Free Maja - antifascist prisoner on hunger strike

An antifascist prisoner in pre-trial detention in Hungary has begun a hunger strike. Maja T. was extradited from Germany in June 2024 accused of taking part in an alleged attack on neo-Nazis at the far-right ‘Day of Honour’ commemoration in Budapest in 2023.  They have been held in solitary confinement ever since - seemingly due to them identifying as non-binary. 

Budapest Antifascist Solidarity Committee has published Maja's statement:

'My name is Maja. Almost a year ago, I was unlawfully extradited to Hungary. Since then I have been held here in inhumane prolonged solitary confinement. Yesterday, on 4 June 2025, a decision was to be made on my application to be transferred to house arrest. This decision was postponed. The last applications for transfer to house arrest were rejected. I am no longer prepared to endure this intolerable situation and wait for decisions from a justice system that has systematically violated my rights over the last few months. I am therefore starting a hunger strike today, 5 June 2025. I demand that I be transferred back to Germany, that I can return to my family and that I can take part in the trial in Hungary from home.

I can no longer endure the prison conditions in Hungary. My cell was under video surveillance 24/7 for over three months. I had to wear handcuffs outside my cell at all times for over seven months, sometimes even in my cell, whether I was shopping, making Skype calls or during visits.

The prison guards inspect my cell every hour, even at night, and they always switch on the lights. I have to endure intimate body searches, during which I have to undress completely. Visits took place in separate rooms, where I was separated from my family, lawyers and official representatives by a glass partition. During cell checks, the prison guards left a complete mess behind. The structural conditions prevent me from seeing enough daylight. The tiny courtyard is made of concrete and is spanned by a grid. The temperature of the shower water cannot be regulated. My cell is permanently infested with bedbugs and cockroaches. There is no adequate supply of balanced and fresh food.

I am also in prolonged solitary confinement. I had no contact with any other prisoners for almost six months. To this day, I see or hear other people for less than an hour a day. This permanent deprivation of human contact is deliberately intended to cause psychological and physical harm. That is why the European Prison Rules of the Council of Europe provide for ‘at least two hours of meaningful human contact per day’. That is why ‘prolonged solitary confinement’, the confinement of a prisoner for at least 22 hours a day for more than 15 days, is considered inhumane treatment or torture according to the United Nations‘ Nelson Mandela Rules. Here in Hungary I am buried alive in a prison cell and this pre-trial detention can last up to three years in Hungary.

I should never have been extradited to Hungary for these reasons. The Berlin Court of Appeal and the LINX special commission of the State Criminal Police of Saxony planned and carried out the extradition, deliberately bypassing my lawyers and the Federal Constitutional Court. On 28 June 2024, a few hours after my extradition, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that I could not be extradited for the time being. On 6 February 2025, it ruled that my extradition was unlawful. Since then, none of those responsible have been held accountable. There has been no justice for me so far.

With my hunger strike, I also want to draw attention to the fact that no more people should be extradited to Hungary. Zaid from Nuremberg, who is acutely threatened with extradition to Hungary, is currently in particular need of this attention. I declare my solidarity with all anti-fascists who are being persecuted in the Budapest case'.

'Anitfascism is self-defence'

A 'Soli Rave' for Maja in Berlin, November 2024

Goths Against Fascism

We've all met some black clad wannabe edgelord with fascist adjacent ubermensch syndrome.  These creeps now think they are running the world, so now is definitely the time for eyeliner antifa to declare itself . And yes, thankfully, goths against fascism is a thing - there's T-shirts and everything.

'fascists do not dance in our darkness'

Thelemite industrial goths The Cassandra Complex have recently released 'Nazi Goths Fuck Off':

It's a cover of 2021 track by Finnish artist Suzi Sabotage:

You look so laughable

Dressed in your victimhood

Crocodile tears

Salt your self-inflicted wound

You wear your fascist views

Like a Ku Klux hood

Then you act like

You've been misunderstood

This is not your playground

We don't want you around

Your bigotry's not welcome here

So drop dead and disappear

Nazi goths, fuck off

Nazi goths, fuck off

Nazi goths, fuck off

Nazi goths, fuck off

Take out the fascist trash

Their symbols will burn to ash

Enough is enough

Nazi goths, fuck off

Meanwhile spotted in the great Dash the Henge record shop in Camberwell, Robert Smith is in the picture - 'Charlotte Sometimes, Always Anti-Fascist'

Update May 2025:

