The following is a bulletin by a Red Storm Collective member on a recent anti-fascist demo which took place in Newcastle Upon Tyne:
The 27th of September saw three demonstrations in Newcastle city centre. On Quayside, the fascists mobilised from 13:00 and just up the road from 11:45 a coalition of local anti-fascists led by the North East Anarchist Group (NEAG), comrades from Red Storm and the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) gathered to block their route. At Monument gathered the representatives of the middle-class, petty bourgeoise, and labour aristocracy: the established unions, SUTR’s creaking bureaucracy and Newcastle Unites.
Comrades at quayside were quickly kettled as police cut through the less militant sections of the crowd, while the fascists were on a less ideal route. There were brief skirmishes at the kettle but as the fascists approached the New Bridge Hotel around 13:30, the kettle dissolved. NEAG and Red Storm comrades led a procession up to the hotel to meet the fascists. All the while Newcastle Unites remained at monument, singing songs and having photo shoots with the mayor while the fascists marched only a street away, protected by an honour guard of riot police.
Four comrades were arrested that day. Many more brutalised. This was as a result of reduced numbers at Quayside and on our march from Quayside. Numbers are always safety; you can dissolve into a crowd easily but Newcastle Unites and their leader Shumel staged a distraction at Monument. The actions of comrades at Quayside meant that the fascists had to reroute their march on a less well-populated route. The actions of the misleader at monument meant a thousand or so counter-demonstrators sat useless. I am sure that Monument made people feel good, the struggle is not supposed to be a feel-good experience. The struggle is a fight for the future. Had the mass of people in Newcastle that day been rallied to Quayside, the kettle may have been broken, or not happened at all, and we may have been able to advance along Quayside to properly block the fascists. Of a similar ilk to the crowd at Monument was the strange, small ‘communist bloc’ called by the RCP which, as usual, sat holding their newspapers while comrades tried to break the kettle.
Saturday was a mixed experience. We saw success in even our disorganised tactics against a well-equipped and organised police force, breaking the kettle just for a moment. However, the lack of prior mass agitation was a hinderance for us. The crowds behind NEAG, RCG and Red Storm comrades didn’t know quite what to do to help and attempts to inform the crowd were resistant to our efforts. Furthermore, the crowds were generally drawn to monument, meaning that the people were split between the navel-gazing speeches of monument and the active attempts to block the fascists of coalition comrades at Quayside.
The way forward is clear to me: form a united front with a provisional committee, a commitment to extra-state, dual power construction, a commitment to agitational propaganda efforts and a minimum political programme to unite anti-imperialist forces across the north east to pose a challenge to state repression primarily and street fascism when and where it arises. One thing is certain too that we, anti-fascists of various stripes, outnumbered the fascists nearly 10 to 1. If not for the actions of the state, they would not have passed.
