The EDL is a racist, anti-migrant, anti-Muslim organisation – but not just that. For all its ludicrous claims to represent the “white working class”, it never misses an opportunity to attack those fighting back against cuts and ruling-class attacks.

During the course of 2010 the EDL has denounced the British Airways strikers, disrupted socialist meetings and attacked Swansea Trades Council’s May Day march. Now it is attacking student protesters against cuts and fees.

In a speech to EDL supporter in Peterborough on 11 December, EDL leader “Tommy Robinson” – a former BNP member whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon – said:
“The next time the students want to protest in our capital, the English Defence League will be there.”

Almost all school and most university students are working class; many of the rest are poor. Yet in classic fascist terms, Lennon attacked them as “students living off their dads’ fucking bank cards who have never lived a normal way in their life. They do not understand what it is to be a working class member of this community.”

Migrants, Muslim people, trade unionists and strikers, student activists… Who will be next on the EDL’s hitlist?

The EDL is organising a demonstration in Luton on 5 February. A number of anti-racist and fascist groups, in Luton and across the country, will be mobilising to stop them. The Stop Racism and Fascism will be there, mobilising working-class and student activists around the slogans:

• Drive the racists off our streets
• Black and white, British-born and migrant, workers and students unite and fight
• We won’t pay for the bosses’ crisis – jobs, homes and services for all

Please join our mobilisation! Get in touch! And watch this website for developments

Notts Stop the BNP along with our sister campaigns in Derby are trying to find out where the BNP conference will be on Dec 10th-12th. The BNP have announced that it is in South Derbyshire: there are some indication that is in Burton-upon-Trent but we need more reliable information.

The fact that the BNP are having to be so secretive about their conference is always a re-assurance. A confirmation that if they openly advertise the location well in advance they know  their opponents will probably outnumber and humiliate them.

Many anti-fascist activists cannot be blamed for thinking that the BNP is a busted flush.   The BNP leadership is riven with division, Nick Griffin is discredited and says he will go in 2013 although no-one would be surprised if he reneges on that causing further division.

The EDL seems to be a far  greater concern and requiring opposition on the streets.

We now have massive attacks on the working class by the Tory/ Lib Dem coalition that needs the attention of any working class activists and trade unionist. Already thousands upon thousands are organising against these cuts, taking to the streets, organising strike action whilst of course the far right wing BNP and EDL do nothing.

Racism has nothing to offer to the growing multi-racial trade union and working class opposition to the cuts. The racist BNP and EDL will be increasingly marginalised within the working class communities whose problems they seek to exploit.

However the BNP is not entirely finished. The BNP could grow with the unstable economic conditions and the Con-Dem attacks if the Government successfully gets away with them and there is not a major fight back
We should not ignore them. That is why we are trying to find out what we can do to oppose their conference.

If anyone has any information or wants to help organise against the BNP conference please contact this campaign ASAP through the Socialist Campaign against fascism network at stopracismandfascism(at)gmail.com

Thanks

Nottinghamshire Stop the BNP

This first one is taken from the Alliance for Workers Liberty website. Obviously all such reports do not necessarily represent the views of all of the network

Whilst the bulk of nearly 1,000 EDLers were bussed from their congregation point in four local pubs to their static protest in Humberstone Gate, organised gangs of their supporters wandered across the town provoking confrontation with Asian youths. There must have been at least fifty thugs carrying out such provocations around the town with a great many attacks on Muslim and Asian people. Some at least of which were physically answered by groups of black and Asian youth.
The official counter protest called by the UAF was a minor and embarrassing sideshow of probably no more than 300. The UAF on the day were not only bad with their event they were even worse with their propaganda. The leaflet they gave out on the day even explicitly counselled Asian youth to refrain from engaging in physical confrontation and therefore even self-defence from the EDL: “Sections of the press and TV as well as some of the police … believe that the anti-racists and young people of this city will react to the EDL and cause trouble. Today we must prove them wrong”! (‘Leicester Unite Against Fascism – Safety Guidelines’ leaflet).

Meanwhile probably about 2,500 other anti-racists were out on the streets opposing the EDL. The vast majority of these were Muslim and other black and Asian people in the Highfields district of the town. The rest from a great many uncoordinated socialist and anarchist groups without any central organisation. The lesson learnt by these groups, and not just the non-UAF organised left, is that the kettled carnivals held by the UAF are no answer to the racist thugs of the EDL.