The Sisters of Mercy had an early 1990s 'Sisters gegen Nazis' t-shirt. They also took part in an ambitious if commercially ill-fated 1991 US tour with Public Enemy and Gang of Four. After a number of gigs were cancelled apparently due to concerns about the different audiences mixing, Andrew Eldritch said:  'Perhaps naively, I don't think it dawns on English bands that this sort of thing should be a problem. There is this tradition of the Rock Against Racism and Anti-Nazi League things and there's a tradition of white bands playing with black bands'

Andrew Eldritch (Sisters of Mercy) and Chuck D (Public Enemy)

1976/77 Rock Against Racism gigs

Some Rock Against Racism gigs and related events from 1976 and 1977

Carol Grimes and the London Boogie Band, Matumbi and Limosine at Royal College of Arts in London; RAR disco in Walsall (Socialist Worker, 11 December 1976)

Plummit Airlines at Hatfield Poly; Special Brew and The Derelicts at Queen Mary College, Mile End; Tom Robinson Band at North London Poly (SW 29 January 1977)

RAR May Day gig a the Roundhouse in London with Aswad, Generation X, Carol Grimes and more (Socialist Worker, 30 April 1977) 

Manchester and Ealing RAR gigs, the later with Misty plus a Hackney anti-racist festival (Socialist Worker 15 October 1977)

Black Slate & Wire in Stoke Newington, Steel Pulse in New Cross + Manchester and Birmingham (SW 22 October 1977)

Hackney Town Hall  - Generation X and Cimarons (SW 13 August 1977)

  

Crew RAR with Any Trouble (SW 13 August 1977)

Brighton (including Piranhas), Maidstone, Bangor (SW 1 Nov 1977)

Bury Rock Against Racism with the Nosebleeds (SW 1 October 1977)

Newcastle and Darlington Rock Against Racism gigs (SW 1 Oct 77)

A tour of England with Bill Hampton, brother of murdered Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton, hosted by Flame (source: SW 1 Nov 1977). The latter started off a black paper linked to SWP but most ended up going their own way (see this interesting piece). The tour included a couple of socials with Silver Camel Sound System, who were linked to central London reggae record shop Daddy Kool, and Matumbi (including Denis Bovell).

Found while browsing through old copies of Socialist Worker:

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/sw-gb/index.htm

see previously:

RAR documents 1979

 

Anti-fascists mobilise again in London against pro-Tommy flag shaggers

A respectable turn out on the 'Stop the Far Right' demonstration in central London yesterday, with around 5,000 people mobilising to oppose a similar size demo called by 'Tommy Robinson' (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) supporters. Back in October the latter managed to turn out a much bigger crowd, good to see their momentum on the streets of the capital stalling, even though internationally they are on the rise.

'Never again - remember history - fight fascism' - banner from lively black bloc

LGBT Against Racism

Ealing National Education Union banner remembers Blair Peach, anti-fascist teacher killed by the police protesting against the National Front in Southall in 1979

Good to see at least one banner from Luton there (another NEU one), the home of Mr Yaxley-Lennon.

'Borders and classes we will abolish them' - I don't know much about Turkish radical left, but good slogan!

I've seen mention of the Clash's London Calling being played at the Tommy Robinson rally, beyond irony as obviously The Clash were hardcore anti-fascists including playing for Rock Against  Racism. Kudos to Phoebe and Lilly from Brighton punk band Lambrini Girls for speaking at the  anti-racist rally. In times like these it's not enough to be personally non-racist, the far right are taking power across the world and need to be contested on the streets and wherever they show their face.

Unite Against Racism demo in East End 1994 + a spycop report on David Bowie donating to Anti Nazi League

In 1993 the far right British National Party achieved a breakthrough in the East End of London when one of its members was elected as a councillor on the Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets. This was a period of racist murders, including the killing of Stephen Lawrence not far from the BNP HQ in Welling, SE London. The BNP still had a street presence in East London too, selling papers on Brick Lane.

It was also a period of mass opposition to the far right, one of the largest manifestations of this being the 'Unite Against Racism' demonstration called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) on 19 March 1994. Around 50,000 people took part in the march through the East End, from Spitalfields to London Fields. This was part of a wider mobilisation that among other things led to the BNP losing their council seat in new elections in 1994.

