to the local context in our chants and engagement with onlookers to ensure they galvanise local antifascist sentiment and organisation as far as possible. 

On Sunday, after waiting for several SUTR speeches at Epping station, we marched along the route dictated by the police to the Bell Hotel, past dozens of people either waving from their gardens and windows, staring blankly, filming or expressing open hostility. Some simply expressed general frustration at the disruption to the town caused by the day and the police operation. Where local residents did wave, many of them parents and young children, we waved and clapped back, with SUTR activists leafleting some. Our greatest hope for the day has to be that those waving ended it more confident to speak up against fascism amongst their friends, family, neighbours and coworkers and one step closer to taking action.

Shortly after 4pm, the march arrived at a fenced area in a field beside the hotel, facing a no-man’s land occupied by a substantial number of police separating us from fascists partially obscured by shrubbery. After just over half an hour of mocking chants like ‘where’s your Tommy gone? Where’s your Tommy gone!’ fascists appeared to recede from view. After about 45 minutes, well before the police cut off at 8pm, SUTR made the call to march back to Epping station. It was explained to us that this was because some had already begun peeling off from the protest, energy was low, and it was important to maintain morale and stay safe by leaving together. 

Successful mass actions entail mobilising many without extensive experience and confidence in confronting fascists and the police, and therefore require a great deal of sensitivity to the energy and appetite in the crowd. Nevertheless, we judged that more could have been done to raise the energy and commitment of the crowd and hold our ground for longer. Lead stewards could have rallied people to stay in chants and short speeches, and stewards stationed at the exits could have dissuaded small groups from splitting off. Reports suggested fascists were demoralised and upset, and this extra time could have more definitively dispersed them.

As a bloc, we did not have the level of organisation, collective discipline and number of stewards that might have allowed us to consider independently holding the space with enough numbers to stay safe. It was unclear what the police response would have been to such a departure from the relatively controlled SUTR-led protest, and whether we would have been prepared for it. We followed SUTR in marching back to Epping station as far-right protestors filtered back into view, chanting enthusiastically.

The size and orientation of the police operation that day meant that fascists were not in a position to harm asylum seekers in the hotel after our departure, but we had left the field outside it to them. We know that the police cannot be relied upon to protect us, asylum seekers, or hold fascists in check. We saw this at many points during last summer’s pogroms, and we see it all the time. We know that fascist sympathies run deep in police ranks. We know that state repression is escalating, Reform is gaining power, and Labour is committed to appeasing them. In short, we have every reason to expect the police to become more permissive of fascist mobilisation and more repressive of anti-fascism.

As we returned to the station, a number of us felt deflated by leaving the field so soon, and the back train of the march grew looser. Harassment by fascist agitators along the route culminated in the arrest of one antifascist, with an initial attempt to protect them from the police was unable to draw sufficient comrades quickly enough to succeed. SUTR stewards sought to dissuade comrades from joining the attempt, presumably convinced it was pointless, while private security hired by SUTR appeared to assist police in dispersing our line. The police chose to escalate tensions, angrily pushing back protestors, driving a van towards us and screaming at comrades. As things eventually calmed, several SUTR stewards formed a protective line between the back of the march and the police line.

As Jonas Marvin put it last summer, our aim must be ‘mass community mobilisations in which you can outnumber and demoralise the fascists, and there is no doubt this places limits on what militancy is strategic when. Neither can we be content for mass mobilisations to be passive affairs reliant on the police, themselves a fascising force of state racism and repression. We need to develop the capacity, confidence and collective discipline to obstruct and move fascists on ourselves, resist police repression, and the experience to judge when it is strategic to do so. More reflections on experiences at recent antifascist demonstrations in Islington, Manchester and elsewhere are needed here.

Each mass action is an opportunity to step up our comrades’ ability to steward, chant-lead, resist police repression and assess the strength and inclinations of our numbers, the police and fascists. They are also opportunities to share skills, knowledge and commitment with the crowd in ways which make the less experienced feel safer, closer to the people around them and better prepared for the day. Building a strong nationwide anti-fascist movement doesn’t require that everyone adopt the same tactics; it means overcoming ‘tactical and cultural silos’ so that its different wings can become ‘contiguous, with genuine cooperation opening up the possibility of a dialectic of accountability’.