A number of the anti-EDL groups acting independently from the UAF were able to respond in kind to the EDL attacks. But the racist intimidation and violence of the EDL was very real and very frightening to many Asians in town, or moving around town, on their daily business. Such organised racist intimidation cannot be continually allowed to happen.

The most aggressive of the EDL’s attacks occurred at the end of their static protest as they were being directed to their coaches to leave the town. At that point abysmal policing allowed something like 300 EDLers to push through their lines and chase local Asian youths and other anti-fascists.

For 10 minutes there was chaos as EDLers spread across the wide inner-ring road and attacked cars and people on the ring-road who were Asians.
Fortunately they had no plan and no idea where they were going. Nevertheless a proportion of them did make their way 600 yards towards the strongly Muslim area of Highfields. After 10 minutes of police chaos, whilst some Asians defended themselves and the area from the EDL, the police eventually were able to regain some control over the EDL breakaway.

Had the EDL made their way further up into Highfields they would not have fared well. The local people in Highfields had been out on their streets all day in several hundreds. But as news spread of the continuing attacks in town by the EDL and especially their break-out at the end of their protest, people poured out of their houses and the number of anti-racists on the streets of Highfields grew to about 2,000. The main organising force was undoubtedly religious groupings around the Mosque. The prominent one probably being the Muslim Defence League which had contingents mobilised across the region.

It was admirable that the local Muslim population were prepared to ignore the advice of both Hope not Hate and UAF not to defend themselves on the streets against the EDL. It is regrettable that the only people to join them were small number of activists mainly from the Stop Racism and Fascism network and the very recently formed and still small Leicester United Against Racism campaign.
With the weak public visibility of these campaigns, reports as usual have attributed the activities of physical self-defence to the UAF. But in Highfields they were even less visible than they had been in Bradford when the EDL were similarly physically confronted.

The working class movement has to recognise the futility of the advice given them by the both Hope not Hate and the UAF. The violent racism of the EDL will not be stopped by the police. It will not be stopped by prayers or multi-racial carnivals, either before and after the EDL protest as promoted by the Hope not Hate campaign or on the same day as organised by the UAF.

The EDL will not be given publicity by anti-racists mobilising directly against them. They have enough publicity as a result of the police action. They do not gain support because they seem harmless racists; they gain support because they are a focal point for racism and violence. They get publicity by ‘kicking their way into the headlines’.

The EDL will be stopped by anti-racists of all races and ethnic backgrounds, who are not embarrassed as identifying themselves as a working class force, taking to the streets. Not merely defending the Muslim areas but stopping the EDL from sending their racist gangs across the area as was so successfully done in Bradford. But that takes organisation and engaging and refuting the nonsensical arguments raised by Hope not Hate and UAF. It means building accountable local campaigns of working class anti-racists before they appear in your town. Importantly, it means building those campaigns even more energetically and widely when they threaten to march.

It means connecting up with the Stop Racism and Fascism Network which is attempting to do that along with the Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance.

Dave Matthews

Two weeks before, when the BNP tried to hold a stall in the City Centre, they were met with massive, spontaneous resistance. As a result, last week they retreated to their stronghold in Huyton, but today they tried once again to claim the streets of Liverpool for the far-right. What a mistake that was.

As two weeks before, phone calls and text messages saw local antifascists mobilise in opposition. And once again, their ranks were swelled by great swathes of the public, particularly young people.

By one o’clock, there was a large, noisy protest under way, held back from the fascists only by a police presence.

The BNP responded by telling people to “fuck off you Irish bastard,” screaming “commie” and calling protesters “paedophiles,” including a Trade Union official. They also gave out racist abuse to black and Asian people who objected to their presence.

Police didn’t respond to complaints that they were breaking the law with their abusive behavior and language, and instead decided to start arresting people protesting against the BNP on the most spurious grounds!

The number of protesters steadily increased, with locals screaming, shouting, and singing at the increasingly agitated fash. It was only the presence of the police which allowed them to stand their ground, but their recruitment efforts were stopped and the day turned into a war of attrition.

