There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack by Paul Gilroy

Author:Paul Gilroy [Gilroy, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Sociology, Politics, Race, United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781134438655
Google: sTWMAQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01JXUVW22
Goodreads: 18738133
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1987-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

ANTI-NAZI OR AGAINST RACISM?

The fourth issue of Temporary Hoarding came out in late 1977. The Anti Nazi League (ANL) was launched on 10 November that year. It was to change and re-direct RAR's politics and orientation. The League was launched as a broad initiative, drawing together sponsors from right across the spectrum of radical politics with a variety of show business personalities, academics, writers and sports people. The League's founding statement drew attention to the electoral threat posed by the NF and their associates. The danger they represented was once again conveyed by reference to the Nazism of Hitler.

Like Hitler with the Jews, the British Nazis seek to make scapegoats of black people. They exploit the real problems of unemployment, bad housing, cuts in education and in social and welfare services…. In these months before the General Election the Nazis will seize every opportunity to spread their propaganda. During the election itself, National Front candidates might receive equal TV and radio time to the major parties. The British electorate will be exposed to Nazi propaganda on an unprecedented scale.

The League's sponsors sought to ‘organize on the widest possible scale’ and appealed to ‘all those who oppose the growth of the Nazis in Britain [to unite] irrespective of other political differences’. As the League's name suggests, its aims were simpler and more straightforward than RAR's heterogeneous concerns. It was a single-issue campaign modelled on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and centred on electoral politics whereas RAR's critique of Labour had fused with punk's anarchic and cynical analysis of parliamentarism.

What we must examine now is the degree to which the ANL deliberately sought to summon and manipulate a form of nationalism and patriotism as part of its broad anti-fascist drive. The idea that the British Nazis were merely sham patriots who soiled the British flag by their use of it was a strong feature of ANL leaflets. This inauthentic patriotism was exposed and contrasted with the genuine nationalist spirit which had been created in Britain's finest hour – the ‘anti-fascist’ 1939–45 war. The neo-fascists wore the uniforms of Nazism beneath their garb of outward respectability and it is hard to gauge what made them more abhorrent to the ANL, their Nazism or the way they were dragging British patriotism through the mud. The League's leaflets were illustrated with imagery of the war – concentration camps and Nazi troops – and were captioned with the antifascist slogan ‘Never Again’. One leaflet, ‘What would life be like under the Nazis?’ warned potential NF supporters that ‘The NF says they are just putting Britons first. But their Britain will be just like Hitler's Germany.’ Another, ‘Why you should oppose the National Front’ made a more direct challenge to the quality of NF patriotism: ‘They say they are just patriots. Then why does Chairman Tyndall say: “the Second World War was fought for Jewish, not British, interests. Under the leadershop of Adolf Hitler, Germany proved she could be a great power”.’

In the Guardian, ANL spokesperson Peter Hain described the NF brand of patriotism as a ‘masquerade’.

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