firstly the UAF decided to label this a joint EDL/BNP march.
http://www.uaf.org.uk/resources/1003londonA5.pdf
why? while it is known there are BNP involved with EDL the BNP has regularly attacked the EDL as hooligans, trouble makers and state dupes. The point is clear, that UAF understand that people no longer see EDL as bad enough in their own right so they must be attatched to the BNP.
second they circulated impetuous nonsense regarding the demo that anyone with any knowledge of the EDL know was untrue. this below was circulated wildly in the day before the event when it must have been becoming clear to the UAF office their turnout would be tiny
"To members of NUS BLACK STUDENTS' CAMPAIGN
Bellavia Ribeiro-Addy 04 March at 14:57 Reply
The Met Police have just informed the Unite Against Fascism office that over 1000 EDL members have registered on coaches coming to London for tomorrow morning and they warn of many more making their own way here. This has now made building anti-fascist numbers tomorrow even more urgent.
The police have said the EDL are co-ordinating different groups to meet at Leicester Square 'Wetherspoons', Kings Cross, Ruislip, Vauxhall, Pimlico and other locations and are to descend on Westminister. The police also said that the EDL intend to march to parliment but after plan to split off into groups and 'visit' Finsbury Park and White Chapel - highly populated areas of ethnic minorities and especially Muslims.... See more
If there is not a massive counter-protest to this, enough people to keep the EDL in Westminister, then we will see a return of the violence that occured in Stoke where the EDL attacked mosques, smashed shop windows and burnt out cars.
Please mobilise for this urgently as we cannot allow the EDL to riot and go on what is essentially a pogrom in Muslim areas, as they did in Stoke.
Assemble tomorrow, 11am outside parliament.
In unity, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, NUS Black Students' Officer, NUS Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism Convenor "
So did the Met tell UAF this? It would be interesting if the UAF published the email. Someone somewhere was having someone on. Was it the Met or the UAF making up porkies?
And in the event what happened? 250 maybe 300 EDL and 100 maybe 150 UAF. The frenzied facebook and email demands of UAF and their SWP supporters to re-enact Cable Street against hoards of muslim eating Nazis are no longer starting to look nonsense but finally and utterly finished. IF we were to believe the UAFs frenzied propaganda then a turn out of 100 people is utterly feeble and embaressing.
EDL showed they are as always a collection of ex army, football crews, kids of a mainly loyalist hue. Anti anything what they see as threatening 'their england'; lefties, muslims and nazis. And not a Nazi to be seen and a few young black and scarfed faces. One shouts at the cameras " Am i a Nazi?? Am I a Nazi??" mockingly.
And do they need to be confronted? Yes of course; for uncritical support for a nationalist myth, for failure to acknowledge that those who rule this country are white and british, for a failure to understand they are scapegoating all muslims in their just opposition to Islamism, failure to understand what the British army is doing in the East etc. .. but not like this, not like what UAF does with lies and disinformation
http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=124:who-are-the-edl-exposing-the-myth&catid=42:feature-stories&Itemid=56
http://www.uaf.org.uk/resources/1003londonA5.pdf why? while it is known there are BNP involved with EDL the BNP has regularly attacked the EDL as hooligans, trouble makers and state dupes. The point is clear, that UAF understand that people no longer see EDL as bad enough in their own right so they must be attatched to the BNP.
second they circulated impetuous nonsense regarding the demo that anyone with any knowledge of the EDL know was untrue. this below was circulated wildly in the day before the event when it must have been becoming clear to the UAF office their turnout would be tiny
"To members of NUS BLACK STUDENTS' CAMPAIGN
Bellavia Ribeiro-Addy 04 March at 14:57 Reply
The Met Police have just informed the Unite Against Fascism office that over 1000 EDL members have registered on coaches coming to London for tomorrow morning and they warn of many more making their own way here. This has now made building anti-fascist numbers tomorrow even more urgent.
The police have said the EDL are co-ordinating different groups to meet at Leicester Square 'Wetherspoons', Kings Cross, Ruislip, Vauxhall, Pimlico and other locations and are to descend on Westminister. The police also said that the EDL intend to march to parliment but after plan to split off into groups and 'visit' Finsbury Park and White Chapel - highly populated areas of ethnic minorities and especially Muslims.... See more
If there is not a massive counter-protest to this, enough people to keep the EDL in Westminister, then we will see a return of the violence that occured in Stoke where the EDL attacked mosques, smashed shop windows and burnt out cars.
Please mobilise for this urgently as we cannot allow the EDL to riot and go on what is essentially a pogrom in Muslim areas, as they did in Stoke.
Assemble tomorrow, 11am outside parliament.
