The summer’s fascist offensive has gripped these islands with fear and brought anti-Muslim, anti-refugee riots and pogroms to towns and cities across England and Ireland, with still more to come in the days ahead. Soon Scotland may also see fascist violence on our streets, with far-right actions planned in a variety of locations in the next few days, and a larger “pro-UK” demonstration scheduled for September 7th in Glasgow.
In the spirit of encouraging resistance to the fascist upsurge, Heckle presents eyewitness testimony from a comrade of ours, Joe, who took part in the anti-fascist counter-demonstration in Bristol on Saturday 3rd of August. By their quick thinking and tenacious courage, Joe and his comrades blocked a horde of fascists from breaking into a hotel housing asylum seekers and committing a pogrom. Read all about it in Joe’s own words below.
Well, I wanted to protest against the far right in Bristol for two main reasons: The first being that the explosion of fascist or Nazi far right thuggery and violence back onto our streets is genuinely terrifying, and I think it’s really important to show that communities won’t stand for it and that we will rally together to stop it. I think it’s really important to demonstrate that. I think the fact we’d seen in multiple other cities that counter-protesters can outnumber the far right, I thought it was important to show that in Bristol as well. And also it’s a city I lived in for multiple years while I was at university, I have an attachment to the community and I wanted to help protect especially the most vulnerable members of the community, you know, friends, neighbours and refugees who had made Bristol their home. I wanted to help protect them if I could.
In terms of what happened, initially we went down to the counter-demo at 6pm at Castle Park, where I think it was reported in the end that there was about 700 counter-protesters, anti-fascists, lining up against the far-right. The police were trying to keep us separate, but immediately as soon as the far-right turned up there was no hesitation or building tension, they just immediately started throwing cans, bottles, whatever they could. They were pretty much violent straightaway from the get-go. We were chanting at them, I think it was mainly pointing out how many more of us there were than them. At that point it definitely felt tense, I mean the police were clearly on extremely high alert, I mean within a few minutes they’d already pretty violently arrested an anti-fascist.
We had known in advance — and if we knew, the police must have known because it was broadcast all over the internet — that the far right were likely to target the Mercure hotel in Redcliffe which is being used to house asylum seekers. And where Castle Park is in Bristol, it’s near a bridge that you can cross to south of the river to get towards where the hotel is, and the far right started moving in that direction, and so did the larger counter-demonstration.
We saw a lot of quite violent confrontation between the police and the far-right on the bridge, traffic was blocked for quite a while. You could see a couple of buses stranded on the bridge with the police trying to funnel the far-right back with dogs and horses and everything. Eventually a large contingent of the anti-fascist protesters got wind that the far right were already on their way to the hotel regardless, so we decided to head down there ourselves to defend it.
It’s worth noting that despite the fact the police would have been aware in advance the hotel would be targeted, they had not sent anyone there. When the anti-fascists started heading down there we had a couple of cops on bikes following us, but there was no sign of any police vans, riot cops, police on horses, any of that. When we got to the hotel it was effectively completely undefended. So when we arrived, the fash hadn’t got there yet. We formed a sort of human chain outside the entrance to the hotel. There was about 150 anti-fascists there in total I think, whilst some of us also monitored the hill to see if the fash were on their way.
For a minute, it kind of seemed like it might be okay — I think we must have been there for about 10 minutes before anything happened. Still no sign of the police at this point beyond the two cops on bikes. But then it was genuinely almost absurd, I remember somebody rode up the hill wearing a Deliveroo jacket and just shouted: “They’re coming! They’re coming!” And then sure enough, within a minute, you could see this whole crowd of just, it must have been a hundred of them I think, charging up the hill towards us.
So we maintained a blockade in front of the entrance to the hotel, and those of us who weren’t in front of the hotel formed a couple of human chains on the hill, locking arms to try and hold together to keep a sturdy bloc so we couldn’t be pulled apart or attacked as easily. And as soon as they got there, again they were pretty much just looking for a fight.
They started running at us, they were, and this is the thing, they were throwing bricks, they were throwing glass bottles, they were throwing bits of wood, full cans of beer, which are pretty lethal when you throw them unopened at high speed. And we were getting pushed, people were getting punched, kicked. It feels a bit melodramatic to say it, with all those huge heavy objects getting thrown and the sheer number of them and the fact there were no police around, there was a wee bit of me that for a minute just thought “holy shit, I might die here”.
“They were throwing bricks, they were throwing glass bottles, they were throwing bits of wood, full cans of beer, which are pretty lethal when you throw them unopened at high speed.”
We managed to sort of hold them off and push them back. I saw a couple of comrades getting pretty badly injured. I saw someone get hit in the head with a full can of beer, I saw someone get hit with a brick, there was a terrifying moment when this huge bloke, and I think he was in an England football shirt, and he had an open cut on his forehead and half his face was covered in blood — that’s how you could tell they were drunk, cos a lot of them were already pretty badly injured but they were still coming — he took a swing at me and he missed, just. And then the fash basically tried to move round and actually force their way into the hotel, so I ran back down the hill to try and join the blockade that was keeping them out and we formed a sort of secondary blockade in front of the one that was blocking the door.