Whilst chants rose up, activists from Liverpool Antifascists gave out several thousand leaflets to largely receptive passers-by.Some people did angrily reject the leaflets – only to come back and apologies when they realised we weren’t BNP! We also received genuine thanks from people for the work we were doing. Scores of people also passed on contact details and expressed an interest in joining the fight against fascism in Liverpool.

Where this event differed from a fortnight ago was that people, predominantly younger, returned with their mates to laugh and have a go at the BNP. It was a scene to remember as the fash were completely surrounded by good, decent Liverpool people, venting their anger and outrage that these scumbags had dared to appear in our City Centre.

Liverpool is a genuinely multicultural city. Our population come from a wide variety of mixed backgrounds, and make up one of the friendliest and welcoming cities in the world. Here, the colour of your skin and where you come from doesn’t mean squat, and the BNP’s attempts to stir the mire are not welcome here.

The day became the centre of attention for shoppers and visitors to our city. Many people from different countries, Spain, Norway, Sweden, China, the US, France, stopped for a chat and took our leaflets. They congratulated us for our efforts and agreed that these scumbags belonged to history. The only reason that the fascists were able operate was due to the heavy police presence. When I say “operate,” I mean to stand there and look stupid. They managed to do this very well.

Once again, a number of people who knew BNP activist and former Quiggins owner Peter Tierney from old raised questions about his sanity. Rumours are circulating about his mental health and the idea that he joined the far-right following a breakdown. He did little to dispel this wwhen he took to marching up and down, ringing a bell, and grinning maniacally at the antifascist crowd.

By 5 o’clock the crowd of people objecting to the BNP’s presence on our streets had grown even larger. Masses of younger people of all colours joined the demo, many getting in the face of the fascists who had turned up on our streets in an attempt to divide us.

Their activists responded by squaring up to teenagers and youngsters. Andrew Tierney at one point broke ranks to chase a young girl, only to be physically restrained. One fascist shoved a man holding his young daughter in has arms. And Jamie Luby was seen telling the same young girl to find him in O’Neills if she wanted to fight him.

Andrew Tierney: antifascists are "now fair game."

But the threats didn’t work on local people. Even children, some no older than eleven, stood up to the thugs. At one point, they jumped on a raised podium to block Andrew Tierney’s view of the girl he had been shouting at when he tried to take a picture of her.

As dusk approached, there were a couple of explosions close to the BNP. One exploded on the BNP’s stall table, collapsing it. Another exploded within the ranks of antifascists. The result was to make a number of protesters move away from the demo. there were many older people proteting against the BNP as were a number of people with young children; explosions in a closed area were therefore at best unwise.

Whatever the motives, Liverpool Antifascists cannot condone the act. We have found great success by educating people as to what the BNP are and only advocate the use of force in self-defence. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured. Peter Tierney hurt his foot, though given his previous violence against antifascists, we don’t have much sympathy.

The thrower of the fireworks, a silly and incendiary act, was not identified.

By this stage the BNP were looking decidedly ruffled. Having given up on their attempts to recruit people, they resorted to their usual tactics of trying to intimidate people with clenched fists and abuse. Most telling was Andrew Tierney’s threat that – because an unknown individual had thrown fireworks – everyone who opposed the BNP was now “fair game.” Organiser Mike Whitby also promised that when they took pictures of those opposing the BNP, they would end up “on a site far worse than Redwatch.”

This shows that the BNP have far from outgrown their violent roots, and that they are still more than willing to intimidate and attack opponents. As Peter Tierney, of course, showed us when he picked up that camera tripod. But today it didn’t work. It was clear to everyone present, and people passing by, that the BNP are not welcome in Liverpool.

The grand finale came when the fascists decided that they’d taken enough abuse for one day and started getting their stuff together. It was like something out of a television drama.

Mike Whitby: pictures of anti-BNP protesters "will end up on a site worse than Redwatch."

They complained to the police about the behavouir of the protesters, but the BNP were the target for derision by respectable people for very good reason. The fascists had to rely on police protection to save them from the wrath of local people. Many of the police present were not comfortable with the job of protecting fascist scumbags, but nobody forced them to join the police. Any sympathy for them in this situation had been eroded by the arests of anti-fascists on the flimsiest of pretences, whilst abuse by the BNP was always conveniently overlooked.

The day finished off with a spectacle that will live forever.

Having got together their bits n’ bobs (and the £3.46 that they’d managed for their full days campaigning), the BNP were allowed to bring cars into Church Street. A line of police blocked them from the opposition as they got in, still mouthing off and offering threats.