In unity, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, NUS Black Students' Officer, NUS Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism Convenor "
So did the Met tell UAF this? It would be interesting if the UAF published the email. Someone somewhere was having someone on. Was it the Met or the UAF making up porkies?
And in the event what happened? 250 maybe 300 EDL and 100 maybe 150 UAF. The frenzied facebook and email demands of UAF and their SWP supporters to re-enact Cable Street against hoards of muslim eating Nazis are no longer starting to look nonsense but finally and utterly finished. IF we were to believe the UAFs frenzied propaganda then a turn out of 100 people is utterly feeble and embaressing.
EDL showed they are as always a collection of ex army, football crews, kids of a mainly loyalist hue. Anti anything what they see as threatening 'their england'; lefties, muslims and nazis. And not a Nazi to be seen and a few young black and scarfed faces. One shouts at the cameras " Am i a Nazi?? Am I a Nazi??" mockingly.
And do they need to be confronted? Yes of course; for uncritical support for a nationalist myth, for failure to acknowledge that those who rule this country are white and british, for a failure to understand they are scapegoating all muslims in their just opposition to Islamism, failure to understand what the British army is doing in the East etc. .. but not like this, not like what UAF does with lies and disinformation
http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=124:who-are-the-edl-exposing-the-myth&catid=42:feature-stories&Itemid=56
Comments
Hide the following 19 comments
Eyewitness Report
05.03.2010 19:45
The EDL marched "successfully" (if you call re-inacting any scene from Planet of the Apes "successful") from Tate Britain to Parliament Square, grunting all the way, but it was obvious they definitely weren't welcome. I heard some pretty disgusting racial abuse from one EDL supporter, there was 1 black and 2 Asian guys on their demo - as opposed to the probably 30% of the Anti-Fascists who were black or Asian. The idiot waving the Hammer and Sickle flag gets the dork of week award for confirming the EDL supporters' world view, and EDL leader and BNP activist Chris Renton stood out like a sore thumb -
I'm looking forward to seeing more photos of the EDL defending Christian culture by relieving themselves on Westminster ABBEY...
LondonTourist
Durruti02
05.03.2010 22:31
durruti02 or is it?
true say
06.03.2010 00:28
We had some lads down at Tate Britain watching/mingling with the EDL (just like EDL did wiv us)- a few phone calls meant we knew numbers, when they were leaving, mood of the crowd etc. We should get this intelligence then ACT ON IT, not use methods that are laid down in advance by SWP Central Office of Protest Tactics, and try and stop the bastards.
As it was it was an embarrassing ramshackle affair of students grinning with pride as the cops loaded them onto buses to ship them out. When the EDL arrived they looked positively confused because there were no anti-fascists to have a pop at- just some bemused looking tourists and despondent looking trade unionists and anarchists etc.
And durrutti is right about the labels- the EDL ain't Nazis or BNP. They're loyalists and they're trying to stir up trouble along cultural lines, not racial lines. They're essentially claiming to 'defend' liberal values of 'free-speech', British judicial system, racial tolerance etc and 'attacking' anti-semitism, homophobia etc. Shouting hackneyed phrases designed to fight the NF in the 70's shows our ideological bankruptcy.
I left feeling despondent- the EDL are well organised and well briefed on the party line. I saw a whole bunch of mainly working-class blokes having a cracking day out with an incredible sense of solidarity. That should be our territory. On our side I saw a bunch of shreaking romantic students with no sense of the task they were achieving. If we're gonna take on EDL and expose them for the rag-tag bunch they are (comprised of people who actually are racists, even if their creed isn't) we need to start thinking about the task at hand, using our eyes (and phones) to take stock of the situation, build new tactics and most of all use our brains!
Also, on a practical level, we need to get involved anyone who will be affected by the rise of the EDL- young muslims. Didn't see anyone from the Mosques there today.
Cable Street it wasn't.
billy bloke
EDL
06.03.2010 02:36
As for "Durrutti" (really?) being "right" about how "the EDL ain't Nazis or BNP, they're loyalists and they're trying to stir up trouble along cultural lines, not racial lines" - like most political analyses that aren't actually NAIVE there are elements of truth in both sides of this debate.
No not all EDL members are BNP but yes a fuck of alot are - including BNP activist Chris Renton, who EDL co-founder Paul Ray confirmed is now (quote) "de-facto COMMANDER of the EDL" and who I photographed on the EDL rally today several times!
