1977-1982
The initial sponsors included Peter Hain (a former Young Liberal leader; then the communications officer of the postal workers' union UCW, more recently Secretary of State for Wales), Ernie Roberts (deputy general secretary of the engineering union AUEW) and Paul Holborow (of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)).
In its first period, 1977–1982, the Anti-Nazi League was launched directly by the SWP, as the organisation's "front first and foremost". Many trade unions sponsored it as did the Indian Workers Association (then a large organisation), and many members of the Labour Party and MPs such as Neil Kinnock. The ANL was according to socialist historian Dave Renton, in his book Fascism: Theory and Practice, "an orthodox united front" based on a "strategy of working class unity", as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Critics of the ANL, such as Anti-Fascist Action argue that the ANL's co-operation with "bourgeois" groups who work closely with the state, such as Searchlight magazine and the Labour Party, rule out this description, making it a classic popular front.
Most of the ANL's leafleting and other campaigns in the 1970s were in opposition to far right groups which it claimed were not just racist but fascist, such as the National Front, an organisation led by John Tyndall who had a long history of involvement with openly fascist and Nazi groups. The ANL also campaigned against the British Movement which was a more openly Hitlerite grouping.
The ANL was linked to Rock Against Racism in the 1970s, which ran two giant carnivals in 1978 involving bands such as The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, Steel Pulse, Misty in Roots, X-Ray Spex and Tom Robinson, attended by 80,000 and then 100,000 supporters.
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