When you hear the phrase 10 forgotten fascist movements, you might picture the well‑known dictators of Italy or Germany. Yet the 1930s hosted a colorful gallery of lesser‑known groups that flirted with fascist ideas across Europe and the Americas. Below we count down these ten obscure parties, each with its own flamboyant uniforms, charismatic leaders, and fleeting moments of influence.

10 Forgotten Fascist Context

During the Great Depression, economic desperation and political instability gave rise to a wave of extremist ideologies. While some movements seized lasting power, many burned bright and faded quickly. Their stories remain fascinating footnotes in the larger narrative of interwar politics.

10. Francist Movement

Historically speaking, French right‑wing groups have always been some of the most active and ideologically driven. Led by intellectuals, former military men, and their own media empires, the French right during the interwar years (1919‑1939) was particularly powerful and posed a real challenge to French democracy.

On February 6, 1934, the Third Republic was rocked by a violent right‑wing demonstration that killed 15 people outside the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. Spurred on by a financial crisis known as the Stavisky Affair, the riot was widely seen by the French left as an attempted coup d’état. The major players in the riot were the much older and more cerebral French Action group and the militarist, veteran‑heavy Cross of Fire. Alongside these groups was the Francist Movement, an anti‑Semitic fascist organization bankrolled by Benito Mussolini, led by a World War I veteran named Marcel Bucard, and defended by a paramilitary organization known as the Blueshirts.

While other right‑wing groups in France were somewhat unique in their mannerisms and style of politics, the Francist Movement was a carbon copy of Italian fascism, right down to their use of the Roman salute, the fasces as a symbol of their ideology, and their unequivocal support for Germany, Italy, and a fascist France. By 1936, the Francist Movement and other “anti‑parliamentary leagues” were banned by the new left‑wing Popular Front government. However, when Nazi Germany invaded France and split it between the German‑occupied north and the collaborationist south, followers of the Francist Movement found themselves in power for a short time in Vichy France.

9. Austrofascists

In spite of speaking the same language, Austria and Germany do not share the same culture, so the fact that they took different approaches to far‑right ideology shouldn’t be terribly surprising. While Hitler and his followers preached national socialism, Austria subscribed to Austrofascism—a nationalist and authoritarian ideology which was decidedly anti‑Nazi. Upholding Austria’s Roman Catholic identity as well as its former position as the centre of the multi‑national Habsburg Empire, the Austrofascists, who were led by dictator Engelbert Dollfuss’s Fatherland Front, sought to counteract anti‑clerical Germany, and any Austrian Nazis who wanted to join Germany, in order to found a single Germanic state in Central Europe.

Although the two groups had been feuding since the 1920s, the Austrian Nazis and the Austrofascists inched closer to internecine warfare after Dollfuss, a diminutive politician and veteran of the Austro‑Hungarian army who liked to wear military uniforms decorated with medals and a distinctive Tyrolean feather cap, was named the Chancellor of Austria in 1932. After merging his own Christian Social Party with other right‑wing groups in order to found the Fatherland Front, Dollfuss quickly set about establishing a repressive, anti‑liberal government.

First he banned the parliament from meeting, then he helped to draft the “First of May Constitution,” which was intended to unite all segments of Austrian society underneath the banner of a single‑party state. However, the new constitution sparked a brief civil war between the Austrian right and left (which the right won) and created a burning resentment toward Dollfuss’s government for its decision to ban all opposition parties. In retaliation, over 100 Austrian Nazis disguised themselves as soldiers and police officers and stormed Vienna’s Federal Chancellery in July 1934. During their attempted takeover of the country, the Austrian Nazis shot Dollfuss twice and then refused to let either a doctor or priest see him, thus letting him die a slow, painful death.

8. Rexist Party

Comparable to their like‑minded brethren next door in France, the Belgian Rexists were ultraconservative Catholics who envisioned a corporatist state fueled by the dual spirit of nationalism and religious adherence. Unlike most fascist movements at the time, however, the Rexists advocated for the continuation of the Belgian monarchy in the face of widespread liberalism. Led by the charismatic war correspondent Leon Degrelle, the Rexists managed to seat 21 MPs in the 1936 election, a notable feat against a resurgent Communist Party.

