ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the origins of ‘no platform’ and its historical precedents in the militant anti-fascism of the 1930s and 1940s. It shows how various anti-fascists, primarily Communists and Jewish activists, responded to the threat posed by Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the inter-war period and the Union Movement after the war, particularly focusing on how anti-fascists sought to deny a platform to Mosley’s fascists. This was achieved by heckling, picketing or physically occupying a space to prevent fascists from speaking or assembling. The chapter also looks at how anti-fascists reacted to attempts by Mosley and other fascists to speak at universities, both in the 1930s and then in the 1950s–1960s. The chapter highlights how these anti-fascist activities from the 1930s to the 1960s served as inspiration for the students who promoted the tactic of ‘no platform’ in the 1970s.