Under heavy police escort, they managed to edge their way foward behind a convoy of police vehicles. But an enormous crowd, now well over two of hundred strong, surrounded this sorry spectacle, hurling abuse at the huddled group of fascists hiding behind their police minders. They were chased up Church and Lord Street in a scene reminiscent of the old westerns. The fascists were literally ran outta town.

‘Don’t come back soon’ was the message. Liverpool is a fascist free zone and its people intend to keep it that way.

¡No Pasarán!

The EDL are reported to being given a far freer rein by the police than they were in Bradford. The EDL are meeting in Humberstone Gate, very close to a number of local shops and businesses owned and frequented by the local Kurdish community. There is no talk by the police of controlling the entry and exit of the EDL from Leicester. The police talk about the EDL being escorted from the train station. But the practicalities of the police containing these racist gangs over such a distance pose massive threats to local Asians, not only the Muslim community but also the Hindu and Sikh communities as well as those the EDL identify as their enemy, any anti-racists.

The local campaign established last night is taking the name of their network, Stop Racism and Fascism. They will be congregating close to the UAF protest but have decided to organise independently and do their best to avoid being kettled and connect with other local people who want to limit the EDL’s ability to intimidate local people. They will be explaining and countering the EDL with working class arguments for unity, against the cuts, against unemployment.

We will carry further details over the next few days about this campaigns plans. In the meantime if you want to contact the local Leicester organisers email stopracismandfascism@gmail.com and we will pass your messages on.

Within minutes of the BNP setting up shop in town, word got out. The BNP were on Church Street and texts and phone calls went out across the city warning people and asking for them to turn out in opposition. I was walking the dog at the time, and so and hour elapsed between the time I was first told and the time I reached the crowds. And yes, I do mean crowds.

Nick Griffin had been there, but he fled with his minders the second opposition showed up. As Peter Tatchell opined when he confronted him, the BNP chairman is a gutless coward.

But the local branch of the BNP stayed behind in Griffin’s stead, offering the members of the public a “petition” (PDF) to “Bring Our Boys Home” from Afghanistan. But as Griffin admits on the BNP website, this is not a petition that will be presented to anybody, or even a serious effort to raise the issue of the war in Afghanistan.

Although they will be “under the banner of “Support Our Troops — Bring Our Boys Home”” their true purpose is “the biggest co-ordinated nationalist recruitment campaign ever run outside of an election period.” Hence who signatories “authorise the British National Party to contact” them or send “future promotional, electoral and fund-raising material.”

As I have argued before, the BNP are not an anti-war party. In fact, their 2010 election manifesto explicitly stated that they opposed the Iraq war only on the grounds that “there were no strategic or commercial interests to defend” and “the same applies to the current war in Afghanistan.”

Hence, if a BNP felt there were British strategic or commercial interests at stake (as Blair did in those two wars), then they would have no moral qualms about sending “Our Boys” to die. For the BNP, imperialism’s only bad when you’re not in the seat of command.Which is why the banner of the Stop the War Coalition could be found in the group opposing the BNP.

Unfortunately, their ruse was fooling a lot of people, the anti-war message drawing people away from the fact that this was a fascist recruitment drive, as they planned. Hence why opposition was vital.

Very quickly, a sizeable crowd had gathered, and the BNP found themselves closed off from public view by a semi-circle of very loud antifascists, some bearing banners and signs from various groups. This, in turn, drew members of the public – most notably young teenagers – into the impromptu demo.

While the police held the main demo back from the BNP, some antifascists took the opportunity to talk to people. The general public were receptive to the idea that the BNP were an anti-working class party, offering division at a time when we are facing huge attacks from those in power, and that any pretensions to the contrary (including on the war) were political opportunism.

That their (pre-recorded) chants echoed the Tory party line with calls to “Smash the TUC” certainly didn’t help the fascists’ case.

Arguing the point with the BNP themselves, for those listening in rather than with hope of converting die-hard BNPers, also went in our favour. People can tell the difference between a valid argument and rhetoric, and what Peter Tierney and his friends offered was certainly the latter.

With the rain pouring down, and some people who had arrived earlier on having to leave for other commitments, still the antifascist crowd continued to grow. The BNP struggled to pass out their leaflets or to get many people to sign their petition-cum-covert-recruitment-form. But still they tried to fight a war of attrition, making a show of themselves for a full six-and-a-half hours.