After entering into a coalition with the VNV (a Flemish nationalist party with fascist overtones) and managing to sway a few voters away from the rival Catholic Party, the Rexists came close to becoming Belgium’s largest and most powerful right‑wing party. Until the German occupation of Belgium, this was the closest that the Rexists would get to seizing absolute power.

Although a political movement with many followers, the Rexist Party was in reality a personality cult led by Degrelle. He pushed the group toward Nazi ideology during the late 1930s, even at the cost of the group’s popularity. During the war, Degrelle left the Rexist Party to join the Walloon Legion, an all‑French‑speaking Belgian unit in the Waffen‑SS. As an officer in the SS, Degrelle fought on the Eastern Front and was awarded numerous decorations for bravery. He also continued to compose pro‑fascist articles for the collaborationist newspaper Le Pays Réel. After the war, when the Rexist Party was gutted and outlawed like most other far‑right parties in Europe, Degrelle fled to Franco’s Spain, where he kept penning letters defending his actions, the Rexist Party, the Nazis, and the fascist experiment.

7. Russian Fascist Party

Also known as the All‑Russian Fascist Party, the RFP was a minor fascist movement led by members of the sizable Russian minority in the Chinese city of Harbin. Using the swastika as their symbol, the RFP made its allegiances clear throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The Russian Fascist Party wasn’t mere Nazi‑worship or a veneration of the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead, the RFP, led by Konstantin Rodzaevsky, was composed of many former White Russians (pro‑Czarist fighters who lost to the Bolsheviks during the bloody Russian Civil War) and was part of a larger anti‑communist network in Russia’s far‑eastern provinces and in parts of China that contained many Russian expats.

In this regard, the RFP was quite similar to the movement led by Baron Roman von Ungern‑Sternberg, a White Russian general who established a private empire in Outer Mongolia during the 1920s to create a new Russian monarchy that would recreate the ancient Chinese empires.

Another important element to consider is that the RFP was based in the Japanese‑controlled puppet state of Manchukuo, giving it a protected status once Germany and Japan entered into a military alliance. In turn, the RFP assisted the Japanese in various ways, even providing intelligence and members for all‑Russian units in the Kwantung Army, a provincial branch of the Imperial Japanese Army based in occupied China. As war erupted, the RFP was rapidly swallowed up by the Japanese war effort. When the Soviet Army invaded Manchuria, the RFP was crushed, and its leaders were either arrested or killed.

6. Brazilian Integralists

Integralism promotes the idea that a nation is an organic whole, whereby the good of the nation is given priority over everything else. While Integralism was one of many reactionary philosophies in France, in Brazil it proved to be one of the most dynamic, if not avant‑garde, ideologies of the interwar years. Founded by Hitler‑look‑alike Plinio Salgado, the Brazilian Integralist Action group got its start ten years before its official formation in 1932. At the 1922 Modern Art Week in São Paulo, Salgado and an odd assortment of Futurists, nationalists, and avant‑garde artists argued for the creation of a new Brazilian art movement that would embrace both modernism and Brazilian nationalism.

Under the slogan of “Union of All Races and All Peoples,” the Brazilian Integralists, who wore green shirts and adopted the paramilitary poses of the Italian Blackshirts and German Brownshirts, took to the streets waving a royal‑blue flag decorated with the Greek letter sigma. Revolutionary in nature, Salgado’s Integralists espoused anti‑Marxist, anti‑liberal, and anti‑materialist views, some of which were codified in the group’s declaration to engage in a “Revolution of the Self,” the act of subsuming individual wants and desires for the larger social body of the nation.

After a tentative peace with Brazil’s President Getúlio Vargas, the inevitable crackdown came after a failed 1938 putsch.

5. National Socialist Movement Of Chile

Known as Nacistas, the National Socialist Movement of Chile followed the template created by the German Nazis very closely, including the group’s virulent anti‑Semitism. They were led by the triumvirate of General Díaz Valderrama (the founder) and German‑Chileans Carlos Keller and Jorge González von Marees. The movement formed its own paramilitary organization, the Tropas Nacistas de Asalto, and began engaging in street fights with rival left‑wing parties. The group also argued that Chile was more of a European‑style nation and thus superior to its South American neighbours. Declaring themselves defenders of European values and Christianity, the National Socialist Movement of Chile eventually broke ties with both the Italians and Germans in order to create a more Integralist movement that claimed adherence to democracy.

