NEAG 2025 HIGHLIGHTS: A YEAR OF ACTION
2025 in the UK, from our perspective, was a year marked by one word: action. With our Government continuing to fund and fuel the genocide in Palestine, empower and inflame racist and fascist rhetoric on our streets, and continue to repress anyone who stands against this agenda, all we can do is fight back.
Our members have not seen greater levels of repression, arrests, and violence in recent memory than in 2025. However, despite the negatives this year has brought, we have also fought back against the growing tide of fascism and normalisation in the UK, whilst building local, national, and international solidarity and strength.
Below we have collected some of those moments from this year, for posterity and history. Only we can write the true history of our struggle, which is more important than ever in the current climate of capitalist and state repression.
All of the below is alongside our annual picnic, banner making sessions, arrestee support, growing the group (one of our strongest years for growth yet) and improving our structures, monthly prisoner letter writing sessions, sofa’s offered to sleep on, money given to those in need, and above all, organising and supporting much of the work that happens behind the scenes to ensure the oppression of our world is a little less so for those in our communities. We could never truly list all we do (and we wouldn’t want to), which is why this is a highlight, not a transcript, of our year. However, if there is one thing to take from this summary, it is to GET INVOLVED. It doesn’t even have to be with ourselves, the potential to make change starts with you deciding to do something about it – we can win, and we will, but only if we all embody the spirit of initiative, and act.
In January, we joined our anarchist friends and comrades in Derry, North of Ireland, for their annual Radical Bookfair, alongside joining them and many others in the Bloody Sunday March for Justice. It is something we have made a little habit of doing each year as a group, and growing the bonds between the closest place to us still occupied by the colonial apparatus of the British State is an important act of solidarity. We hope to join them this year once again, and we imagine that the march this year (in the backdrop of the British justice system allowing for a murderer to walk free) will be needed more than ever.
February brought the brave action of the Scotswood 3, who shut down the Israeli-owned weapons factory in Newcastle (Rafael, formerly Armstrong Work, on Scotswood Road), and aided in the solidarity and support actions after their brave act of resistance. We also hosted, alongside Newcastle Palestine Solidarity Campaign, our largest prisoner writing workshop to date, focusing particularly on Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Zionist prisoners.
Squatting was back on the agenda in March, we hosted a successful and well attended squatting workshop in Newcastle, which allowed for us to re-ignite the conversations regarding squatting that came to fruition a few years ago when we hosted our Queer Anarchist squat party fundraiser.
April brought with it a lot of demo’s and actions, Crips Against Cuts North East began to hold various demonstrations against the proposed welfare benefits cuts, Republic hosted a demonstration against Charles Windsor’s visit to Durham, and a successful demo in support of trans-rights in the heart of Newcastle. We have supported and been involved with all of these actions locally.
The Teesside Radical Bookfair was held for the first time in Middlesborough, which we attended and had a stall at. Despite it being the first, it was incredibly well attended and many local people arrived to get involved. Organising efforts have been spearheaded at this event that continue to this day. Furthermore, a contingent of us went to the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair in Greece, where we strengthened our international bonds and solidarity and made lasting connections to attend future events. Rafael was also hit again by the Armstrong 2, who we also aided in post-action solidarity and support.
June, as always, brought with it the Newcastle Ewan Brown Anarchist Bookfair. We hosted a talk, had a stall, and we continued to aid and help with this event firmly keeping its position as the premier anarchist event in Newcastle in the modern anarchist era. Please attend if you can in 2026, it is always amazing, and a beautiful way to commemorate a lost comrade, who we deeply miss to this day.
Durham Miner’s Gala once again came around in July, and with it, a stall (by the Northumbria Branch of the IWW, which we kindly shared and used as a base of operations for the day). Despite the (unfortunate) continued liberalisation of the gala, with trade unions supporting the ongoing genocide in Palestine via support arms workers and the Labour party still being invited, the day was very successful and the organisers continued to stand in firm and steadfast solidarity with Palestine. We also organised yet another fundraiser gig for the Scotswood 3 legal fund and the Palestinian Red Crescent at the Star and Shadow, getting some much needed funds to 2 valuable causes.
In August, the first of the ongoing anti-fascist demonstrations in Newcastle, outside the Newbridge Hotel, began. Fascists, organising around groups mostly based in South Shields, continue to attempt to attack the hotel and harass residents. They continue to throw nazi-salutes, attempt to doxx anti-fascists, and spread vile rhetoric. All while the police stand by and watch. These demo’s are ongoing, and we still need people to get down and support us, every Saturday, from midday. We also helped to organise a counter demonstration against an LWS (terfs) event in Whitley Bay.
September brought with it one of the largest anti-fascist mobilisations in recent memory in Newcastle. Despite Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) and Newcastle Unites hosting a ‘unity demonstration’ on the other end of Newcastle to where the fascists were, ourselves and various other groups (NE Antifascists, Northumbria IWW, Newcastle PSC, Red Storm Collective, and many more) mobilised hundreds to directly confront the fascists on the Quayside. Despite police repression, we countered the fascists directly, and their pitiful turnout of around 100-150 people went home with their tails between their legs (because, as you can imagine, a lot had travelled from other parts of the country for this demo).
In October, we helped to found a Newcastle branch of Food Not Bombs. So far, it has provided hot meals and drinks at various demonstrations and events locally, and hopes to continue to do so in 2026.
The Amsterdam Anarchist Bookfair was once again held in November, which we attended and held a stall at, continuing to strengthen international bonds of solidarity and spreading the word about our actions across Europe. We also collected multiple statements of solidarity and support for Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Zionist prisoners – which can be seen on our social media.
Leading from this, in December, we have supported actions in solidarity with the Hunger Striker’s and their demands (End all censorship, Immediate bail, Right to a fair trial, De-proscription of Palestine Action and Shutdown of all UK sites of Elbit Systems. This strike is still ongoing, and some prisoners are now at immediate risk of death, much like the anti-fascist demonstrations, we call on anyone who can to get involved in supporting the hunger strikers. Prisoners For Palestine is the best source for information on their current status.
Unfortunately, all possible indicators show that the situation will only worsen. The fascists continue to rally and demonstrate weekly in Newcastle, the genocide rages on whilst the hunger strikers are ignored, the Labour government continues to betray and butcher the country, Reform UK is on the rise, and the only response the mainstream left has produced is a fractured and splintered ‘socialist’ party, and an anti-fascist rally being held in March (seemingly to mostly stroke the invited celebrities ego’s).
It is clear, now, more than ever, that what we need is a radical alternative, and we will be there to provide it, alongside others, in 2026.
Long live the beautiful idea, long live anarchy! Long live the resistance!
Two quotes we hold close for the coming year:
“Socialist leaders who, finding themselves caught up in the electoral machine, end up gradually transformed into nothing more than bourgeois with liberal ideas. They have placed themselves in determinate conditions that in turn determine them.” – Reclus, 1898
“Anarchy cannot come but little by little – slowly, but surely, growing in intensity and extension. Therefore, the subject is not whether we accomplish Anarchy today, tomorrow, or within ten centuries, but that we walk toward Anarchy today, tomorrow, and always.” – Malatesta 1899
A simpler, shorter version of the below is available on our social media pages (linked at the bottom of this webpage)
