ABSTRACT
In all probability, the moment that opposition to the National Front (NF) is mentioned, it is the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) that springs to mind. This organisation, formed in late 1977, grew rapidly to become the Front’s most memorable opponent. It obtained some 40,000 to 50,000 members, distributed over 5 million leaflets and sold around 1 million anti-Front badges and stickers. Such was the level of its popular support, that the ANL was widely regarded as the largest extra-parliamentary movement since the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the early 1960s.1 In mobilising mass opposition to the NF, and in smearing the Front with the lethal Nazi label, the ANL has been judged an unqualified success. Many held it responsible for the electoral demise of the NF at the end of the 1970s and urged others, such as opponents of the Front National in France, to follow its example.2 Yet support for the NF may have already peaked by the time the ANL was launched. Moreover, the concentration on the activities of the ANL has meant that the work of other antifascist groups that either pre-dated or paralleled the ANL has been largely ignored. This narrow focus has also precluded wider consideration of other sources of antifascism. It may have been the case, for instance, that hostility from the mainstream media hurt the National Front more than the activities of opposition groups. After the 1979 general election the NF named the media its ‘number one enemy’.3
