Nazi skinheads on the floor
Kensington Library 25 May 1991
Nazi skinheads are lying on the floor semi-conscious inside the entrance of Kensington Library in west London as we anti-fascists pile out and past them onto the street. The British Movement skinheads don’t look so tough now in their black bomber jackets, faded jeans, Dr. Marten boots and nazi badges while they are sprawled out on the deck. It’s what every militant anti-fascist wants to see in the early 1990s as we face a small but violent fascist movement, a spate of racist murders and no justice.
I’m with Gerry Gable, the publisher of the anti-fascist monthly Searchlight of which I am a journalist, and have to stick with him, my car is at his house on the other side of London. If he isn’t a wanted man yet, he is about to be, and we both know it. Police car sirens are screaming but we don’t run. Officers are out of their cars looking for people to nick. Ambulances are appearing. We pause at an estate agents’ window which takes us slightly off the high street, pretending to look at the eye watering prices of local property. Then when it looks like the coast is clear we slip away.
Thamesmead: We remember Rolan Adams
Saturday 25 May 1991 had been a long day. The British National Party held a march in Thamesmead south-east London starting from the very spot where the racist murder of Rolan Adams had taken place in February of that year. Anti-racists had called for the fascist provocation to be banned but to no avail. Our friends from the local Greenwich Action Committee Against Racist Attacks (GACARA) organised a counterprotest bolstered by support from Anti Fascist Action and Searchlight. On behalf of Searchlight, along with the family and GACARA, I lay a wreath at the spot where Rolan had been killed. This was two years before the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which also took place in south-east London. The circumstances of both murders were very similar, as was the appalling response of the police.
Meanwhile, as all eyes were on Thamesmead, a small group of young Jewish anti-fascists were getting themselves ready to spearhead the disruption of an event later in the day in west London. Keith Thompson, from the shadowy nazi umbrella organisation the League of St George, had hired a meeting room in Kensington Library. The meeting was entry by ticket only. What Keith didn’t know was that the anti-fascists had also printed their own tickets to his event.
The main speaker was to be Jeffrey Hamm, a 75-year-old veteran of Oswald Mosley’s pre-war British Union of Fascists and National Socialists. Interned alongside other fascists as a potential quisling during WW2 Hamm became the leading post-war Mosleyite, attempting to rebuild the movement, while old man Mosley himself was in self-imposed exile abroad awaiting a glorious return to lead a revived movement.
Other speakers were from the National Front and the Third Way, a splinter group from the former. Also on the bill was British National Party member Tony Wells (Lecomber) who had been convicted 5 years earlier of attempting to bomb the offices of a Trotskyist organisation. He was currently facing charges for attacking a Jewish school teacher who he saw remove a BNP sticker at a tube station (for which he was also later convicted and imprisoned).
Back in Thamesmead, as the anti-fascists shouted slogans and the police kept them apart from the fascists, Anti Fascist Action were distributing their share of the stack of entry tickets to the League of St George meeting later that day. The tickets had the same wording on them, but there was a crucial and intentional difference, they were a different colour to Keith Thompson’s.
Kensington Library
In Kensington Library Thompson was setting things up for his event. National Front hardman Eddie Whicker and Matthew Collins (Searchlight mole and star asset inside the far-right) popped in together early but Thompson dismissed any need for assistance in securing the event. After all it was ticket only and he had a bouncer on the door. He wasn’t expecting any trouble and they went on their way to the pub. By the time they heard the police sirens it was too late to do anything useful.
A short time later the Jewish anti-fascists entered the library building and made their way down the stairs and secured the room that the League of St George were going to use for their meeting. It was now in the hands of the anti-fascists.
By now Gerry Gable and myself had travelled from south-east London and were in situ nearby. We had a spotter outside who told us our lads had entered the building and we made our way in. But there was a problem. Even though the meeting room had been secured somehow the bouncer was at the top of the stairs as if nothing had happened. It was still early and perhaps he wasn’t at his station when they had entered. As we approached, he knew we weren’t your League of St George regulars. We had to think fast and told him we were the TV crew and flashed our press passes. “Keith never told me there was a TV crew,” the bouncer said. There was an awkward silence but the bloke lost his bottle and did nothing when we just walked past him and down into the room.
A short while later we could hear a cacophony upstairs as AFA appeared, removed the bouncer and a few fascists that had now appeared in the foyer, and secured the entry point. The room filled with anti-fascists.
Anyone who turned up now had to show their ticket. If you turned up with the anti-fascist coloured ticket you were welcomed. If you turned up with a fascist coloured one you were escorted to rows at the front of the hall to howls of derision from the anti-fascists. The tiered room, that also served as a cinema room, became packed with anti-fascists right to the back with the fascists in a couple of rows at the front.
Gerry Gable got up on to the stage and made an anti-fascist speech in which he tried to calm down the biggest hot-heads amongst the anti-fascists, as we heavily outnumbered the enemy, and some of them had taken quite a beating already. One fascist who refused to surrender his bag – which could potentially have had weapons in it – was locked in the projection room banging on the door to get out.
What to do next? We had taken over the meeting; mission accomplished. There then ensued one of the most bizarre spectacles I have ever witnessed. The organiser, Keith Thompson, asked Gerry if he could have his aircraft recognition books back that he claimed were stolen from his house many years earlier in a robbery by anti-fascists. Jeffrey Hamm then said “Mr Gable can you please help me find my glasses” which had been lost in the pushing and shoving upstairs (it turned out they were in his jacket pocket all along). And then finally the dozens of anti-fascists ended the meeting with a victory song. Was it the Internationale? The Red Flag? No, we sang Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright side of Life to the hapless nazis. Then we heard the sirens, and it was time to leave.
The aftermath
Gerry might not have had his collar felt that night, but seeing as he spoke at the meeting and the fascists knew who he was, it was only a matter of time before the police turned up at his doorstep. The same went for leading AFA activist Gary O’Shea. They were both charged with incitement to violent disorder and the case took a year to come to court. In addition, O’Shea was charged with the theft of a flag.
The prosecution case against Gable was that he had been the instigator and controller of a well-planned invasion of the hall at Kensington Library. The prosecution witnesses – all nazis apart from the caretaker – were demolished in court when they denied they were nazis and then had their track records laid out before them showing that they were lying. The caretaker testified that a bag of weapons found at the scene had actually belonged to the nazis. Keith Thompson was challenged for swearing on the New Testament, when he was known to be a pagan, and further destroyed his own credibility by engaging in Holocaust denial. The defence council also claimed that Thompson had been a one time paid Searchlight informant. Jeffrey Hamm never got to testify, as he passed away before the case came to court. After four days the case collapsed, costs were awarded to the defendants, and we celebrated.