Next Saturday, 21st February, the fascists of Britain First will march into Manchester’s city centre, shielded by a costly police operation.
The financial, political, and moral cost of allowing an organisation run by convicted criminals – whose ranks attract domestic abusers, drug dealers, and neo-Nazis – will make our city a temporarily unpleasant place to visit.
Yet, as has happened for nearly a century, the forces of decency are gathering to ensure their message of hate is drowned out.
This is a city with a profound and proud history of anti-fascist resistance. Our great-grandparents didn’t just oppose Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in the abstract; they physically drove them out.
Humiliation
In September 1934, when Mosley held a notorious rally at Belle Vue, over 3,000 anti-fascist campaigners marched along Hyde Road to protest.
Their chants of ‘Down with fascism’ and ‘Down with the blackshirt thugs!’ were so loud they reportedly drowned out Mosley’s speech, forcing him to retreat in humiliation after just an hour.
The defeat of fascism in Manchester has also been a story of quiet, defiant resilience. In 1934, Mosley’s British Union of Fascists opened its northern headquarters on Northumberland Street, deliberately planted in the heart of a Jewish neighbourhood to intimidate the community.
But by 1937, the BUF had fallen on hard times and stopped paying rent. A local Jewish businessman, Avrohom Yaakov Pfeffer, seized the opportunity, bought the building, and evicted the fascists.
He then donated it to the growing Jewish community. Today, that building is the Machzikei Hadass synagogue, a beautiful and permanent symbol of how fascism was replaced by community, how the blackshirts were literally replaced by the black hats .
Battlegound
This spirit carried through the decades. In the 1960s, we drove Mosley’s Union Movement out of Moss Side.
The 1961 by-election there became a battleground when Mosley stood on a racist ticket, distributing leaflets that smeared the Caribbean community. But the people of Manchester rejected him; his candidate polled just 1,200 votes and lost his deposit .
This is the tradition we inherit: a working-class and community-led opposition that has seen off the National Front, the BNP, and just last year ran the grifter Nick Tenconi out of Piccadilly Gardens.
Now, Paul Golding, a multiply convicted criminal and admitted domestic abuser, dares to march under the banner of a “March for Remigration,” a racist dog-whistle for ethnic cleansing .
He’ll cynically claim to be “protecting women and girls,” yet his record of violence against his former partner, Jayda Fransen, exposes his hypocrisy.
Appalling attitudes
The vast majority of his followers are men, many with appalling attitudes towards women, a point underscored by the recent launch of Women Against the Far Right North West.
Over 400 people packed into Central Hall Manchester this month to organise against this very threat, to show that the far-right does not speak for the women of this city .
Standing in Manchester city centre today, I am struck once again by the sight of children from every background playing together. This is the everyday reality of our multicultural city, something to be fiercely protected.
Britain First thugs
The thugs of Britain First represent the 1%, not the 99% of us who get along. Their hatred is fuelled by billionaire-owned platforms like those of Elon Musk and amplified by fake news outlets, but their ideas will find no home here.
We know the police and local authorities are facilitating this march at great expense, leaving decent people to pick up the pieces. But we also know we have the power to disrupt them.
A few weeks ago, when the self-styled ‘Christian nationalist’ grifter Hugh Anthony attempted a rally in St Peter’s Square, a serious, no-nonsense anti-fascist presence forced him and his tiny band of followers to cower behind police lines. That was just a prelude.
So if you’re free next Saturday and you want to make history, please get to Manchester. Let’s add another chapter to our city’s legacy. Let’s show these modern-day Mosleyites that their hatred belongs in the past.
Let’s gather in Piccadilly Gardens from 11:30 am onwards.
They shall not pass.
No Pasaran!