Ultimately, however, over 100 antifascists and local people watched and jeered as the fascists packed their gear into two cars and drove off, protected by a flank of police. No doubt they will try and sell it differently, but for British nationalism this was undoubtedly a failure.

Elsewhere, the BNP’s dissident faction claims that “four teams of two” were “out in Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley, handing out BNP literature to commuters and the General public.” However, even on the basis of their own piss-poor website all they can prove is that Steve Greenhalgh appeared outside Orrell Park Station and Bootle Strand to give letters to … err, nobody!

But they, like the Griffinites, are promising to be out every Saturday for the next few weeks. On which note, the promise from Liverpool Antifascists is that we will be watching when you turn up again.

Daniel Randall is a member of Workers’ Liberty and a supporter of the Stop Racism & Fascism Network who has participated in mobilisations against the EDL in Bradford, Nottingham and London. The following is a guest post giving his impressions of what went on last Saturday in Bradford.

The background and build-up to the day is complex and is fundamentally a reflection of the political divisions within the anti-fascist movement in Britain (I understand the situation in Scotland is largely similar to ours in England).

The Hope Not Hate/Searchlight campaign, the anti-fascist formation of choice for large sections of the trade union bureaucracy, focused on collecting signatures for a petition calling on the (Tory) Home Secretary to ban the EDL’s march.

When such a ban was secured, HnH began organising “Be Bradford – Peaceful Together”, a “multicultural festival” (music, face-painting, bouncy castles… precisely the sort of stuff that were key weapons for the anti-fascist militias in Spain in 1936/7) at a location a couple of miles away from where the EDL (now reduced to a static protest) would be gathering. Their event secured the backing of various local religious institutions, the local trade union bureaucracy and indeed local government.

The SWP-run Unite Against Fascism, frequently politically indistinguishable from HnH (same “unite with anyone – and we mean anyone – against fascism” approach, same celebrity fetish, same slavish deference to trade union bureaucrats and religious leaders, same faith in the state to sort things out by banning fascist parties or organisations), called their own “We Are Bradford” event in the city centre, close to where the EDL would be amassed. The list of initial supporters for the event was a chemically-pure mini-popular front, including everyone from trade union leaders to Lib Dem MPs to religious zealots.

However, they were at great pains to ensure everyone that the event WASN’T a counter protest. Oh no. Nothing as radical or confrontational as that; just a “peaceful multicultural celebration of Bradford”. Undoubtedly the EDL were quaking in their boots.

Local supporters of the Stop Racism & Fascism Network called for a genuine counter-mobilisation to confront the EDL from the start.. SRFN doesn’t have a fraction of the resources that either HnH or UAF have so we were sanguine about our prospects. Nevertheless, SRFN supporters spent the build-up to the event leafleting local working-class estates, particularly in Asian areas, calling on people to mobilise on the day to confront the EDL rather than spending the day at HnH’s limp “festival” or at UAF’s non-protest. SRFN called on people to meet at separate location, Centenary Square, near to the EDL’s rally point.

The other key element in the picture, which would ultimately prove decisive, was local Muslim youth. Unfortunately the left has no real implantation amongst those communities and before the event it was unclear to us whether they would mobilise independently in any significant numbers or follow the advice of community “leaders” to either stay at home or attend the HnH or UAF events.

The experience of previous anti-EDL mobilisations told us that policing would be pretty tight, and we weren’t disappointed. On the day, the cops were out in force. SRFN supporters who attempted to remain outside of police cordons and leaflet members of the public were told to move on and disperse, under threat of arrest. However, in spite of almost every organised element in the equation militating against it, a crowd of several hundred of us managed to gather across the street from the EDL’s rally point, almost literally within spitting distance of the enormous pen the police had constructed to contain the racists. The crowd was made up of SRFN supporters and other independent anti-fascists along with hundreds of Muslim youth, and police soon mobilised to make sure we didn’t get any closer to the EDL.

