On 30 April 1978, the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism pulled off something that British anti-fascism had never managed before: a mass popular mobilisation that was also, undeniably, a fantastic day out.
Around 100,000 people from all over the country converged on Victoria Park in east London, but they didn’t take the easy route.
Assembling five miles away in Trafalgar Square, the march wound through the heart of National Front territory in east London — through Hoxton in Hackney, past the top of Brick Lane in Tower Hamlets — a deliberate, pointed passage through neighbourhoods the NF had been trying to claim as its own.
Organisers had been told that young people would skip the march altogether and head straight to the park for the music.
At 11 o’clock, Trafalgar Square was deserted. But half an hour later it was packed.
The column took three and a half hours to clear the square and stretched four miles through the streets of London.
The final line-up at Victoria Park included The Clash, Steel Pulse, the Tom Robinson Band and X-Ray Spex — a billing that fused punk and reggae in a way that made an explicit political argument: that these communities, so often played off against one another by the far right, shared a common enemy.
Emblematic
The moment Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69 and Steel Pulse saluted the crowd together from the stage became emblematic of the whole enterprise.
Dave Widgery, writing in the aftermath, called it a positive, joyous carnival against the No Fun, No Future philosophy of the NF, and the joyfulness was itself strategic.
This was anti-fascism as something you wanted to be part of, not a political duty.
Vote collapsed
The NF’s response was to watch their vote collapse. Local elections held shortly afterwards saw the NF vote plummet, despite their promises of an electoral breakthrough.
The carnival hadn’t just filled a park. It had had helped shift the weather.
You can see The Clash’s historic performance here:
