Close examination of the area above my left eye reveals a scar. It is a souvenir of when, walking home from a night on the beer with Mickey, Brendan and Leo, we were jumped by a group of loyalists.

Mickey stood apart from the kerfuffle and subsequently explained that because he was really good at martial arts he didn’t feel he should get involved. One of the loyalists hit me on the head with a crutch of all things. He swung a second time, and I managed to get it out of his hand. Despite having given up judo after three months on account of being the most useless student in the last several hundred years, I remembered just enough to trip the bugger. While he was lying on the ground, I repeatedly battered him with his own weapon. Even though I was a few pints in, I was aware enough to make sure I avoided hitting his head. I concentrated on his legs to ensure he couldn’t chase us and to give him something to remember me by. I like to think that to this day there is a man hobbling round Sandy Row Rangers supporters club with memories of that evening.

Happily, as this report of an attack by some lumpen scum on a young Protestant, seems to suggest, incidents of this sort are rare enough now in the six counties to make news.

This brings us on to Quentin Deranque, a fascist sympathising ultra-Catholic who was allegedly killed in a fight with people associated with La France Insoumise (LFI). Deranque is being presented as a French hybrid of Charlie Kirk and the recently canonised teenager Carlo Acutis. In reality, he was a founding member of a fascist fighting group called Allobroges Bourgoin.

Jacques-Elie Favrot, who was until a short time ago an assistant to an LFI parliamentary deputy, has been charged with encouraging the violence that led to Deranque’s death from a traumatic brain injury.

Far right violence in Lyon

The context is that in Lyon where Deranque was killed left groups and bookshops, Palestine solidarity activists and ethnic minorities have been attacked for years by violent racist thugs. That was the swamp Deranque inhabited. He may have dressed it up with an extremely reactionary brand of Catholicism, but he was a fascist street fighter. It is hardly surprising that the left has been obliged to organise its own defence, not least because most cops tacitly agree with the far right. On the night of his death Deranque had been part of a group which intended to disrupt a meeting with LFI MEP Rima Hassan, whom The Times describes as “known for her strident pro-Palestinian views”.

Let’s go along with what the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (NPA) says and describe his death as regrettable. To me, it looks like something rather similar to the incident I was involved in. If the loyalist had brought something more substantial than an aluminium crutch, I could have been in the paper the next day. If I hadn’t stopped Leo kicking him when he was on the floor, it could have been him.

French political culture is a lot more violent than its British counterpart. Riots are not uncommon and mass street movements sometimes become a bit lively. The far right mythologises violence and recruits people who are attracted to it. Participants at a memorial rally for Deranque gave Nazi salutes, just like Jesus used to.

However, as the NPA point out, Deranque’s death is being used to delegitimise the entire radical left, in particular La France Insoumise, in the weeks before next month’s local elections.

Melenchon said last weekend that, “for LFI, nonviolence is a fundamental philosophical choice. Violence stunts our movements and brings fear that spreads.” However, the entire weight of the ruling class and its press are being brought to bear against the party combined with death threats, attacks on its premises and bomb threats. It is impossible to imagine a similar reaction to the death of a left-wing activist.

If only he’d studied Laudato si’

Deranque’s death was regrettable. If he had taken his inspiration from what the current pope and his predecessor had said about migrants and environmental justice, his family would not be in mourning.

However, it also raises questions about the tactics of left groups when they turn to pre-emptive violence. I once nearly got punched in the face by a member of Red Action, an outfit Paul Mason’s old muckers used to work with. They seemed to enjoy violence for the sake of it and fighting fascists in pubs was how they justified it. We will not know the exact circumstances of what happened in Lyon until the case comes to trial, but the political conclusion is that while it may be necessary in some situations to take physical security very seriously, there is a high price to be paid by the entire left if it gets out of control.

And let’s take no lectures on violence from a political class in Britain or France which has enabled the Gaza genocide and has a long history of supporting colonial and imperialist wars which have murdered millions.