The English Defence League (EDL) have made plans to march through Sheffield on 30th May. They have already held a series of actions elsewhere in the country, such as in Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham and Leeds, apparently demonstrating against ‘extremist Islam’. Sheffield has a strong working class history thanks to it’s industrial past, but our class has also come into conflict with nationalists and fascists in the past, from the British National Party (BNP) refusing to support the miners’ strike, and actively fighting against it by working with mine owners to break strikes and bankrupt the National Union of Mineworkers through court processes, to the local anarchist and socialist skinhead crew that chased the Nazi skinhead crew out of town.

We know what the EDL are attempting to do; shift focus away from our real enemies, the politicians, bankers and bosses, and place the blame for our economic and political strife on workers with a different skin colour who face the same crap from their bosses as we do. In Luton, the EDL beat up a man simply for being Asian when they were left to march through the town unopposed. In Leeds, EDL supporters broke off from the main protest to go and intimidate the local gay district. In Stoke they threatened Asian businesses and the workers there. It is evident that these people don’t actually want to challenge Islam as a religion, but use it, like the BNP do, as an excuse to target Asian and immigrant workers, splitting our class on abstract lines and diverting the attention from the people who are really harming us, the EDL are doing the job of the politicians in Westminster.

Oppose the EDL on 30th May! More info on their march will be posted.