Throughout the group’s short period of existence (1932‑1938), Keller provided the Nacistas with an ideological grounding in conservative revolutionary writing. In particular, Keller and others looked to Oswald Spengler, whose favorable opinions of aristocracy and hierarchical societies appealed to Keller’s desire to preserve Chile’s Spanish traditions. As the Movement began to back away from German Nazism and started forming coalitions with other right‑wing groups, some within the party decided to break off and look toward Hitler’s Germany for guidance. The most important of these figures was Miguel Serrano, who combined his unabashed love for Hitler and anti‑Semitism with Eastern philosophies and the occult, coining the term “Esoteric Hitlerism.”

4. Christian Party

Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here satirized the American attitude that fascism was so alien to everyday Americans that it had no chance of ever catching on as a legitimate political movement. In truth, several fascist and neo‑fascist movements existed in the US between the World Wars. From the German‑backed German American Bund to Father Coughlin’s over‑one‑million‑strong National Union for Social Justice, the Great Depression served as an incubator that fostered resentment against the traditional values of American republicanism and democracy.

The Christian Party, run by professional agitator William Dudley Pelley, was a much smaller organization, but its Silver Legion came close to forming a European‑style paramilitary street gang in the heart of America. The zenith of the Christian Party came in 1936, when Pelley ran for president as an anti‑Roosevelt populist and traditionalist Protestant who swore to rid the American economy of Jewish power and influence. Overall, Pelley garnered a paltry 1,598 votes out of 700,000 in Washington State. Before he could run again in 1940, the FBI raided the Christian Party headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina, and seized assets and equipment under the guise of an embezzlement investigation.

Afterward, Pelley and the Silver Legion briefly aligned with the America First Movement, which fought to keep the US out of World War II, but disbanded after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

3. Irish Blueshirts

Though they only existed for two years (1932‑1934), the Irish Blueshirts were at one point a serious threat to the tenuous democracy of the Republic of Ireland. Originally founded as a collection of former Irish soldiers tasked with protecting the outgoing Cumann na nGaedheal government from the IRA and the supporters of Fianna Fáil, who hated the Cumann na nGaedheal leaders for signing the Anglo‑Irish Treaty of 1921, the Blueshirts soon began flexing their power as a rabidly nationalist and authoritarian mass movement.

For their part, the Blueshirts believed that they were fighting for Catholic values and the interests of a unified Ireland. In 1933, uniformed supporters of the Blueshirts (who once again took fashion cues from the Italian Blackshirts) took part in the March on Dublin that, like Mussolini’s own March on Rome, was supposed to be a display of size and power. Although the stated aim of the march was to honor war veterans buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, the group’s actions incurred the wrath of President Éamon de Valera, a sworn enemy of the group, who shortly thereafter made the party illegal.

Following their disbandment, Blueshirt leader Eoin O’Duffy formed the ill‑fated Irish Brigade, which briefly fought on the side of Franco and the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War.

2. Spanish Falange

The Spanish Falange (meaning “phalanx”) was arguably the most radical right‑wing group that fought during Spain’s brutal civil war from 1936‑1939. Intellectually dissimilar from fellow right‑wing groups like the royalist Alfonsists and Carlists and the staunchly Catholic CEDA, the Falange was founded by the nobleman José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who used his oratorical skills to gain big‑business support for his fledgling group, which never managed to garner many adherents outside its student base.

What the Falange lacked in manpower it more than made up for in zealotry. Like the Italian fascists, the Falange eschewed the traditional tenets of Spanish conservatism (monarchy, church, and family) in favour of aesthetic modernism and a belief in an all‑powerful, militaristic state that would expand the size of Spanish imperial possessions. In some ways, the Falange was more akin to its radical left‑ist opponents during the civil war, who also shared the group’s disdain for clericalism, the Roman Catholic Church, and bourgeois morality.

