A NEW history of the fight against the far right in Glasgow has been published after a packed launch in the city.

Liam Turbett’s Glasgow 1975 connects two largely forgotten incidents in the city that year.

The first was the racist murder of Hector Smith by a member of the fascist National Front, and three months later the blockade of a meeting of the same mob at the city’s Kingston Halls. 

Numerous incidents of police brutality followed, and the farce of pickets being arrested twice after escaping Govan’s Orkney Street police station and returning to the picket.

One escapee, Glasgow Trades Council’s Keith Stoddart, told the launch on Thursday night: “This is about resurrecting part of working class history that has been lost.”

Mr Turbett said: “It’s never really been recognised that the National Front played a direct role in the murder of a Jamaican man in Glasgow, it’s not something that’s talked about or known about."

He added that the protests at Kingston Halls played a foundational role in building “mass popular opposition and resistance to the National Front.”