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No pasaran in Sunderland

JAMIE TUCKNUTT reports on an initiative that brings together two epochs of the city’s anti-fascist struggles

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON: Joseph Andrews (left) and James Andrews

SUNDERLAND has a proud history of fighting fascism. A great source of pride for me is the fact that Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts, try as they might, could never get a foothold in Sunderland.

The working class, the very people that Mosely, like the right wing today, saw as ripe for exploitation and indoctrination, stood firm and met his attempted meetings and rallies head on.

We know the  Communist Party prevented the British Union of Fascists (BUF) holding open air meetings in Sunderland; for example in May 1934 a meeting was stopped when the BUF speaker was “knocked off his box” by a Sunderland man who would later serve in the International Brigade in Spain.

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