Ultimately, this would be the group’s undoing. After first being gutted of their leadership by Spanish Republicans, the Falange, which committed thousands of men and women to the Nationalist side, were placed into a subordinate position by General Franco after the war. Franco, who was always more of a traditional conservative, disliked many aspects of the Falangist platform and therefore promoted the Carlists and other groups over the Falange. As a response, many Falangists joined the Blue Division, an all‑Spanish volunteer division in Germany’s Waffen‑SS. The Blue Division mostly fought on the Eastern Front until 1943, when, under public pressure, Franco ordered all Spanish volunteers to return home. Many Falangists decided to stay in the German Army and signed up for other units, while those Falangists who returned home were suppressed after Falange supporters threw grenades at a Carlist meeting held at the Basilica of Begona in 1942. Demanding retribution, the Carlists and the Spanish Army persuaded Franco to execute Falange leaders before ultimately pressuring El Caudillo into smashing the group altogether.

1. Iron Guard

The Iron Guard of Romania was more than just one of the most unique fascist organisations in history. Whereas other fascist movements extolled the virtues of nationalism and militaristic discipline above other major concerns, the Iron Guard openly worshiped death. At its head was Corneliu Codreanu, a handsome mystic and virulent anti‑Semite who imbued the Iron Guard with an occult‑tinged philosophy that embraced not only anti‑liberalism, but also terrorism. Because of this, the Iron Guard, whose motto was “Everything for the Country,” became one of the most violent fascist groups of the interwar period.

In 1938, out of fear of the growing power of the Iron Guard and its three death squads, which were tasked with assassinating political opponents and carrying out pogroms against Romania’s Jewish population, King Carol II established a one‑party “corporative” regime with himself as leader and began outlawing all other political parties. Subsequently, many Iron Guard legionaries were imprisoned or executed. Even Codreanu himself was imprisoned and garrotted to death in November 1938.

Following this purge, the Iron Guard took advantage of World War II and Romania’s troubled neutrality. As Romania began leaning toward the Axis Powers, Guard members allied themselves with General Ion Antonescu, an authoritarian dictator who supported Germany and Italy during their invasion of the Soviet Union with Romanian troops. The alliance between General Antonescu and the Iron Guard was short‑lived, however. For two days in January 1941, the so‑called Legionaries’ Rebellion tried to usurp Antonescu’s power. At the same time, the rebellious Iron Guard members carried out a pogrom throughout Romania which killed around 120 Jews and destroyed many homes, businesses, and synagogues. Once the guns stopped, and General Antonescu carried the day, over 200 (some sources say as many as 800) Legionaries were dead and thousands were imprisoned.

Benjamin Welton is a freelance writer based in Boston. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, VICE, Metal Injection, and others. He currently blogs at literarytrebuchet.blogsport.com.

Almost everyone goes through some sort of a ‘phase’; a double‑denim craze, that fleeting Mohawk, growing your own chilli peppers, or even weekly colonics. Yet a handful of these passing fads evolve into lasting trends, movements, or subcultures, complete with their own jargon, rituals, and sometimes a quasi‑religious aura. Below you’ll find the top 10 enduring clubs, hobbies, and identities that have survived the test of time and show no signs of fading away.

Why These Top 10 Enduring Subcultures Matter

10 Goth

Who could have guessed that goths would still be haunting the scene two whole decades into the 21st century? Their apparent immortality isn’t a coincidence – it’s almost poetic that the go‑to aesthetic for outcasts and non‑conformists has become one of the most widespread, long‑lasting subcultures of the 20th and 21st centuries. Goths, however, remain blissfully indifferent to the world, caring only about the occasional shortage of that coveted ‘midnight onyx’ lip gloss.

The movement sprouted in the 1980s, branching off from the splintered English punk scene. Its longevity can be traced to an eclectic visual palette that pulls from a dizzying array of sources: 1950s monster movies, German expressionist cinema, the brooding poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, Victorian fashion, and even darker strands of European folklore, African, and Caribbean voodoo. This melange gives goth a timeless quality – it isn’t the fleeting “new black” but rather the perpetual black of cultural history.

9 Hacker Culture

The Matrix is real, we all know that by now. 2020 stripped away any remaining speculation – reality can’t be any crazier or more random. Hackers, a venerable community living on the digital fringes of civilization, have been aware of this for quite some time.