I think a lot of us were preparing to dig in for a day of fairly typical anti-fascist activism; shouting at a group of nearby racists plus a bit of low-level scuffling with the cops as they try and push us back and we try and get a bit closer. Even if that had been the end-result, it would have represented a significant improvement on UAF or HnH’s strategy; at least the EDL would’ve encountered some visible, vocal opposition (even if it was from the other side of a fenced-off pen and a few lines of cops) rather than having every anti-fascist in town neatly swept off into either the UAF or HnH distractions where they were visible only to other anti-fascists and maybe a few passers-by who took the time to find out what was going on.

As it turned out, we were able to do rather more than just shout at the EDL. They were obviously just as agitated as we were about being held in one place and made several attempts to break out of their pen. At one point, a small group made it onto the pavement and lobbed a few bottles and rocks in our direction. Then, a few hours later, around a 100 EDLers managed to escape and headed off; we could only assume their intention was to cause a bit of (probably-violent) havoc in town. We figured that trying to head off and confront that group was a more useful thing for us to do than spending the rest of the day shouting ourselves hoarse and shoving the cops, so a group of maybe three hundred of us turned back up the street we were on and ran to find them.

We tracked the EDLers down to a roundabout by a retail park and managed to bloody a few noses before police stepped in to break us up and quickly herded the EDLers into Forster Square train station and out of town.

We shouldn’t overstate what we achieved; the EDLers we confronted represented maybe 1/8th of their entire forces on the day. We should also take care not to fall into a crude idealisation of physical-confrontation anti-fascism; it’s a form of activism that excludes those less-able to take part in it and is only one aspect of the anti-fascist strategy we need to develop.

But we did prove that with a bit of tactical dexterity, the EDL can be confronted. We challenged their right to bring their racist bile onto the streets of our cities without encountering any visible opposition. We challenged the pro-state, popular-frontist perspective of mainstream anti-fascism that asserts that calls for state bans or polite rallies are sufficient responses. A lot of us didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when we received reports that leading SWPers had led chants of “whose streets? Our streets!” from the platform of the UAF rally while we were actually doing the work of defending the streets from the EDL hundreds of yards away.

Beneath the practical unity built on the day between Muslim youth and independent anti-fascists, there are some politics that need unpicking; during the lulls between scraps with the cops, we chanted “unemployment and inflation are not caused by immigration; bullshit, come off the enemy is profit” while many of them chanted “Allahu akhbar!” Some of them also chanted “the EDL are faggots!” and hurled sexist abuse at women police officers.

The point is that practical unity in confronting fascist organisation is the best framework from within which to challenge the religious, homophobic and sexist politics that some Muslim youth hold. The left must break from the essentially racist assumption that working-class Muslims can only be related to on the basis of religious communalism and can only be engaged with through the religious establishment and community “leadership”. At one point the self-same community “leaders” who had backed the HnH and UAF events turned up on the frontlines of our confrontation with the police to plead with local kids to go home. Fortunately, their pleas were ignored.

The English Defence League promised us a summer of mass mobilisations intended to cause havoc in some of England’s key centres of Asian, and specifically Muslim, population. They crowed about mobilising up to 5,000 to come to Bradford. Those claims have come to nothing; they were not strong enough to meaningfully impose themselves on the streets of Bradford on August 28, and when a few of them did manage to defy the police they were sent packing by our hastily-convened anti-fascist rapid response unit.

Hopefully, the dismal and disgraceful role of HnH and UAF on the day will help break the stranglehold that these groups hold on anti-fascist politics in the organised workers’ movement. One battering isn’t going to make the EDL go away and the social problems leading many white working-class people into the arms of the EDL and, beyond them, the BNP haven’t gone away either.

We still need to build a national anti-fascist movement that combines a direct-action approach with ongoing campaigning on issues like jobs, homes and services so we can provide anti-capitalist, anti-racist answers to the legitimate grievances which the far-right attempts to exploit. Young working-class people from every community will be at the centre of that; the ruling-class figures and popular-frontist ideas that existing mainstream anti-fascism looks to will be no part of it at all.

Taken from LiverAF website http://liveraf.wordpress.com/

Lesson one is that organisation is crucial to defeating the EDL and strange and mixed though it was, organisation did happen in Bradford , formally and informally. Further the mood amongst the antifascist youth was excellent. Hope not Hate played a complex role, revealing again their lack of a class approach but organising quite a campaign. UAF s role was also quite complicated.

