South and South West London Anti-Fascist Group

Labour movement and anti-racist activists in south London have recently founded this group, which is sponsored by Battersea & Wandsworth and Croydon trades councils. It will be organising a lot of campaigning work, producing literature etc in the coming months. More information soon!

Email southlondon-antifascists@aktivix.org

The founding statement is below

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We are a labour movement and community-based campaign against the BNP and other fascist, racist and far-right parties.

The group will be comprised of activists and delegates to a range of national anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations like Unite Against Fascism and Searchlight and to events co-ordinated by SERTUC. It will be committed to non-sectarian unity and to working with all political parties against fascism.

We oppose the BNP and parties like them because they stand against the interests and traditions of the labour movement. They are fundamentally anti-working class, racist, sexist and homophobic. The BNP has grown in the recent past. At the last elections they won a further ten council seats (in areas within the lowest 10% for all socio-economic indicators) and Richard Barnbrook was elected to the Greater London Assembly.

They have grown by relating to the very real crises facing working-class communities: the problems in housing, hospitals, education and public services. The BNP also exploits the attacks on immigrants and asylum-seekers from all sides of the political spectrum and the press.

We seek to build links between the labour movement and community groups in order to:

1. Mobilise the labour movement and communities to campaign against local fascist activity;
2. Mobilise against the fascists and for the defence of communities targeted by fascists eg. supporting postal workers who refuse to deliver BNP election material and organising demonstrations to stop BNP activity;
3. Expose the bigoted lies of groups like the BNP for what they are and work to extend anti-racism and other liberation campaigns within our movement;
4. Educate the community, and in particular young people, about the nature of groups like the BNP;
5. Oppose all forms of racism, including the demonisation of immigrants;
6. Develop materials and campaigns that contest the political terrain adopted by the far right - counterposing working-class solidarity to their politics of race hate;
7. Organise workers and communities, black and white, British-born and migrant, to fight back against cuts and privatisation - for decent jobs, homes, education, services and democratic rights for all.