Photos from an amazing set from the day taken by Pete Marshall, very evocative of the whole period

As has been confirmed in the Undercover Policing Inquiry, anti-racist groups were infiltrated by undercover 'spycops' who dutifully reported on everything that moved.  In July 2024, the Inquiry published a series of reports seemingly written by Trevor Morris who had infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League using the name Bobby Lewis (HN78). This includes an assessment of the SWP/ANL's planning for the TUC march, in the context of which it is mentioned that David Bowie had recently made a donation of $1000 to the ANL. Thus we have the unusual billing at the end of the report where the list of  'Special Branch References' - usually referring to people/organisations of interest to Special Branch - is headed by David Bowie and followed by Anti Fascist Action, the Anti Nazi League, Newham Monitoring Project and several Turkish revolutionary organisations reported to be joining the TUC march.

During the 1970s of course Bowie's brief apparent flirtation with fascist imagery had been  one of the instances that prompted the formation of Rock Against Racism, but his subsequent actions show that he decisively moved on from that time. Doubt if he had a Special Branch file (I believe that the letters n/t next to his name stand for 'no trace' in their records), but who knows?

Source

Working Class Records: Antifascista Siempre

Picked up this rather fine 'Antifascista Siempre' t-shirt in Spain recently, produced by Madrid-based Working Class Records.

They have a huge range of options on the antifa/anarcho/punk/skin spectrum so check them out!

Working Class Records

 

100 years of anti-fascism in Britain

Mussolini's ascent to power in Italy in 1922 was the start of a terrible period in European history, followed by similar far right dictatorships in Germany, Spain, Romania, Hungary and other places - leading to war and genocide. Mussolini's admirers in Britain set up their first organisation, the British Fascisti, in 1923. There was opposition from the start, so 2023 marks the centenary of  both organised fascism and anti-fascism in Britain.

In his excellent  history of 'Anti Fascism in Britain', Nigel Copsey dates anti-fascism here from efforts to disrupt the founding meeting of the British Fascisti in London's Hyde Park in 1923: 'The roots of Britain's anti-fascist tradition can be traced back to 7 October 1923, when Communists disrupted the inaugural meeting of the British Fascisti (BF). This rally of Britain's first fascist organisation, attended by some 500 people, ended in 'pandemonium'. Two further meetings, both held in November 1923 in London's Hammersmith, were also disrupted'. These early British fascists were a wannabe paramilitary outfit with a main focus on anti-communism and defending King, Country and Empire (with anti-semitism never far behind). 

Their public launch in October 1923 followed several months of secretive organising but it was described in the Daily Herald (8 October 1923) as 'British Fascisti's Comic Show' interrupted by hecklers:

 

There does seem to have been a slightly earlier anti-fascist effort in London associated with the milieu around Sylvia Pankhurst's Women's Dreadnought (later Workers Dreadnought) paper. Sylvia, the most radical of the famous suffragette family, had by this point helped established a Communist Workers Movement independent and critical of the mainstream Bolshevik inspired Communist International.

In March 1923 Sylvia Pankhurst spoke at 'A protest meeting against the fascist reaction in Italy' held at Signor Dondi's Club in Clerkenwell (Eyre Street Hill).  Also on the bill was Pietro Gualducci, a long term anarchist exile in London  who had once been jailed in Italy for singing anarchist songs.The paper also advertised 'Il Comento', an Italian anti-fascist newspaper. 

In May 1923 it was reported that 'An Anti-Fascist Organisation, specially appealing to young people between 15 and 30 has been formed. It proposes to attend demonstrations, carry banners. collect, sell literature, and so on  on. It will organise classes and meetings for the young. A Red Shirt uniform is being discussed. Secretary, Mr H . T. Noble. 157 Church Street, Stoke Newington'. Copsey dates the first anti-fascist organisation to 1924 when the People's Defence Force was established in Soho, but this seems to predate that. How long it lasted is unclear but this does seem to be the first specifically anti-fascist organisation in Britain.

Interesting to see that the Dreadnought crew held a series of jazz dances in this period at Circle Gaulois in Archer Street off Shaftesbury Avenue. The fascists too were dancing, with a Black Shirt Gala Ball  held at the Cecil Hotel in the Strand with Italian fascists and their supporters  in February 1923.

[sorry to have missed Alfio Bernabei’s exhibition “Sylvia and Silvio” is at the Charing Cross Library earlier this year, which covered some of the above - see his article here]

The Redskins - revolutionary rock'n'roll?

The Redskins were one of the few avowedly revolutionary socialist bands in mid 1980s Britain. They also had some decent tunes as well as a very sharp look. Two members of the band were active in the Socialist Workers Party and their musical output reflected this, indeed their first and only album took its name from the SWP's defining tagline 'Neither Washington nor Moscow' (but International Socialism). The band played numerous benefit gigs, especially during the miners strike. 

