How Jean-Marie Le Pen has fallen: from 17% of the votes in France’s 2002 presidential election, to violent farce in a car park in a usually sleepy Manchester suburb. On 25th April, Le Pen had flown in to what was suppposed to be a secret location to give a joint press conference with British neo-Nazi, Nick Griffin, who was launching his bid to become an MEP in the June 10th elections. (Griffin actually lives in Wales, but is standing in the North-West, because here, under the regional list system of proportional representation, he probably needs about 9% of the vote to gain one of the region’s nine seats).
Things started to go wrong for the pair when demonstrators opposed to Griffin and Le Pen followed journalists to a clandestine rendezvous in the car park of Pets at Home, Stockport. From here the press were to be redirected to the actual venue – the Cresta Court Hotel, in Altrincham. Anti-fascist activist Bill Jefferies snatched a copy of the directions from a BNP official. Camera shutters chattered into life, as, in front of the world’s media, he was punched on the chin: the BNP’s new-found mask of respectability had already slipped. Now the race was on, as the hundred or so demonstrators took to cars and minibuses, determined to show their opposition to the far-right love-in, and, if possible, stop it from even taking place. The caravan was completed by the dozens of journalists, complete with TV cameras, sound-gear, and satellite vans, equally intent, on witnessing whatever the outcome would be.
On arrival at the Cresta Court something of a lull ensued. There were a couple of police vans present, and reinforcements arrived in dribs and drabs until about thirty officers were on the scene. Le Pen was said to be already closeted within, and the demonstrators could neither see him, nor be sure he could hear their chants. Nonetheless, chant they did, in a desultory sort of way for an hour or so, whilst the more militant anti-fascists began to reconnoitre the hotel and its environs. Two things in particular did not escape their notice: first, the single exit from the Cresta Court’s car park, and second, the building site at the rear of the premises. If the BNP had had a similar eye for terrain and its tactical consequences, they might have avoided what happened next.
Le Pen and Griffin emerged from a side exit, and surrounded by a BNP security squad of half-a-dozen or so suited minders, were bundled into the waiting car of Griffin’s bodyguard, Joey Owens (according to Searchlight, Owens has been questioned by police concerning several brutal Liverpool murders). Before they had even shut (and locked) the doors, the anti-fascist were on the scene. In a major blunder, the BNP had chosen a route which would mean driving almost the whole way round the hotel to exit the confined car park. This was to take them nearly twenty minutes, during which they would be pelted with missiles and abuse.
First came the battle of the building site. The builders’ fence was dragged across the car’s path, and other materials were added to strengthen the barricade. A barrel of water was used to add weight, knocked over by the neo-Nazis, then thrown into the midst of their entourage. An anti-fascist was struck above the eye with a metal pipe, and later required treatment in hospital. Nonetheless, he was seen to continue fighting. But there were too few anti-fascists at the rear of the hotel, and after a struggle the barricade was pushed aside by police and the BNP squad.
At the hotel gate, police and the BNP had to battle the entire crowd in front of them, at the same time as the militant anti-fascists, who had now rallied themselves and run round from the building site, arrived in their rear. The exit barrier was pulled down by protesters, and pulled off by police. But the pièce de résistance (I hope M. Le Pen will pardon my French) was the rubbish bins, conveniently located close to the gate. Handfuls, and then entire sacks, of refuse, mainly from the previous night’s menu items were dumped on the car. The slime set quickly in the afternoon sun to a layer that was just too tough for the windscreen wipers – especially after they were ripped off.
At the climax of the struggle, fascist bruisers, police, and anti-fascists of all ages and both sexes tumbled over each other, with a hefty seasoning of image-hungry cameramen throwing themselves in to complete the chaotic mix. Some demonstrators were opting for passive resistance, and sat in front of the car, chanting, ‘this is a peaceful demonstration’, whilst others were more proactive, running around the sides to land blows on the BNP squad, and continue the trashing of Le Pen’s car, already encrusted with rotting food (and said to belong to Joey Owens). One old lady reached over the police line with her walking stick to strike a fascist bodyguard repeatedly on the head, inflicting a slight gash.
Just as quickly as it had flared, the violence ended when Le Pen made it to the road, and sped off in a car that under any other circumstances I doubt the police would have allowed him to drive. The demonstrators and anti-fascists, left in possession of the battlefield, each turned to checking their friends were OK, and attending whatever slight wounds had been suffered. There was a jubilant air: they were clearly of the opinion that they had run Le Pen out of town. I asked a woman in her twenties, did she think it was democratic for Mancunians to challenge the BNP’s freedom of speech with such forceful action? ‘Freedom of speech is a precious right,’ she said, ‘and fascists are against it, as they openly admit. That’s why we need to drive them off of our streets whenever they try to organise. We can’t rely on the state: the police have just protected this press conference’.