At its core, hacker culture is about inventively solving tough problems, especially within software systems. Imagine coaxing an old‑school dot‑matrix printer into playing a melody – that’s the kind of quirky ingenuity hackers thrive on. Emerging in the early 20th century and evolving alongside the free‑software movement, this subculture perhaps stands alone on the list as the only one capable of reshaping the world in a truly meaningful way. If the material world is a simulation, then hackers are its most skilled programmers.

8 The New Age Movement

“This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” crooned The 5th Dimension in 1969. We’re still waiting, hippies.

From crystal healing and reflexology to the revival of ancient divination practices such as I Ching and astrology, the New Age movement is a sprawling, loosely‑held belief system that somehow endures. It embraces everything from Atlantis lore to ancient‑alien theories, acting as a one‑size‑fits‑all alternative to both organized religion and hard‑core science. While the movement’s claims often clash with empirical evidence, its followers genuinely believe in the power of pressurized rocks and celestial alignments. Despite occasional bad apples, the New Age crowd rarely displays overt malice – they’re more eccentric than dangerous.

7 Furries

Don’t click away! This subculture is often linked to creepiness, yet it boasts a surprisingly rich history. First, a quick myth‑busting: furry fandom isn’t solely about sex – that’s a stereotype that only applies to a minority.

The roots of furry fandom trace back to the underground comix scene of the late 1970s. By 1983, the term “furry” described fans of anthropomorphic animals in sci‑fi, cartoons, and comics. They began congregating at expos and conventions, and by 1990 had established early online communities that have flourished into the 21st century. Members often create and wear “fursuits” – elaborate animal costumes – and for roughly 37 % of them, the experience includes a romantic or sexual dimension. Whether you adore cartoon critters or simply appreciate the creativity, the furry world offers a vibrant, if occasionally misunderstood, community.

6 Gopniks

You’ve certainly spotted them – the squat‑sitting, tracksuit‑clad youths with cheap vodka and a fondness for slavic beats. Gopnik culture is essentially a regional flavor of a universal subculture that surfaces wherever sportswear brands, easily modifiable hatchbacks, and electronic music intersect.

In Britain they’re often labeled “chavs,” in South Africa they’re part of Zef culture, and similar vibes echo through US hip‑hop scenes and the Latin American “cholo/chola” phenomenon. Whether called “street culture,” “working‑class drop‑outs,” or “gutter stargazers,” these groups share a common thread: young, often under‑educated individuals from lower‑class neighborhoods, perceived by mainstream society as bordering on loutish or criminal behavior. Their shared aesthetic – tracksuits, squatting, and a rebellious attitude – makes them instantly recognizable worldwide.

5 Naturism

Millennia ago, humanity walked naked – the natural state for every creature in the animal kingdom. Of course, early humans faced a brutal world of sabre‑toothed cats, poisonous splinters, and volcanic eruptions, which likely contributed to short lifespans.

Organized naturism began in the British Raj in 1891 with the inaugural club, the “Fellowship of the Naked Trust,” founded by a Bombay judge named Charles Crawford. Since then, pamphlets, documentaries, and philosophical treatises have spread the stripped‑back lifestyle worldwide. Today, Croatia stands out as a naturist hotspot, with nudist tourism accounting for roughly 15 % of its post‑Yugoslav tourism market – a lucrative industry that proves nudism isn’t merely a hippy‑ish pastime, but a serious economic driver.

4 Surfer Culture

“Yeeeew! Look at that gnarly swell coming in! This is gonna be radical, dude.” The surfer lexicon, once the domain of a tiny clique, now permeates mainstream English, proving the cultural reach of this niche hobby.

Surf culture arguably originates in native Hawaiian tradition, with Duke Kahanamoku – an Olympic gold‑medal swimmer and Hawaiian native – championing the sport abroad. In 1912 he introduced surfing to Southern California, and two years later he demonstrated it in Australia at Sydney’s Freshwater Beach. From that laid‑back debut (“You wanna see me ride a wooden plank from the islands? No sweat, brah!”) emerged a global phenomenon influencing fashion, slang, film, and lifestyle, all built around the endless pursuit of the perfect wave.