The UAF comment that “a mixed group of people including white, black and Asian people, young and old, families, shoppers and passers-by, spontaneously turned up on pavements overlooking the EDL event, to show their opposition” is not quite accurate. This was unaligned anti-fascists and local youth with a very few passers-by or shoppers. It was this group that responded when the EDL escaped into the crowd.

The BNP suffered serious defeat in the last election. The organisation of effective opposition to the BNP was both necessary and successful. The rise then of the English Defence League, ostensibly committed to “opposing” fundamentalist Islam, presented a different set of problems as they were not an electoral organisation, and touched on issues that could possibly get an echo in the non-Muslim population. The activists of the EDL are a most unattractive grouping, including football hooligans, jumped up “patriots” and bigoted racists.

There have been EDL demonstrations in other areas and an abandoned one in the East End of London. In Dudley and Bolton the police and local authorities and community groups did their best to keep the Muslim youth away from the EDL, including apparently funding trips to Alton towers…

Bradford was different. In 2001 the National Front visited the city. Some stayed drinking, holed up in a pub. As they left, they went into the Asian areas, breaking windows, hurling abuse and threatening the population. Asian youth came out to drive them out, and a riot developed. Asian youth suffered badly in the police intervention and in the courts. Many are serving sentences still. There was also elements of inter communal violence in these riots with a labour Club being firebombed. The threat of an EDL demonstration in Bradford was taken seriously by all who opposed the EDL.

The first suggestion was that there would be a counter demonstration. Then Hope not Hate put forward the idea of a petition to ban the EDL from marching through Bradford and organised to get thousands of signatures for this.

The government agreed. The Government motives were difficult to fathom. However Bradford does have liberal MP who might have had some sway. The likelihood of a huge anti-EDL demonstration in the city might not have been to the governments liking either.

Hope not Hate/Searchlight have organised and claim to have campaigned door to door in Bradford . They have used a “decent people don’t like the EDL” approach rather than take up the BNP or the EDL on class lines. UAF (Unite Against fascism, largely a Socialist Workers Party front, affected in its politics by its work with Respect and its apparent links to Muslim groups with other than a class basis) called a demonstration which was also to be a “static assembly” like the one allowed to the EDL.

There was a demonstration on the Friday before the EDL and community groups decorated the city with green ribbons and banners to symbolise the opposition to the EDL.

The state organised one of the biggest mobilisations in years. The media had warned most people to stay out of the city and it was indeed like a ghost town, with many shops and cafes closing early or not opening.

EDL supporters on the trains were not allowed to stop at Bradford but taken to other stations and coached in. Once in the city, the EDL were “corralled” in a large fenced area, (actually much bigger than was needed). The area was massively policed, the UAF in their area and the EDL in theirs. Reports are that the UAF area was quiet and the police did not actually kettle them, people could come and go. To add to the complexity, the Trades Council organised yet another festival out of the main centre.

Non-aligned antifascists were not happy to go along with the twin “static assemblies” or the “keep out of town” advice. The EDL had to be confronted. The police were breaking up groups of more than five or six Anti-fascists as they moved around the city centre. The role of the UAF and HNH meant that coordination was poor – hampered by the inexperience among many of the younger unaligned Anti-fascists who did their best (and in the circumstances did well – their mood was more aligned with that of the Asian Youth and others who joined the demonstration) in trying to organise the willing who were in the streets facing the EDL.

The Northern Indymedia report was to me an accurate report of what I saw. The EDL threw smoke bombs and thoroughly upset the mounted police. It was strange to see the police do what they did. Normally the police would have been much harder on the anti-Nazis than on the Nazis. They did use horses against the local youth and demonstrators a couple of times, though in a low key way, using the horses to “encourage” people to move back rather than physically pushing them. The police confronted the EDL with massive force. The EDL had their speakers, waved flags (including the Israeli, Scots and, bizarrely, the Netherlands) and chanted hate.

The mood was focused, but friendly. A wedding party arrived at the Midland hotel, piped in by a Scottish piper. The music drew the crowds’ attention and the bride was cheered into the hotel.

A number of EDL who had missed the bus or otherwise arrived late filtered through the crowd, were seen and allowed through the fence into the EDL area by the police.

There were a hundreds of local youth, mainly but not exclusively Asian. There were early teenage girls and boys among the younger groups, less women among the older groups. Significantly, there were very few paper sellers, few chants but lots of quiet chats going on between friends and strangers. Some of the youth were organised into groups acting together and some were Asian and White together.

