Neo-Nazis penned into a left luggage section in Liverpool this weekend (All photos by Oscar Webb)
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.
Neo-nazi group “National Action” (NA) were forced to abandon their “White Man March” in Liverpool this weekend when anti-fascists turned out in force to hand their racist asses to them. The anti-fascist crowd blocked NA from leaving the train station, threw bottles and eggs at them and broke through police lines to punch them in the face.
Videos by VICE
NA, whose members openly idolize Adolf Hitler, had about 50 supporters show up in Liverpool on Saturday for their much anticipated demonstration. They were completely outnumbered by anti-fascists, who prevented them from even leaving the train station they’d turned up at.
Members of the Nazi group brag online about attending ISIS-inspired training camps where they practice fighting, learn to use weapons and discuss Nazi ideology. In the flesh, they were not particularly scary: Fights that broke out when the crowds met were mostly won by the anti-fascists, dispelling the hype NA has built up about itself online as a group that “only bullets will stop.” In fact the truth is they can be stopped with some well-aimed eggs and punches.
National Action’s build-up to the march was sinister and menacing, which made the events of the day all the more funny. A letter sent to the mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson—which the group later denied sending—threatened that the city would “go up in flames” if he banned their march. NA’s Facebook page announced, “in years to come, your grandchildren will speak [of] this day and how NA made history. Prepare yourselves.”
This is what that predicted turning point in history towards National Socialism in Britain ended up looking like. NA, on the left of this picture, were penned into a corner of Liverpool Lime Street station by police “for their own protection” while a wave of anti-fascists tried to get at them, chanting, “if it wasn’t for the coppers you’d be dead”.
The day began at 11 o’clock when 200 to 300 anti-fascists from the Anti-fascist Network rallied at St Luke’s church in central Liverpool. From here, the anti-fascists marched down the road to Liverpool Lime Street station, where members of NA were arriving by train.
At first the police managed to stop any of the anti-fascists from getting into the station, and the two opposing groups had to make do with swearing at each other through the windows of the station’s Wetherspoons.
But pretty quickly, the hundreds-strong group found another, un-policed, entrance to the station and made a rush for it.
Once inside, the anti-fascists pretty quickly found NA penned into their corner, symbolically in the doorway of an unfortunate left luggage shop.
The anti-fascists started throwing water bottles at NA, then someone who had brought some eggs started chucking them. Bananas also got thrown—a brutal attack to the pride of any self-respecting white supremacist. Needless to say none of them had the presence of mind to style it out like Dani Alves.
This guy got covered in milk, which probably wasn’t how he had been planning on celebrating his whiteness.
At this point the police decided that NA needed to be further cordoned off and bundled them into the lost property shop with the barrier put down. As they waited in their Nazi pen, they presumably had some rather awkward conversations very, very close to each others’ faces.
Then the police decided to escort the group out of the station. As NA came out of their lost-property refuge, there was a massive push by the crowd and the police lines finally broke. It was pretty chaotic for a couple of minutes as NA, the police and the anti-fascists at the front of the crowd were pushed together into a dead-end of the station. In this crush, punches were thrown between the two groups and it nearly turned into a full-on battle before the police managed to regain some control.
Covered in egg, and faced by a crowd about ten times as big as them baying for their blood, NA looked pretty shaken at this point. One young member was bleeding, having been punched in the nose. He was frantically complaining to the police that some of NA needed to use the toilet having been contained for two hours. Holding his bloodied nose and clutching his piss-filled bladder—it looked like a pretty miserable way to spend a Saturday.
NA did a bit of half-hearted seig-heiling before the police pushed the crowd back and managed to escort them out of the train station and into a transport police office next door. Presumably from here the police waited for the anti-fascist crowd to disperse and send NA home on trains.
The anti-fascists meanwhile, feeling truly victorious, marched down to Liverpool’s waterfront to let off smoke bombs and pose for photos.
NA’s normally busy social media presence has gone a bit quiet following the foiled march: National Action north-west’s Twitter said that anti-fascists “call us fascists [but need to] take a long [look] at the video footage and a long look in the mirror,” adding that anti-fascists are “disgusting.”
Throughout the day, six people were arrested.
Speaking exclusively to VICE, a spokesperson for the Anti-fascist Network said, “We’ve seen a surge in neo-Nazi activity and anti-fascists have shown we’re more than ready to oppose it. The event has already been dubbed the ‘Battle of Lime Street.’ This might be the biggest anti-fascist victory in the UK for 20 or 30 years. It was a total victory over NA, who are completely humiliated. NA came out of the internet and now the internet is ripping the piss out of them on a scale they could never hope to reach.”
Still clearly buzzing from the day’s events, the spokesperson continued: “We want to thank the people of Liverpool. Particularly members of the black community, trade unionists, Irish republicans, and football casuals who joined us in taking mass direct action against a neo-Nazi march.
“The struggle against the far right in the UK is far from over. In Dover on September 12, racists from all over the UK are coming together to whip up hatred against migrants. Nazis are already talking about getting revenge for Liverpool.”
NA have also said that they’ll hold another White Man March in Liverpool in two weeks’ time. That seems kind of unlikely given the pasting they received on Saturday. If it does happen, it’ll be interesting to see if they make it out of the station this time.
Follow Oscar on Twitter.
