Are the Blackshirts Back?

Wear Dark Clothing

The TV footage from Belfast this week was striking. On TV news we watched wave after wave of young men, all dressed in black, wearing balaclavas, advancing on police Land Rovers to stone the PSNI. The choice of dark clothing was no accident and it serves a purpose

In advance of the rioting on Tuesday, there was a call on social media and Whatsapp for “men of the age of 18 and over to wear dark clothing and be prepared to fight or be arrested”. If you are involved in a riot, getting everyone to wear the same uniform of black clothing and balaclavas will confuse their identities and make it very difficult for the police to identify any individual rioter. As a side effect, it creates a striking image of unity for the rioters, almost like a perverse form of school uniform.

Such tactics are not new. During the 1930s when Mussolini was trying to seize power in Italy, he famously got his armed thugs to wear black shirts and to attack their political opponents in street battles. The Blackshirts armed themselves with wooden clubs and used systematic violence to crush trade unions, political rivals and violently purge ethnic minorities. After Mussolini came to power his tactics were copied in Britain and Germany.

The Malign Effect of Rich Elites

In Britain, the rich elite tried to take power using the British Union of Fascists (BUF) set up in 1932 under Sir Oswald Mosley. When Oswald Mosely spoke, his own Blackshirts were used to beat up and subdue anyone who opposed him.

Despite coming from a privileged background, Mosely persuaded the working-class men that their country was in decline, that outsiders (Jewish people in this case) were dragging their country down. Mosely promised to end the “decay” of British capitalism and parliamentary democracy. He was going to end unemployment, protect British wages and was going to use Tariffs on foreign goods to do this. Effectively, he was going to make Britain great again.

Similarly in Germany, Adolf Hitler got his thugs to dress up in brown shirts, rather than black, and attack political opponents, trades unions and Jewish minorities. He was going to make Germany great again, and we know where this led.

One of the earliest concentration camps was at Dachau near Munich, and was set up initially to provide ‘protective detention’ and re-education for left wing opponents of Hitler, but quickly transformed into an extermination camp. When I went on a tour of this camp at the end of May, what struck me about its earlier days was the level of bullying involved, with an early camp leader being sacked because he was insufficiently cruel.

Who is Manipulating Us?

Just as Britain rejected the Blackshirts at the end of the 1930s, I believe we will today reject the blackshirts rioting on our streets. However, we are safer and this process will be faster if we are aware of the dangers.

Today we have some foolish local politicians being led by rich and powerful elites from outside N. Ireland, people who are determined to manipulate our people into actions that will harm us all. The same people who told us that Brexit would solve our anxiety over immigration and make us all richer are now, ten years later, telling us that closing our borders is the solution to our problems, that it is a tiny number of brown neighbours who are causing our problems.

These rich people need to completely detach the UK from the EU; they want to remove all the protections that our workers have under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). These include

The Right to Form and Join Trade Unions:
The Right to Collective Bargaining.
The Right to Strike
The Right to Privacy at Work – restricting excessive monitoring of employee’s personal email or phone usage.
The Right to Whistleblowing – exposing dangerous or illegal work practices.

In addition, they do not want the UK to copy the EU in imposing restrictions on large tech monopolies that trade in this country but pay little tax and exploit their workforce.

A Different Experience of Immigration

Almost 3 years ago, I wrote on Slugger about how a very different experience of immigration affects working class people. (See here: https://sluggerotoole.com/2023/11/27/it-is-different-for-working-class-communities/)

I have no problem with people discussing immigration and its impacts, positive and negative as outlined in that article. However, I have no sympathy with people claiming they do not have a voice. This excuse of not being listened to was used by Loyalist rioters during the shameful Holy Cross Primary School riots by people who had Nigel Dodd’s DUP as their MP. Today people are rioting on the Lower Newtownards Road and claiming that they are not being listened to. Their MP is Gavin Robinson – talk to him.

Wanting to talk about immigration is fine; becoming one of our black-shirt rioters and destroying unionist areas is not OK. I understand that these foolish young people are being manipulated, but if a few were lifted by the PSNI and held on remand until after the marching season we might get a peaceful marching season and they might learn a lesson.