A few EDL escaped the compound ran into a local shopping area and were caught in the car park by antifascists where, to quote Trotsky, their heads were acquainted with the pavement, by Asian youth and a number of organised antifascists. The EDL were escorted into their coaches by the police and bussed out.

Politically, and for some physically, the EDL had a bad day. Bradford was spared a repeat of 2001. The police had a dry run for future demonstrations. The Youth of Bradford, mainly self organised, did well in defending their homes and defending anti-racism.

UAF and Hope not Hate placed themselves in a strange political place, and non-aligned antifascists demonstrated they were clearly an alternative.

Hope Not Hate, Bradford TUC and the city council held a cultural festival miles outside the city centre – attended by less than a hundred and fifty people and described by one visitor as “more councillors than human beings”. (The police threw left-wingers out because it was “not supposed to be a political event!”) Five hundred UAF and SWP members gathered in Exchange Square, to listen to hip hop and hear speeches urging “respect” for the police and praising Tory Home Secretary Theresa May for banning the EDL’s attempts to march. Meanwhile many hundreds of people, a mix of leftists (mostly unaffiliated – the only two visible groups were the AWL and Workers Power) and self-organised youth, mostly Asian, rallied and counter-demonstrated, without police permission, metres from the EDL protest.

There were far fewer EDLers than the racists had predicted – about eight hundred, not the many thousands they boasted they would have. They shouted chants including “Allah is a paedo” and “We love the floods” (a reference to the disaster in Pakistan).

When a group of one or two hundred broke out from the EDL demonstration to rampage around the city, they got a nasty shock. Most of the counter-demonstration chased them through town before trapping some of them in Forster Square railway station and giving a few a good kicking.

Attempts to attack a local mosque were also beaten back, and some of the EDL coaches were stoned and had their tyres slashed.

Even as it was, with the dominant forces in the labour and anti-fascist movements working with community and religious leaders to prevent a counter-demo, we gave the racists a seriously hard time. We don’t care about the imams, police and Blairite councillors. But trade unionists and socialists who did not even join the counter-demonstration once it began should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

In contrast, supporters of the Stop Racism and Fascism network, including AWL members, argued for a counter-demonstration in the city centre from the very start. Bradford United Against Racism went door-to-door, mainly in Asian areas of the city, working to get people out. We are not pretending that the protest was organised by us; but we do feel proud that we argued for it and played a full role in it on the day. Ironically, the ban on marching praised by UAF speakers was also the reason why many Stop Racism and Fascism activists were stopped from leafleting by police, in some instances being threatened with arrest.

Events in Bradford demonstrated vividly the necessity of challenging UAF and Hope Not Hate’s stranglehold over anti-fascist activity, particularly in the labour movement. Both campaigns have once again shown themselves to be profoundly inadequate – in their lack of class politics and their advocacy of reliance on the police. As an absolute minimum, we need to insist that it is right to counter-demonstrate against militant racists and fascists – just as right as it was in the 1930s and 1970s. We would urge trade unionists and local anti-fascist campaigners to back and get involved in Stop Racism and Fascism.

Part of this is building links with workers and youth Asian and Muslim communities at the sharp end of the fascist and racist threat. The demonstration in Bradford today was largely an amalgam of distinct elements: the only common chant was “Black and white, unite and fight – smash the EDL” (and sometimes only the second part); most of the Asian youth did not take up leftist chants, and chauvinistic comments against EDL members and sexist chants including against female police officers were heard repeatedly. The fact that hundreds of youth defied self-appointed community leaders to challenge the EDL on the streets is positive. But the left, which is largely white, has to stop treating Asian people as an ‘other’ that can only be organised on the basis of religion or communalism, and make the arguments for working-class unity and anti-capitalist struggle.

Don’t let the SWP lie about what happened!

Predictably, the bourgeois media is reporting clashes between the EDL and… UAF. We expect such ignorance from them. But we should not allow UAF itself, or the SWP, to lie about what happened on the day. We raise this because they have done so, many times, in the past.

There were, at most, a dozen SWPers on the counter-demonstration – and not on the front-line – while hundreds obeyed the police – or more to the point the central committee – and stayed in the square. Comrades, ask yourself why your organisation behaves like this – and then ask your organisers and leaders!