And again they were punching, kicking, trying to force their way through. One of them kicked me really hard in the shin, and I almost went down, but luckily we were in a human chain so I managed to prop myself back up. I sort of stood behind a couple of folk trying to keep them, trying to support them physically and keep the line going. It was pretty terrifying because the police were nowhere to be seen. It was just an onslaught and it was never-ending, it was like they had a never-ending stream of energy and I was amazed we kept going cos I really didn’t know if we’d be able to.
The thing that made all of us feel really strongly that we absolutely had to hold the line was that when we got to the hotel, we could see, looking out of the windows, families of asylum seekers and refugees, including weans, kids, looking out. And we were trying to chant things at them like “you’re welcome here”, “we love you and we’re here to support you”. And then it sort of dawned on me after all the violence had died down that a lot of those kids would probably have seen what happened with the fascists charging at the hotel and I just can’t even imagine how scared they would have been, it’s… It doesn’t really bear thinking about, about what would have happened if we hadn’t been there, and there were no police, and the fascists had been able to get into the — I don’t really want to think about what would have happened if the fascists had been able to get into the hotel.
Eventually, finally, it must have been about 25 minutes later, 25 minutes of this fucking onslaught from the fash, the police finally materialised. We had cops on horses, a couple of riot vans and they formed a sort of ring around us, at last, and they started to disperse the fash. That lasted itself about 20 to 30 minutes. And eventually the fascist crowds were forced over to the other side of the motorway, and the police formed a blockade around the front of the hotel with riot vans.
But they were so late. I really cannot criticise the actions of the police enough, I mean you can tell it’s bad, because in a number of local news outlets even they’ve admitted they fucked up, and that’s how you know the police response was pathetic really, it was seriously lacking. You know, if the anti-fascists hadn’t been there, those fascists would have gotten into the hotel.
A few of us really didn’t trust that the fascists wouldn’t come back, so about 50 to 80 people continued to linger outside the hotel, blocking the entrance until well after nightfall, until eventually a couple of local green party councillors liaised with the police and tried to move us along. We resisted those calls initially because we just didn’t trust the police response after what had happened earlier but eventually, once we were confident the police had moved a lot of the fascists back towards Temple Meads, the train station, we decided to disperse.
And then, right as we were about to leave, the police tried to use what’s in England called a Section 60 Order to remove the mask of one of the anti-fascist counter-protesters, and this cop literally walked up, grabbed the guy by the arm and tried to yank his mask off his face. So understandably, a lot of the anti-fascist comrades rallied around this guy, and tried to sort of get the cop off him, and suddenly we were just rushed by the police, hitting us, shoving us out the way, it was shocking to be honest, given that we had effectively done their job for them — we defended this hotel, if we hadn’t have been there the fash would have gotten in, and they were now trying to violently disperse us and force us to remove our masks.
And then, initially the police told us to exit one way, we tried to exit that way and they blocked us and tried to push us back and said we couldn’t and tried to take people’s masks off again, so we tried going the other way and then we had the same thing. Eventually they managed to fucking pull their heads out of their arses and co-ordinate themselves, and they sent us back down the hill, towards where the fascists had been. Luckily, they’d left by this point.
And we tried to walk back into the city centre via the bridge, only to be met again with a police blockade saying “oh we’re just waiting for the signal to let you through”, and we kept saying to them “we’ve been told to go this way”, and they just ignored us. In the end, to get out, we had to go down some much less visible side-streets, which to be honest was incredibly dangerous given that we’d had the fash crawling around all day and we weren’t confident they were all gone. So the actions of the police were really unbelievable — well, not unbelievable, but pretty terrible.
And by the end of it a lot of us had quite mixed emotions. We were really proud and happy that we’d been able to defend the hotel, we were really happy the people in the hotel were safe, because I think that was a really close call. But at the same time, we’d witnessed a lot of pretty scary violence and we’d been in a very dangerous situation. A couple of us, myself included, came away with injuries and I think we were all just exhausted. So, I had a very well-earned pint that night, and, yeah — did not sleep very well.
This is also a good thing to add — there was a sort of feeling I had afterward that as much as it was terrifying, it was almost absurd as well, because you know, these guys are far-right, fascist thugs, there’s absolutely no denying that. The thing about it is, they weren’t like, organised Brownshirts marching in unison or anything, they were just pissed up fucking gangsters basically. It’s clear that there was no form of organisation. Obviously rioting in itself is a political act, they’re political in that sense, but you get the feeling that a lot of these people are not involved in any kind of organisations, they probably don’t even fucking vote — they’re just interested in a fight, and have racist enough views that they’re okay to fight about this. And we shouldn’t downplay the threat this poses, especially to minority communities because it is serious, but to take away some of the power of these guys, I think it’s important to look at just how fucking stupid they are, and be able to laugh at that.
I want to end by saying thank you to all the comrades who were there on Saturday for putting up a united front against the fascists, for supporting the community, and for showing that Bristol won’t tolerate fascism.
Here’s to that! Let’s all raise a glass to Joe and the anti-fascists of Bristol, in thanks for their struggle and sacrifice. It can be done — the fascists can be beaten back. Let’s do the same wherever they rear their brutish heads, in Scotland, and in the rest of these islands.
¡No pasarán!
