There is much on the internet about this demonstration, and the death of Kevin Gately. I was there, and this note just adds some personal recollections of my own.
On this day, in 1974, at an anti-fascist demonstration in London, Kevin Gately, a student from Warwick University, was killed, almost certainly by a blow with a truncheon from a mounted police officer.
He was one of a contingent (as was I) which was trying to get through the police lines to prevent a rally by the National Front.
No platform conference
Earlier that day there had been an emergency conference of the National Union of Students which, in the face of an onslaught from the right wing press, was reconsidering the No Platform for Racists and Fascists policy it had adopted some months earlier.
To its credit the policy was strongly reaffirmed, and I was one of the delegates who supported it.
National Front rally
Then some of us left to join the anti-NF march to Red Lion Square which had been called by Liberation, the Movement for Colonial Freedom.
The National Front, enjoying a period of growing success at the time, was marching through London and planned to hold a rally at Conway Hall.
As we approached the square , a group of about 200 of us tried to push our way through the police lines and get to the entrance where we planned to establish a mass picket to stop the Front meeting happening.
That surge was met with a vicious and wholly disproportionate response from the police – mounted officers charged their horses into the crowd, lashing out with their truncheons.
Kevin Gately was very tall, about 6 foot 9, and must have presented a tempting target as he stood out from the crowd. He died of a blow to the head from a blunt instrument.
Many injuries
There were many other injuries to anti-fascists that day and when a friend of mine who had also been there came into our college common room the next morning and asked “How many died?” it didn’t seem an odd question at all.
It was only years later, when I saw the photo above, that I realised how close I had been to Kevin Gately – just four rows behind him as we approached Red Lion Square.
Travesty of a public enquiry
There was a public enquiry under Lord Scarman which was a travesty and sought to pin the blame for Kevin Gately’s death on those attempting to stop the Front rally, rather than those who ploughed into us on horseback, batons flailing.
But the march did galvanise the anti-fascist movement and helped stimulate the establishment of many local anti-fascist groups round the country which, a few years later, became the grass roots of the Anti-Nazi League and inflicted a historic defeat on the NF.
This article first appeared on my blog at https://andybell2000.com/
