FRFI 211 October / November 2009

Since May 2009, racists under the banner of the English Defence League (EDL) have organised a number of demonstrations and rallies against ‘Islamic extremism’. A march in Luton in May was followed by two demonstrations in Birmingham on 8 August and 5 September, a rally at a mosque in Harrow on 11 September and a counter-protest to the annual Al Quds march through central London two days later. The EDL is planning further events in Manchester, Leeds and Bristol.

Although the EDL purports to be a non-racist, non-fascist organisation dedicated to opposing what it calls ‘Islamic extremism’, it has close links with the British National Party (BNP) and its supporters have shown themselves to be virulent racists. They are acting as unofficial auxiliaries of the BNP which wants to retain the aura of respectability it has achieved with the election of two of its leaders as MEPs in the 5 June European poll.

Luton

The first EDL rally took place in Luton, a BNP stronghold and scene of a widely-publicised Muslim-led anti-war protest in March 2009. On 24 May, scores of racists descended on the town and rampaged through Asian areas, attacking people and smashing up shops. When the EDL announced a further demonstration for 19 September, ‘Hope not Hate’, an anti-fascist group associated with Searchlight magazine, organised a letter-writing campaign calling for it to be prohibited. This was supported by the local council and the police. On 20 August, the Home Office granted a ban under the Public Order Act which prohibits ‘any procession or march involving members or supporters of, but not limited to, the English Defence League, UK Casuals United, March For England and United People of Luton’ from marching in the town without having made a formal application to Luton Borough Council. Weyman Bennett, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) joint secretary and leading SWP member, welcomed it, saying ‘What we have proved is that where we, as a multiracial group, organise and stand up, the EDL can be defeated.’ (The Guardian, 21 August 2009).

However, the ‘but not limited to’ provision in the order gives the council carte blanche to ban any march or protest, including those organised by anti-racists. As if to underline this point, two young Muslims were arrested on 30 August as hundreds took over the streets in the Bury Park area of Luton because of rumours of an EDL mobilisation. No fascists were arrested. If the Luton ban were repeated elsewhere, all the EDL would have to do is announce a march in a particular city for all protests, whoever organised them – trade unions, anti-racists, socialists – to be prohibited there as well.

Birmingham: SWP faces both ways

On 8 August EDL supporters tried to organise a rally in Birmingham city centre but were met by hundreds of Asian youth and anti-racists who rapidly dispersed them. When the EDL announced that they would return on 5 September, the local UAF split on how to respond. The majority refused to organise a counter-mobilisation and instead asked to hold a rally outside Birmingham Council House as ‘Birmingham United’. The council refused. In the event, Asian youth once again took to the streets, and once again put the racists to flight. Councillor Salma Yaqoob of the Respect party, who had joined with the police in calling for a ban on the EDL march, later wrote in the New Statesman ‘If the violence of the EDL was predictable, it was also predictable that some Asian youths would ignore calls for restraint from myself and others.’ It was Respect and its allies who ensured that the UAF would oppose the demand for a counter-protest. Although the SWP, one of the main founders of both the UAF and Respect, then broke ranks and joined with the Asian youth, the report in the following week’s Socialist Worker did not mention the stance the local UAF had taken.

Harrow: giving a platform to Labour racists

The EDL event in Harrow was timed to take place on the anniversary of the Twin Tower attack. There was no evidence that EDL supporters ever appeared; such was the response of the Asian community. According to FRFI supporters who were present, any time there were rumoured sightings of the racists, dozens of Asian youth would rush to the supposed location to find nobody there. This was despite the presence of hundreds of riot police. In contrast to Birmingham, UAF did organise a counter-protest. Yet they chose to give a platform to local Labour MP Tony McNulty, a defender of state racism and a persecutor of the unemployed and those on benefits (see box).

It is impossible to square UAF’s claim to anti-racism with this act. McNulty was for a period Labour’s main orchestrator of state attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers. How can he be seriously presented as a recruit to the fight against fascism? Socialist Worker, in its account of Harrow, chose to ignore McNulty’s record. A couple of days later, the UAF’s website reported with approval Labour Secretary of State for Communities John Denham’s suggestion that the situation with the anti-Islamic groups today was comparable with that of the 1930s when fascists marched against Jews. It did not comment on McNulty’s dismissal of this as ‘stupid analysis’, a view echoed by Home Secretary Alan Johnson. Labour is concerned not with the EDL but with the prospect that its actions will kindle resistance to the crisis where none exists at the moment.

The victories in Birmingham and Harrow show that despite police protection, the fascists are not yet able to mobilise a significant number of supporters on the streets. On 13 September, fewer than 100 EDL followers joined Zionists in opposing the Al Quds march in support of Palestine. However, the left, especially the SWP, are being forced to face two ways at once: towards their Labour racist allies in the UAF on the one hand, and towards the Asian youth on the other. For genuine socialists, it is the actions of the Asian youth which are starting to point the way forward; it follows on from their militant participation in demonstrations in defence of the people of Gaza during the Zionist onslaught last December and January. Self-defence is no offence

Tom Vincent, Robert Clough

Tony McNulty MP: Labour racist

Tony McNulty became Minister of State for Immigration in May 2005, boasting how the government was cracking down on illegal immigrants, and deporting more and more failed asylum seekers. His Immigration and Asylum Bill published in June that year proposed that asylum seekers should have just one chance to appeal, and that, if that appeal failed, all their benefits would be stopped and their children taken into care. It became law the following year. In May 2006, he took over responsibility for policing and crime, security and counter-terrorism, implementing the Identity Cards Act, and, in 2008, the Counter-Terrorism Bill which proposes to extend the maximum period of detention to 42 days. In October 2008, he became Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform, being proud to crack down on benefit fraud. ‘We are doing more than ever to tackle benefit fraud... we’re closing in on benefit cheats.’ (4 December 2008). In March 2009, McNulty was revealed to have claimed £60,000 in ‘second home’ expenses for a house occupied by his parents in his constituency in Harrow, 11 miles from Westminster, and six miles from his claimed primary home in Hammersmith. ‘Everyone does it’ was his defence.

Unite Against Fascism

Unite against Fascism (UAF) was set up in 2003 as an alliance between the SWP and black members of the Labour Party organised in the National Assembly against Racism with support from trade unions. Its stated objective is to ‘campaign with the aim of alerting British society to the rising threat of the extreme right, in particular the BNP, gaining an electoral foothold in this country’; in practice this means its priority is to shore up Labour’s disintegrating vote. It refuses to campaign against state racism since its supporters include leading figures in the Labour Party such as Peter Hain, who spoke at its 2007 conference when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the current Solicitor General Vera Baird and Ken Livingstone who is UAF’s Chair. Others are the likes of Tory leader David Cameron and prominent Zionists such as Liverpool Labour MP Louise Ellman and Henry Guterman, who supported Zionist attacks on FRFI pickets of Manchester Marks and Spencer.