3 Punk

Who doesn’t love being spat on by a skinny yob with a safety pin through his nose? Punks adore that raw, confrontational energy, and they’ve spawned countless offshoots, musical genres, and political movements, cementing themselves as perhaps the most influential cultural wave of the latter half of the twentieth century.

Punk, according to Patti Smith, is fundamentally “freedom.” Joe Strummer added that it’s about “attitude” and “truth.” Chuck Klosterman observed that punk also embraces a certain laziness – style over substance: “You didn’t even need to know how to play your instrument, just how to plug it in.” Sid Vicious epitomized this ethos, turning nihilism into a fashion statement. At its core, punk is rebellion, honesty, and a distinct visual code – ripped jeans, mohawks, safety pins – that instantly identifies its adherents. Its ever‑evolving nature ensures it will persist unless society collapses into totalitarianism or absolute anarchy.

2 Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs

“My most basic credo is: I never said freedom was cheap. And it ain’t. It’s the highest‑priced and most precious commodity in my life.” – Sonny Barger, author, actor, and Hells Angel.

Veterans returning from war often struggle to reintegrate into civilian life – a challenge that dates back to the 1940s and perhaps even earlier. Fighter pilots, fresh from dogfighting over Europe or the Pacific, found ordinary life dull compared to the adrenaline of aerial combat. Their answer? Forming outlaw motorcycle clubs, tearing across American highways on roaring Harleys, and rejecting the constraints of the American Motorcycle Association. While some of these clubs have devolved into organized crime syndicates, involved in drug trafficking and contract killings, the romantic allure of unbridled freedom on a steel horse remains compelling.

1 Ferroequinology

We’ll close with perhaps the most pulse‑racing, in‑your‑face, tear‑it‑all‑down subculture on the list.

Train spotting. Not the gritty heroin‑addicted world of the film “Trainspotting,” but the earnest hobby of cataloguing, photographing, and obsessively discussing locomotives. Ferroequinologists – a term derived from Latin “ferro” (iron) and “equine” (horse) – are the ultimate rail enthusiasts.

These aficionados, known variously as rail fans, anoraks, gunzels, or foamers, serve a practical purpose: British Transport Police regularly solicit information from them, and companies like BNSF rely on spotters to flag irregularities, enhancing railway safety. So while the pastime might seem frivolous, it plays a real‑world role in keeping tracks secure. And no, we won’t feed them to the furries.

2019 has seen a major rise in protest action throughout Britain. Over the past few months climate change activists have been out in full force. In April campaigners from political movement Extinction Rebellion blocked numerous roads and train lines in London; Using tactics that included gluing themselves to a lorry. Elsewhere crowds of young people have been following in the footsteps of Greta Thunberg and going on strike to demand that parliament declare a climate emergency.

These environmental rallies are hardly the first protests to happen in Britain, nor will it be the last judging from current enthusiasm. The divisive debate around exiting the European Union has sparked a number of marches from both pro-Leave and pro-Remain forces. Movements around a wide variety campaigns; Everything from Palestinian solidarity to the incarceration of Tommy Robinson – are a semi-regular sight in some city centers.

Britain’s history has been shaped by mass action and protest. Whether you think of the people involved as brave fighters taking a stand against worthwhile causes or just needless time wasters. Here are ten times that activists rose up in Britain.

10. General Strike, May 1926

The best part of a century ago, over one and a half million British workers took industrial action against insufficient wages and long work hours. On May 3rd 1926, a large contingency of coal miners made the decision to go on strike. Their bosses were making plans to slash their pay by 13%, whilst also adding an extra hour to their shifts.

In an act of solidarity, masses of other workers joined the miners in striking. Dock workers, builders, electricians and many more took to picket lines across the country. Without drivers, the trains and buses were brought to a standstill. Police and strikers clashed violently. A warship was sent to Newcastle to aggressively intimidate the strikers back to work.

In the end Britain’s Trade Union Congress brought the strikes to an end without any victories. By November miners were either unemployed or had returned to work under worse conditions. In the aftermath of the struggle prime minister Stanley Baldwin passed a law forbidding mass picketing, which is still in place today.

