The BNP ‘festival’ near Welshpool was designed to celebrate, and build upon, their electoral advances made in Burnley, Oldham etc. It failed. According to journalists at the camp, between 100 and 150 people attended on Saturday – possibly a third of last year’s attendance. These included none of the new forces recruited in Burnley, Oldham and Bradford. Why? In all of those centres there have been large-scale anti-nazi mobilizations since the General Election, beginning to cut the ground from beneath the hard-core Nazis. The ANL has been a significant part of this. A 500 – strong public meeting in Burnley made the decision to hold an ANL Carnival in the city. (It doesn’t help that New Labour is banning it. And all anti-fascists need to take time out to deluge the Home Office, Burnley Council etc with demands that the Carnival goes ahead).



The ANL protest in Welshpool was a success. It was built with the co-operation of local anti-racists. And there were many local residents there. The number of Welsh-speakers present bears testimony. And this was after our demo had been banned by the police! Compare that to the proposed NF demo that was banned in Birmingham the previous weekend. The NF were too scared to appear. The ANL held two successful stalls in the city that day!



If Nazi ideas and organisation are to be prevented from growing, the key to success is mobilising the maximum people from the area itself, beyond the ranks of the already committed activists. We must prove in practice that we are the majority, and the Nazis are the unrepresentative minority. This is true when we challenge their ideas asylum-seekers, Holocaust, immigration, multiculturalism etc.) It is even more true when we confront them organisationally, as in Welshpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Burnley etc.



The ANL did this. Many people in Mid-Wales now know about the viper they nurture at their breast. They won’t forget the sinister police road-blocks, with Nick Griffin and three of his goons telling the police who can pass through and who can’t. It’s unlikely that the BNP will be permitted to organise in this way in the future.



For the ANL to have bussed in coach-loads of hard-knocks from English cities would have been a disaster on all fronts. It would have alienated local anti-racists, preventing the growth of anti-racist organisation in mid-Wales. It would have vindicated the Home Office, the police and the spineless media, who all tried to paint the ANL as the mirror image of Nazi thugs.



It would have actively drawn resources away from the cities where Nazis hope to build on disillusion with New Labour.And it would have begun to present a ‘solution’ to fascism based on mobilising a militant paramilitary minority. This ‘ solution’ is an elitist one, and ultimately leads to passivity amongst the majority of anti-racists, who are unable or unwilling to transform themselves into street-fighters.



I am proud to say that at Welshpool, because of the way the ANL organised, no anti-racist was excluded from full participation. There was a blind resident on the protest; old and young people, black, white, even an A.M.! All the leading spokes-people for the antifascists, who conducted negotiations with the police that day were women. It was a fine platform from which to continue building the anti-nazi movement in Wales.