A RAG-TAG mob of fascists failed to disrupt a big Communist Party public meeting in Merthyr Tydfil on Monday evening.

Around a dozen members of the National Front (NF) and the new outfit Valleys Frontline Firm turned up at the Soar centre, where CP general secretary Robert Griffiths was launching his general election campaign for the Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney constituency.

Bemused locals looked on as an NF organiser led the fascist protesters in a chant of “Whose streets? Our streets” as a large crowd filed into the venue.

But Mr Griffiths refused to be sidetracked by the fascists, urging an enthusiastic audience to help return an MP who would fight for “public ownership, a wealth tax on the super-rich and the rejection of the European Union, Nato and nuclear weapons.”

He vowed to uphold the staunchly socialist and anti-imperialist politics of the town’s legendary former MP S O Davies, echoing his call in the 1955 government of Wales Bill for “a Welsh parliament in a federal Britain.”

Mr Griffiths also launched a vitriolic attack on “chief war criminal” Jack Straw, Labour’s foreign secretary at the time of the Iraq war, his fellow disgraced MP Malcolm Rifkind, bedroom tax minister Iain Duncan Smith and “category A greedy bastard” Stuart Gulliver, the tax-dodging chief executive of HSBC bank.

“They epitomise Britain’s utterly corrupt ruling class and its craven political Establishment,” he charged and reaffirmed the Communist Party’s commitment to uniting with left and progressive forces inside and outside Parliament to fight for radical and revolutionary change.

Respect MP George Galloway had been due to address the rally, but withdrew following the recurrence of a back injury.

In a message to the meeting, Mr Galloway endorsed Mr Griffiths as CP prospective parliamentary candidate and said he was the “sort of person we desperately need in Parliament — he would speak up for the working-class people whom new Labour has so miserably abandoned.”

Merthyr Tydfil Trade Union Council secretary Tommy Roberts, who chaired the rally in a personal capacity, announced that Mr Galloway would reschedule his speaking commitment in the town for March 30.