9. The Chartists, 1848

Nowadays almost every adult with British citizenship has the right to vote in elections; (Excluding prisoners and some people involved in the upper echelons of parliament). Historically this has not always been the case. From 1832 only 18% of adult men were allowed to vote. The working classes, who did not own property, were still without suffrage.

The Chartist movement aimed to bring this to an end. Their six key demands were listed in the People’s Charter, which called on votes for all men over 21 and votes by secret ballot amongst other things.

In 1848, having already been rejected twice, the Chartists presented their petition to Parliament. The petition had an estimated six million signatures, or so they claimed. The 20,000 Chartists who assembled on Kennington Common were met by 8,000 soldiers, and their petition was rejected once again.

In spite of this defeat many of those in Parliament still feared that the movement would escalate into a revolution. Riots had sprung up in Manchester and Preston. And at the time vast swathes of the working class were living in poverty and hunger. Several Reform Acts were passed throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. And, by 1918 all but one of their demands had been met.

8. Poll Tax Riots, March 31st 1990

In her final few years in office, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced a flat-rate poll tax – officially known as the Community Charge. First instigated in 1989, the tax was met by monumental opposition. Several different campaigns urged the public to refuse payment. Droves of activists took the streets to confront what they saw as a vicious attack on the working class.

Following on from various active demonstrations that had broken out in some pockets of the country, a mass protest was scheduled for March 31st 1990. On the day more than 200,000 incensed Brits marched across central London demanding an end to the poll tax. The police reacted with a vast display of force. Officers on horseback charged at the crowds, whilst others attacked the protesters with riot shields and truncheons. In the face of this provocation, the protesters responded by hurling impromptu projectiles like bottles, sticks and placards. The total 339 protesters were arrested.

In response to the public’s hostility, the Community Charge was dropped in 1993 after only a few years and replaced with the property-based Council Tax system.

7. Stop The War, February 15th 2003

The single biggest march ever to happen in Britain. In 2003 somewhere between 750,000 and two million protesters marched across London. The march – which was held in conjunction with hundreds of similar demonstrations globally – aimed to take a stand against the planned invasion of Iraq. Protestors flocked to the capital from 250 towns and cities to join in with the rally. Waving pro-peace banners and urging Prime Minister Tony Blair not to go to war.

Despite the enormous turn-out the march proved unsuccessful in preventing war. In March that year British troops carried out a ferocious incursion of the Iraqi province Basra. Bombs from coalition forces rained down on Baghdad on the spurious claim that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Years later Iraq remains ravaged by conflict, which has been exacerbated since the emergence of militant organizations such as ISIL.

6. Student Protests, November and December 2010

In 2010 the British government announced plans to triple university tuition fees to £9,000 and abolish the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) for college students. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who had previously promised to oppose any attempts to hike tuition fees, refused to take a stand against the proposed raise.

Outraged by the decision, tens of thousands of students came out in protest against the education funding cuts. Towards the end of 2010 the National Union of Students and University and College Union held a series of demonstrations, particularly centered on London. The most prominent marches saw activists smashing windows, clashing with the police and on one occasion storming a government building in the centre of London.

Ultimately Parliament refused to meet the protesters demands. The cost of an undergraduate degree for home students now stands at up to £9,250 per year in England and EMA has faded to a long distant memory. On top of this the maintenance grant for students from low-income backgrounds was scrapped in 2016, and the education budget cuts show no sign of slowing down.

5. Brixton Riots, April 1981

Brixton in Lambeth, South London is one of the most multicultural and poorest districts in Britain. Over the past seventy years a large population of immigrants, particularly Irish, West Indian and Afro-Caribbean, have settled in the area. In the 1980s poverty there was rife. The borough of Lambeth was marred by poorly built and often dangerous housing and the levels of employment were worryingly low.

By spring 1981, following a step up in the use of stop and search, the strained relationship between black youths and white police officers in Brixton was threatening to spill over. These tensions reached breaking point on Friday April 10th 1981 when a group of black locals attacked a police vehicle, launching glass bottles at the windscreen.

