as in independent reports, radio, mainstream, pictures etc?

 http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1487285_three-arrested-as-national-front-protesters-gather-in-heywood

three arrests were made, 100 gathered by the memorial gardens

 http://menmedia.co.uk/rochdaleobserver/news/s/1487285_three-arrested-as-national-front-protesters-gather-in-heywood

why was there no protest against the nazis?

The "get out on the streets and challenge the propaganda put out by fascists" bit is easy - all you need is an internet connection and a printer or photocopier. As for the "strong working class anti fascist movement" - that could take a while, and whether it might "quell support for extreme groups such as the NF and the NWI" is an open question anyway

When Fascists tried to pull a stunt like this in our area, where there's no formal Anti-Fascist presence, me and an Asian mate IMMEDIATELY set-up a couple of pseudonymous e-mail accounts, wrote a very polite, carefully worded and non-confrontational blurb explaining why as a solution the far-right are worse than the problem they were trying to exploit, addressed it to "Dear Friends" and sent it with photos of Sieg Heiling EDL etc to a few hundred people in the local media, councillors, police, churches, sports clubs, community and interfaith groups etc, and to as many local people as we could Google e-mail addresses for (and councillors and plod were contacted to help take the edge off potential hostility to anti-fascist interventions, not out of any love for authority). When we got replies, our responses were again carefully worded and faultlessly polite, especially on the few occasions we received any hostile replies.

Knowing full-well that lefty rhetoric would go down like a cup of cold sick with 99.99% of locals who aren't leftists or anarchists, and knowing the left would fuck that up for us when they arrived anyway (which they did) we deliberately adopted an inclusive rather than radical stance.

Then we printed-out a couple of hundred home-made posters on a laserprinter, went out at night, stuck them to lamp-posts, bus shelters, phone boxes etc with sellotape, and toured the local pubs, cafes, bus garage, railway stations etc with some attractive female company to open the conversations (sorry if that seems sexist, but it worked), chatting to staff and punters about the dangers of right-wing hooligans potentially using their premises to cause a fight - we had one hostile reception, everyone else was grateful that who they misperceived as being representatives of UAF had bothered to take an interest in their safety!

Our posters were amateur but simple, direct, well-written, with large clear images of Sieg Heiling EDL that made the point in a way anyone could easily understand, and the posters' superficial amateurishness made it obvious the opposition was genuinely local and not coming from outsiders in the organised left. Ditto our e-mails showed local knowledge that made it obvious we weren't visiting opportunists, and when the EDL arrived it was the Fascists who were condemned by locals for being "outsiders".

Our approach wasn't spotlessly PC but it WORKED and delivered a major humiliation for the EDL and their NF and BNP hangers-on. I don't know Rochdale, so I'm not sure how safe it would be to copy our formula there, but certainly SOME of these techniques could be used I think.

 http://www.dailystar.co.uk/posts/view/188763/Racist-Bulger-fiend-backs-BNP/

I'm increasingly under the impression that the fash are working with the other fash (cops..) to try and goud previously unmonitored 'anti's' out of the shadows onto the streets and into the lenses of the FIT camera teams to be databased. Just a thought ...

Why was there no protest against the nazis? Answer is that it's not good for individual Anti-fascists, or for anti-fascism generally, for us to have our photos taken by our opponents, then posted all over Nazi websites like Redwatch pretending that because we oppose THEM somehow therefore we "support" paedophiles

The way to combat this one is with an imaginative and effective PR campaign, not by wandering like sheep into a trap laid by the NF and EDL

Either way I've been monitoring NF web chat recently, and basically the strategy for NF types over the last 4 or 5 years has been -

Plan A - support the BNP, but when they were exposed as a bunch of Nazis move on to...
Plan B - support the EDL, but when they were exposed as a bunch of Nazis go back to...
Plan C - support the NF again, just like the old days, because there's nowhere else left to go

The EDL got 300 in Rochdale, the BNP got 50, the NF got 100, even if they had joined forces it still would have been less than 500, but the fact they broke into 3 separate demos shows what a total shambles they are. In terms of mainstream politics the far right is fucked for years, in terms of street politics their best hope is an outside chance they might be able to provoke a race riot, but even in Rochdale their strategy's already failed. What we need to turn far-right demos into is intelligence bonanzas for US, not PR victories for them, get your cameras out folks!!!!!

There's a comment on Stormfront that says "It was a good demo by the NF but its boring when the reds don`t turn out. We always used to turn out when we knew full well we would be outnumbered, but now that we have bigger turnouts they don't come out to play. Its not as exciting knowing your going off for the day with no chance of being attacked. Right on the doorstep of Manchester too, where are the famous Manchester AFA and Redaction"

Is this thread being used to set Indymedia up again?

 http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t869774-4/