Protestors at RWB

"BNP Is A Nazi Party" answers your question nicely.

Around 8 antifa have been arrrested after a clash with riot police - one cop said to be injured "slightly."

By all accounts, except from the fantasist BNP, the festival was very small indeed, and since it pissed it down on Saturday night I for one had sweet dreams at the thought of Griffin ending up on his arse in a field today and he tries to rally his faithful.

The gathering and rally in Codnor and march to end of the Codnor-Denby lane was not the only thing happening on Saturday. Disruption at various points away from rally site, and nearer the festival site was the order of the day, obviously focused on giving the fascists a hard time getting to festival & not aimed at fighting with police as mainsteam media has reported. It was very pleasing that the cops were caught unawares in spite of the number of police assigned to the task of protecting the fascists. But as tends to happen if you take direct action, riot police come in to 'quell' things like roadblocks extremely violently tooled up with batons. In these cases self-defence, as well as running to escape serious injury, is often necessary.

The people who took the direct action, which meant that opposition to the RWB was well reported in the media and the police had a severe public order headache should be proud of themselves. It seemed the chief cop's only response to any direct action was to order in a team of riot cops to beat people up as violently as possible and arrest them, something we see time and time again but usually only reported as a bad thing if it happens in more repressive countries like Burma. As there were a lot of arrests all our support will surely be needed if the cops try to make public order offences stick.

If Stop the BNP Red White & Blue Festival means anything, it means stopping the festival happening not only marching and shouting about it. It's good to show support to the growing number of local people who don't want the BNP organising in their area, but at the same time the fascists already know who they are, so it's up to anti-fascists, local or otherwise to actively stop them organising wherever they are. The main reason the booze & music events license was not given to BNP this year (unlike 2007) was the threat of disorder by anti-fascists which tells us even more disruption is needed if they try it again next year.

And let's not kid ourselves. The whole system is in need of change, not a vote for Labour rather than BNP. The Labour government, with enthusiastic opposition support, has done more than anyone to increase the level of racism in Britain with its new border and immigration policies, locking people up in detention centres etc. In Italy it's even worse at the moment with the ruling party openly attacking immigrants, Roma people in particular. So it's only a small step from detention and deportation (organised by Labour Party) to calling for complete expulsion/repatriation which fascists in Britain in Italy want -
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/roma

Here is a link to a press article clearly explaining that the cops were first to use violence when they came to 'quell' a roadblock that was hurting no one and clearly intended to prevent fascists from going to their racist 'festival'. In it you will read from the mouth of farmer whose yard was on the junction, "Then the police arrived with batons and pushed them down the road and they leapt over the fence and into other fields to get away from them." Only after did anyone have to defend themselves according to the second eye-witness. This is not to say that police should never be attacked if they are defending fascists, but on this occasion it's the police who should arrest themselves for assault.

 http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/news/Left-wing-activists-clash-riot-police-anti-BNP-protest/article-273516-detail/article.html

... showing clearly that it's the direct action that will get RWB stopped.

 http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/news/residents-living-near-BNP-festival-site/article-273452-detail/article.html