Originally posted by suityou01
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Back around 1995, the Mushroom Bookshop - a long-lived radical collective in Nottingham - was stormed and wrecked, with staff members and customers brutally assaulted, by a mob of British nationalists after one of the Nottingham association football clubs had a home game against a London club that is well-known for the nationalist calling of its followers. Whether the assailants regarded themselves as BNP, NF, or some other name, I do not know, although the BNP were widely named. (Naturally, at the subsequent trial, none of those involved in the attack admitted to any affiliation to a specific group.)
At that time I was working in a pub in Leicester that was renowned for its radical left-wing tendencies. On a Bank Holiday Monday a few weeks after the attack on the Mushroom, when Leicester City were at home to the same London club, I got a phone call around lunchtime asking if I could come in for the afternoon shift. I hadn't been due at work until 8PM but I had a quick shower and caught the bus into town.
Upon arriving, the landlord explained to me that our good friends in the Anti-Fascist Alliance (AFA) had people undercover in the BNP, and that there was credible intelligence that we were to be targeted after the match by the same thugs as had done over the Mushroom. Then he pulled a cricket bat from the pub's club kit, and sent me off to tend the back bar, with instructions that if things kicked off in the front then I should use it as I saw fit against anybody creating such mayhem who tried to make it into the back.
We also had some big lads from the AFA on the door, and a bunch of them were out and about acting as spotters.
Once the match had ended, we got word that the guys who were going to do us over had met up, with their leaders and spotters being in a Land Rover, parked about half-a-mile away. Then we got word that they were on the move.
They drove past the pub once, and turned off into a back street up the road. They'd seen that there were some big lads on the door (which was never normally the case) and had a bit of a conflab, all the while under surreptitious observation. Then they went around the block and had another look, and again pulled into the back street.
This time they apparently decided that as we were ready for them, they didn't stand much of a chance; so, like all bullies who have been faced down, they ran away.
The AFA kept tabs on them until it was definite that they were heading back to London. The final bit of feedback we got was that they had already passed Junction 20 (about twelve miles south), but would be followed for a bit further in case they turned back. They didn't; and I made a few extra hours pay.
I was quite astonished to discover that these people go to such lengths: undercover operatives, surreptitious surveillance, people scattered over a square mile of city streets watching out for potential threats.
Still, anything that helps beat the Fascists - or at least prevents them beating me over the head as I do my job - is fine by me
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