We might expect the party hierarchy to have been pleased at having such a band talking up its politics in songs and in the music press. But when the band were covered in Socialist Worker in September 1984 the tone was decidely lukewarm. After acknowledging their use 'to raise funds and fuel the spirit' Ed Warburton's article 'Powerful music, political pitfalls' goes on to warn that 'the dangers are great'.  Some of the arguments are not particularly controversial - yes, the music press builds people up then knocks them down again, and 'the music business turns everything  into a commodity. Rebellion is safely packaged'. The final sentence 'you can have revolutionary rock'n'roll but you can't be a revolutionary rock star' does though read a little bit like a direct warning to the band and a lot less than a glowing endorsement.

The negative tone was certainly picked up by many and there was an outpouring of support in the letters page of the paper. Paul McGinlay from Glasgow described the article as 'cynical, uneducated' and '  that 'The Redskins are the poison in the machine, and if you'd seen them you'd know that they'd go down rather than sell out'.

A Tyneside miner likewise called the article 'insulting and narrow-minded' and said 'I say all power to the Redskins and thank them for their Victory to the Miners gigs'.

'Ed Warburton's friend' came to his defence, claiming that he hadn't been slagging off the Redskins but making a broader point of critiquing those on the left 'who believe that red bands and stars spouting socialism in the NME are the shortcut to getting our message across. All that does is turn socialism into a fashion that the rock business can turn into last year's model and discard at a whim'.

A review of miners strike music in the paper shortly after does highlight the Redskins 'Keep on keeping on' single. Seemingly the band 'aren't to everyone's taste musically, but for sheer hard work, commitment and rock 'ard politics they can't be beat'.

The band split up in 1986. Over at Moving the River I found the story announcing this from the NME with the headline 'A rock and roll socialist fantasy ends'. It reads a little like the kind of state sponsored 'apology' read out by prisoners on Chinese media with the band's Martin Bottomley bemoaning the band's drift away from 'the party and its collective discipline'. He did though make the point that 'socialists should not discount the possibilities that popular culture can present'.

The SWP's ambivalence about the band most associated with it had a number of sources I think. The first stemmed from the top down culture of the party. Essentially a small number of people did the writing and thinking for the party, the job of the thousands of other members was to distribute this by the main activity of selling the paper.  Before social media and the internet, there was very little opportunity for people to put their own political views out there unless they started their own publication. People in the SWP who had their own platform independently of the party, such as a band or a zine, were always viewed with some suspicion.

But in the case of the Redskins there was perhaps a more specific issue. To lay claim to the skinhead identity as a socialist in the early 1980s was a bold move: a  statement of intent to occupy a subcultural space that the far right thought belonged squarely to them. Inevitably this was going to get a violent response, and it did at on June 10 1984 at the Greater London Council's 'Jobs for a Change' festival  in Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank.  An estimated 150,000 went along to see The Smiths, Billy Bragg, Misty in Roots, Gil Scott-Heron and the Redskins. As the latter were playing a group of around 100 bonehead fascists stormed the front and attacked people around the stage. I was in the crowd and there was a lot of panic as most people ran to get away, despite the fascists being massively outnumbered. Later there was more fighting as the fascists regrouped and attacked the crowd at another stage where Hank Wangford was playing. I ended up with a motley crew of Red Action, punks and anarchists chasing nazis around the South Bank. 

By this point the SWP, who had arguably been amongst those at the forefront of militant anti-fascism in the 1970s, were in no position to respond to such attacks even if they wanted to. It had actually recently expelled some of its most militant streetfighters for the offence of 'squadism' by which they meant putting too much focus on physically opposing fascists. Those expelled went on to form Red Action which was to be the backbone of Anti Fascist Action for at least the next 10 years. When The Redskins next played a London gig it was Red Action who provided the security. The experience of The Redskins showed that the SWP's position at the time of more or less ignoring the far right threat was untenable, not that they would ever acknowledge it. The SWP acted like nothing had happened on the South Bank and neither the event or the fascist attack fiasco were mentioned in the following week's Socialist Worker. 

From Red Action no.13, 1984 - their account of the GLC festival in Jubilee Gardens:

Stand up and Spit has lots of good material about Redskins and related scenes

1984 Socialist Workers courtesy of excellent Splits and Fusions

See previously Socialism through Oi? Chris Moore (Redskins) looks at the music scene in 1982