They are all racist scum.

This is who the BNL are. Making racist jokes about Asians. Scum.

These people are evil!

Some people say the EDL are the same as the BNP. Others say the EDL are just a confused bunch of football hooligans. While there is an element of truth in both descriptions, neither gets at the core of what the EDL are - that is storm-troopers for British imperialism.

It is worth remembering where the EDL started. In March 2009, a group of Muslims came out to protest against British soldiers from the Anglian Regiment, just returned from Iraq, being paraded through Luton city centre. The protestors held up placards: “British government – terrorist government”, “Illegal war in Iraq” and “Anglian soldiers: butchers of Basra”. The protest was physically attacked by a group of army supporters who went on to launch the English Defence League. Since then the EDL have held a series of protests around Britain, initially only drawing a few dozen people, but more recently supported by between 1,000 and 2,000 on successive protests in Stoke (23 January), Bolton (20 March) and Dudley (3 April). On 2 May EDL members occupied the roof of a building adjacent to the site of a proposed mosque in Dudley and used a PA system to broadcast anti-Muslim propaganda and fake Islamic calls to prayer. After two days they were arrested and charged with burglary and inciting racial hatred. While the EDL make a great show in public of their couple of Sikh and black members to try and ‘prove’ that they are not racist, and claim that they are only concerned with ‘Islamic extremism’ rather than all Muslims, their chants say it all, including ‘If you build a mosque we’ll burn it down’ and, towards counter-protesters: ‘We hate pakis more than you’. Where the EDL have had large numbers and have not faced effective opposition, as in Stoke, Bolton and Dudley, mosques, as well as Asian individuals and businesses, have been attacked.

The Socialist Worker Party and Unite Against Fascism have made a lot of the involvement of BNP member Chris Renton in the leadership of the EDL. It is unsurprising that there is a crossover in membership between the EDL and other racist groups, but there seems little evidence that the EDL is a front for the BNP or any other organisation. In September 2009 the BNP made it a disciplinary offence for their members to have anything to do with the EDL, following which Chris Renton resigned from the BNP. Since then Nick Griffin and other members of the BNP leadership have made public accusations that the EDL is a ‘false flag’ operation set up by the British state – hardly something they would say of a BNP front organisation.

But if the EDL aren’t ‘old style’ fascists, what are they? A very visible aspect of the EDL’s politics has been its political affinity with both Loyalism and Zionism. In September 2009 the Bristol Evening Post reported that the UK chapter of the Jewish Defence League, a Zionist organisation had turned down an offer from the EDL to form an alliance. Israeli flags have been flown since the early EDL demos and were flown alongside the England flag at the Dudley rooftop occupation. The ‘Links’ section of the EDL website points to a number of Zionist blogs and sites for its international news. Likewise, the EDL makes no secret of their support for Loyalism. An official EDL spokesperson’s statement on Youtube following the Dudley rooftop protest was delivered in front of a banner showing the ‘red hand of Ulster’ and the ‘six counties’, while the Loyalist slogan ‘No surrender’ is common amongst EDL members. The EDL have said they will be sending hundreds to Belfast to participate in the Orange marches on 12 July, and say many of their core members have been attending for years.

What Zionism, Loyalism and the EDL have in common is support for imperialism and hostility to anti-imperialist movements. This is embodied in the centrality in the EDL’s politics of support for the British army and in particular its campaigns in the Middle East.

In this context we can begin to understand the increasing support being provided to the EDL by the British state. In FRFI 214 we reported on the change of police tactics at Bolton, where they viciously attacked the UAF-organised counter-protest, using police dogs and making dozens of arrests. When the EDL members on the Dudley rooftop occupation were confronted by hundreds of anti-racists, the police sealed off the surrounding area of the town and released a statement warning that anyone coming into Dudley with the intention of causing ‘disorder’ would be ‘dealt with swiftly and robustly’, and allowed the EDL to remain on the roof for nearly three days.

Capitalist states have only resorted to supporting fascists when their economic domination has been threatened by powerful revolutionary movements backed by the working class and oppressed. Today there is no such movement in Britain which threatens the British state directly. But there are movements which identify with the forces resisting imperialism in Palestine and Afghanistan and are prepared to act in anti-imperialist solidarity. In the months before the EDL was established thousands had come out on the streets to protest against the massacre being carried out by Israel in Gaza. This was not the first time, and was despite a massive offensive involving propaganda and repression against Muslim communities, and in particular their activists, over the last decade. The EDL are a popular domestic reflection of the British state’s imperialist interests in the Middle East and their vicious attacks on Muslim communities in Britain. They offer the state the potential to extend its existing apparatus of punitive prison sentences, terror laws, shoot to kill and immigration prisons, in order to terrorise Muslim activists off the streets without further damaging the government’s claims to moral superiority.

The EDL are not ‘Nazis’ nostalgic for Adolf Hitler, they are very modern and very British racists. The EDL are a threat precisely because they are acting in line with the interests of British imperialism. They represent mainstream racism in its naked form on the streets of Britain.

Excellent article.

Pictured is Granny Doris...an EDL organiser from Luton EDL and Houghton Regis & Dunstable EDL Division. She organised the pre Bradford meeting in Seaham.

Here she is in her joke burka [LOL not] with Dave Tann and Andrew Reynolds.

this link proves it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?=kp-lwSe2llg
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1hJbjNrBXs&feature=related

The EDL are the Army. FACT.

this is a worrying revelation the police can cope with thousands of edlers coming to bradford but if as you say they are the army dogs and batons against guns and tanks it wont be a fair fight i will wave my anti bnp placard from a safe distance

The one in the middle is EDL. His name is Gareth.

I am quite sure the guys in Iron Maiden would not be happy seeing Eddie being used in this picture.

Up the Irons

Q: "The Socialist Worker Party and Unite Against Fascism have made a lot of the involvement of BNP member Chris Renton in the leadership of the EDL. It is unsurprising that there is a crossover in membership between the EDL and other racist groups, but there seems little evidence that the EDL is a front for the BNP or any other organisation. In September 2009 the BNP made it a disciplinary offence for their members to have anything to do with the EDL, following which Chris Renton resigned from the BNP"?

A: Chris Renton has NOT resigned from the BNP. Chris Renton appears on BOTH leaked BNP membership lists. EDL co-founder Paul Ray claims he's been kicked-out of the EDL for opposing Chris Renton's BNP infiltration and since then EDL leader "Tommy Robinson" has been exposed as BNP member Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. The EDL may not be a front for Nick Griffin but it is definitely a front for other people in the BNP.

"EDL admit their leader's BNP"...
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm8lTdh_bwk

"EDL Leader Exposed"...
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HgQZitwpSo

Q: "The EDL are not Nazis nostalgic for Adolf Hitler"?

These EDL definitely are...
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz5fyoMVtIY
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlTJOefkzdQ
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1d0X7oqLoU
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-YRwri8S6E
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awRKR-RP1DA
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN9j7Sz5Ctc

This is him. What a wanker.

Dean J smith alos known as "Dudley Fonz Smith" is a racist Blood and Honour ne Nazi pice of scum. He is the one in the center of the photo wearing a St Geroge Cross shirt.