Anti Fascism talk hosted by Alarm and The Anti-Fascist Network

Saturday  21st April 2012 evening saw LARC (London Action Resource Centre) play host to a talk from a speaker from Anti-Fascist Action (AFA)  Ireland. The talk was jointly hosted by London Anti-Fascists and The Anti-Fascist Network. We had a good attendance considering numerous other Anti-Fascist events happening around the country on the same evening, with approx 20 people from numerous groups.

The talk was broken up into two sections the first being titled “The development of the Irish far right and Anti-fascist opposition 1945 to 1991. This was an excellent history lesson of a part of Irish history which is usually relegated to footnotes.

The point the speaker made excellently was, that although often small in numbers, and of varying degrees of lunacy, Ireland has always had a far right presence. From the 40’s extreme right corporatist, Ailtirí na hAiséirghe , the black Legion in the 50s, up to the 70’s National Movement,  and 80s neo –Nazi boneheads.  The talk was accompanied by slides of various players within these groups as well as the some examples of the propaganda they were printing. The talker also had some great anecdotes from anti-fascists who opposed these groups through the years. Needless to say as Ireland always had a far right presence there has always being anti-fascist resistance, primarily coming from the republican movement, from the IRA burning down Mosley’s house in Ireland to the Workers Party kicking Nazis off the streets of Dublin.

The second part of the talk focused from 1991 when AFA was formed to the present day. A run down was given of all the opposition that AFA have seen the back off since then, including the Immigration Control Platform, which never really took off in the mid 90s when AFA physically stopped their launch meeting, a blow from which they never recovered. To the early 00s and  Justin Barretts swift exit from Irish politics after a meeting with a few AFA lads. In the later part of the decade a neo nazi group the  Celtic Wolves, disappeared shortly after a encounter with an AFA mob in a Dublin pub.

He went on to talk about the current groups on the Far Right namely Folk Advance and The Democratic Right Movement. He went on to give an honest analysis of these two groups, and the current role of AFA in Ireland.

One point the Speaker made, which I don’t think can be over stressed was the success of AFA Ireland, now in its 21st year, is down to 2 main factors :
1) That the core group of people who were involved from its launch 21 years ago, are still very much involved in the group now.
2) That AFA Ireland has always had a membership from across the left wing political divide in Ireland, that it has managed to remain non political outside of the No Platform policy. This means it has being able to draw wide support from various different Republican groups, Eirigi being particularly mentioned, Anarchists both aligned and non aligned, The Socialist Party, and many other Left wing groups. Herein the speaker stated was the strength of AFA Ireland.

We would like to extend our thanks to AFA Ireland for sending over a speaker, a great night was had and we managed to raise a few pounds for our prisoner fund as well.
We look forward to running many more similar nights

No Pasaran.