Disturbances escalated over the course of the weekend. Protesters were set upon with police dogs, police vans were attacked with petrol bombs and bricks, and over a hundred businesses and vehicles sustained damage. An inquiry into the violence recommended that police should liaise more with Brixton locals to ease the animosity.

4. Peasants’ Revolt, 1381

Another British rebellion sparked in opposition to a poll tax, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 saw artisans, villeins, laborers and the working classes conspire against young King Richard II. The protests broke out in May of that year and by June 13th had spread to the capital. Under the command of Wat Tyler, English rebels stormed into London, slaughtering several merchants and demolishing the palace of the Duke of Lancaster.

Over the following days the Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury was killed, as was Wat Tyler. However the momentum was short lived. After only a few days the king persuaded the rebel army to leave London, and by June the movement had been extinguished altogether.

In response to the revolt Richard II vowed to eliminate forced labor and encourage free trade, but he quickly went back on his promises. The only real success of the Peasants’ Revolt was to halt the spread of the poll tax.

3. Northern Ireland Conflict, 1968-1998

For thirty years nationalist and loyalist forces in Northern Ireland faced off in a volatile armed conflict that, at times, verged on civil war. During the so-called ‘Troubles’, Irish nationalists and other republican movements, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), fought against the Ulster constabulary and British Army for a unified Ireland. Meanwhile unionists and loyalists clashed with the republicans in favor of continuing the political relationship between Ireland and Britain.

Violent action including rioting, house burnings, shootings and bombings were performed by all sides. In 1972 alone, 480 people died at the hands of the conflict. On January 30 of that year the British Army massacred fourteen republicans in the city of Derry. This attack has since come to be known as ‘Bloody Sunday‘ and paved the way for a step up in militancy from all sides. Car bombings became a favored tactic of the IRA, who had killed over 100 British soldiers by the end of the year. In total more than 2,000 people died over the course of the 1970s, and despite several attempted ceasefires fierce battles continued for years afterwards.

Officially the conflict was brought to an end in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. That said, in recent years a New IRA has started to emerge, signaling that disputes over the status of the six counties are far from over.

2. Miners’ Strike, 1984-1985

For Britain the 1980s were a time of intense political action. Of all the movements that stood against the neoliberal policies of Margaret Thatcher‘s government, the miners’ strike is one of the most commonly remembered.

On March 6th 1984, it was announced by the National Coal Board (NCB) that twenty pits would be closed down, putting 20,000 workers out of a job. In response miners called a national strike, laying down their tools and demanding job security.

The constabulary were relentless in trying to quash some of the striking miners, and their extreme actions remain a contentious topic to this day. One mass picket line in the Yorkshire village of Orgreave was charged by police riding horses and dressed in riot gear. On the other hand the strikers could also be brutal in their treatment of ‘scabs’; Anyone who decided to cross on the picket lines into work. A taxi driver died in South Wales. He died after a concrete post was dropped onto his car for driving a pair of scabs to the Merthyr Vale Colliery.

By the start of 1985, unable to afford to continue the industrial action, large numbers of miners were forced to head back to work. Mass pit closures followed and the coal mining industry fell into a rapid decline. Kellingley Colliery, the last remaining deep coal mine in Britain, ceased operation in December 2015.

1. The Suffragettes, 1903-1918

The Suffragettes were not the first movement to demand votes for women in Britain. However, they played a vital role in ensuring that demand was delivered. In 1903 the Pankhurst family; Mother Emmeline and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia – started up the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), one of the most militant organizations in the history of British politics.

For the first few years the Suffragettes’ actions were actually fairly non-violent. The main shift came in 1905 when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney forcibly disrupted a political meeting in Manchester. From this point forwards the campaign became far more extreme in its actions. Protesters chained themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace. They set churches ablaze, smashed windows on Oxford Street and attacked politicians all in the name of securing women’s suffrage. Their most notorious act of protest came in June 1913, when activist Emily Wilding Davison died after throwing herself under the horse of King George V.

By the end of the First World War suffrage had been granted to all women over 30 with property. While many in the movement saw this as a resounding success, Sylvia Pankhurst continued to fight. Her East London Federation believed in fighting for decent rights for women of all classes. Whereas other movements at the time were noticeably centered on the middle classes.

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