the streets to a bid for electoral respectability, partly as a response to their defeat on the streets by AFA. In 1994, BNP activist Tony Lecomber announced this turn in tactics with a statement to the press that there would be "no more meetings, marches, punch-ups".Jon Kelly "Nicky Crane: The secret double life of a gay neo-Nazi", BBC News Magazine 6 December 2013 In 1995 London AFA responded with its Filling the Vacuum strategy, which involved offering a political alternative in these communities instead of concentrating on challenging the fascist presence on the streets. Red Action and its allies campaigned within the AFA Network after 1995 for AFA as an organisation to adopt the "Filling the Vacuum" strategy. However, given that AFA contained a number of political groups, with differing political programmes, this, and the decline of street action by the BNP as it embraced "respectable electoralism", contributed to the breakup of much of the AFA network, with much internal recrimination. Anti-fascist mobilisations still occurred after 1995, such as ones against the National Front in Dover in 1997 and 1998. The number of AFA branches across the UK peaked at 38 in the mid-1990s, with regular national conferences and an active Northern Network. A new AFA National Coordinating Committee was set up, and in 1997, an official AFA statement forbade members from associating with Searchlight. In 1998 the committee expelled Leeds and Huddersfield AFA for ignoring this policy. There were some local relaunches of AFA groups, such as in Liverpool in 2000, but by 2001, AFA barely existed as a national organisation. Red Action and other AFA activists followed the logic of providing a political alternative to fascism in setting up the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) in 1995, which became the sole focus of Red Action activity after 2001. Others formerly involved in AFA, predominantly anarchists, have maintained militant, street-focused tactics, initially in the group No Platform, then Antifa UK. Some of these groups re-formed in the Anti-Fascist Network in 2011, which aims to recreate the "two-track" approach of AFA. Politics Critics argue that AFA's physical confrontation approach was often more visible than their ideological work, and their tactics were criticised for their squadism and use of violence. However, supporters of AFA's approach cite its involvement in the youth music scene and successful propaganda events like the 1986 and 1987 Remembrance Day "Remember the victims of Fascism" marches as