Tag: Anti-Fascist

A Burning America

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There was once a time when I was mulling over the idea of going to America for a friends summer wedding. Summer has been and gone and the wedding became a tiny event with just a few family. I think we all know which virus we can blame for that change of plans. I was thinking too about maybe visiting him at some point later this year or spring next year and going on a road trip somewhere. He’s good for road trips. In another unrelated plan I thought about going to Seattle and completing a coding bootcamp course. Coding because I want to learn how to write it, bootcamps because they’re intense and good ways to learn and Seattle because it’s apparently quite a cool city and it’ll always be synonymous with Nirvana and the grunge music scene in my mind.

None of these things are probably going to happen. Partly I don’t want to go too far from the UK at the moment considering we have no idea what will happen with this virus over the winter. With the American government responding worse than ours somehow it doesn’t look like the most appealing place right now either. On top of that though it really does look like the country is descending into what can only be described as the early stages of it’s second civil war. Am I being hyperbolic? Perhaps. But taking a look at current events with another person being shot dead it does make you take notice and raise an eyebrow. A few days ago some little seventeen year old right-wing kid shot three people protesting on behalf of Black Lives Matter, after another unarmed black man was shot dead by police. Today, or maybe it was last night, a man was shot dead but this time he was marching with Patriot Prayer, a right-wing group taking part in counter protests.

A year or two ago these two sides of the ideological divide in America were squaring up to each other wearing armour and carrying bats. A few people turned up carrying guns but more to flaunt they could and as a warning that they had them than to actually use. Now they’ve started using them. This is currently an incredibly heated situation in a country awash with guns. At the moment, to say this could unfold with further violence and shooting is not an overly dramatic statement to make. It is an election year with an unstable leader willing to push and step over the boundaries of common practice in his determination to hold on to power. I’m not suggesting he’s about to lead a fascist military coup or become a dictator but he’s likely to incite an already incited populace. Really this could go anywhere. For the time being I know where I won’t be going.

The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There was a time when men were men said the romantics ignoring the fact that these were tough men through circumstance and necessity. The period of time that stretches from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the Second is one that has filled the imaginations of even the most derelict of minds. For my generation and those slightly older this is a period that we can look on and imagine our grandparents struggling to survive in. It is this connection that allows for an appreciation that others in later years will perhaps not have and it was with these thoughts that I pictured my own grandfather when watching and listening to the story of Johnny Longstaff by Teeside folk band The Young’uns at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. 

Johnny Longstaff was born in Stockton-On-Tees. He lived in a time when work really was scarce and a day without food common enough to be normal. He joined the marches to London 1934 as a fifteen year old demanding the opportunity to work and decided to stay. 

While in London he found himself joining various union movements and was present at the infamous Battle of Cable Street in which the original anti-fascist movement stood up against and beat Oswald Moseley’s fascist Black Shirts.

With this he heard of and met others heading out to Spain to fight Franco and his fascists. He was only seventeen and risked arrest because of the governments non-interventionist policy but signed up and headed out to Spain regardless.  

While out there he fought for the International Brigade. Civil Wars are by their nature brutal conflicts and the Spanish Civil War was certainly this. He buried friends who were killed next to him, spent days without food or water, endured the hottest and coldest of conditions and generally struggled through the horrors of war culminating in his presence at the infamous and horrific battle for Hill 481. 

He survived the war and was sent back with the rest of the International Brigade at the end of 1938. He signed up to fight Hitler in 1939 but this was denied on the grounds that he had broken the law by fighting in the Spanish War. In 1940 though he tried again and this time was allowed in. He survived the war and went on to live a rather normal life in the civil service before dying in 2000 at the age of eighty-one. 

The performance was incredibly inspiring and I left with an intense fire burning inside. I have attempted in this blog and recently in general, to try understanding the other side of the argument. It can help us understand our own position on issues as well as equip us with the tools to fight. The same must go to fascists and racists but it’s hard to understand their opinion when so deplorable. This show certain left me with the feeling that I don’t need to understand their perspective, their hate just needs destroyed. We live in a time that has seemingly forgotten the horrors of that time, of the rise of fascism and the very real threat it posed to the world. The Spanish Civil War was a fascinating fight between the fascist right and the socialist, anarchist and communist left that the Second World War could never be. While the Second war may have been one of ideologies, it was still one of Empires unlike Spain which really was a battle of ideas. These were men of a different time. It was hard and it was that that toughened them up. It is easy to romanticise the period but it does make you realise how soft we are in modern times. We mustn’t forget the past. We mustn’t forget those who fought the hatred of an ideology because while times may have changed, the more we forget the more likely we are to have to fight that ideology all over again.