Yes the EDL are Loyalist and are trying to stir up trouble along cultural lines, but yes Loyalism and Fascism have always been connected, yes many EDL members are definitely also racist and yes racism ALWAYS contains strong cultural elements - so even people who flatter themselves with names like Durrutti aren't always right, kapisch ;)
LondonTourist
@ LT BB etc
06.03.2010 12:59
but someone asked why disinfo is wrong? well first off no one commented on where those lies came from - was it the OB or was it the SWP?? this is important. lies can be dangerous.
if it was OB then it is worrying, as it asks questions as to what their game was in trying to get UAF to get more people along - did they want trouble??
but if it was SWP/UAF?, trying to get people there i suppose, then it is worse
1) because honesty is revolutionary .. simple. the state lies lies and lies - using disinfo to make things worse or create a scene, a means to and end, is just wrong and ultimately self defeating
but 2) it shows how messed up is their politics. if you have politics that consistently has to lie about the nature of the political reality around you , you will not succeed. simple. UAF will not succeed as they have developed a fantasy or rather they are trying to force what is happening now into a 1930s straitjacket . It is not 1936. It is not Cable Street. As BB says rightly EDL are
"..a whole bunch of mainly working-class blokes having a cracking day out with an incredible sense of solidarity..." And critically s/he adds ".. That should be our territory." Yes, yes and yes again
And back to lies and disinfo again. Where is the evidence Chris Renton is a BNP activist?
Here is a photo of him beneath a placard saying " We are not BNP and we are not racist". it is entirely possible he is being deceitful. But frankly UAF and SWP lie so often it is hard to knwo who to believe. If there was evidence Chris Renton and his brother were BNP activists would we not have seen the evidence?
discussion here from a website it is worth keeping an eye on
The other famous EDL and alleged BNP activist is
"..Davy Cooling, 26, a driver from Luton who helps run the EDL, admits to attending BNP events when he was younger, although he said he is not a member of the party... A few years ago I attended two or three meetings of the BNP in Luton, but I do not agree with their policy of banning black and other ethnic minoirity groups from membership. It doesn't matter what religion or race you are. Everyone is welcome to the EDL.".
So again why the lies?
D02
funny moment
07.03.2010 04:31
"Geert! Geert" they cried....then "We're over here! We're EDL" before gazing after his car like slove struck girls instead of the big fellas that they are. Then they phoned their mates "We saw him! We saw him! We saw Geert!"
Then there's the one who bleaches his hair to look just like his hero.
Aaaw bless!
ANON
Love struck girls...
07.03.2010 07:17
Anyway it just goes to show how much influence someone can have over someone else.
I do think that the EDL are not quite what they are painted to be however and to say that the Black and Asian members are "token" members "paraded" is to insult those people and discredit them with suggesting that they have no intelligence. Maybe you should try talking to them instead? [Calmly]
What I think is that these men ans women are mostly ex soldiers who are sick of the way our armed froces are treated and exploited. They have also come out and said that they are against right wing Islamic fascism as are many Muslims, especially women. If you remember that some of these men have been to Muslim countries where homophobia leads to the death of gay Muslims, where women are beaten and stoned to death...you might understand a bit more.
Our soldiers beg in the streets, in uniform, which is terrible. In some areas of London women are verbally abused by extremists who want Sharia law here. The EDL are fighting over this. They are not racist..that won't wash. You need to speak to them if you want to know what they stand for instead of being reactionary.
Having been to the demo in London the other day I have changed my mind about them. The youth leader Joel Titus is a mixed race guy...how is he a "BNP nazi"? He's not. Please don't say he's "being used"...he's a bit cleverer than that. Try reading the book "Infidel" by the Somalian woman Hirsi Ali and other books she has written.
anon
not waving but drowning
07.03.2010 14:33
"Geert! Geert" they cried....then "We're over here! We're EDL" before gazing after his car like slove struck girls instead of the big fellas that they are. Then they phoned their mates "We saw him! We saw him! We saw Geert!"
Then there's the one who bleaches his hair to look just like his hero.
Aaaw bless!'
oh,and the far left doesn't hero worship, go to Marxism and see if they don't, the EDL is running rings around the left, it has no answers:to see primarily middleclass students opposing hundreds of working class who are clearly angry not just about Muslims,immigration but also the economy, the decay of Uk politics, etc and I believe that many could be won to left wing perspectives says it all. The far left is atrophying, its leaders and cadres borgoisie and cut off from ordinary peoples lives. Where are the campaigns against poverty, the welfare cuts,the housing crisis,the bankers bonuses.Instead they think re-enacting the battles of the 80's will energise thier organisations or are obssessed with events 1000's of miles away., etc as as for the anarchs, well,dwindling numbers innit.
I'm not invoved in left wing politics anymore,but i hated it being dominated and more so led by the middle class who appeared to want to fight for the W/C but clearly patronised them or in the case of many Earth Firsters,Eenviros, RTS's activists(though not all) didn't give a shit about them.
past caring...
no freedom of speech amongst UK left
07.03.2010 22:26
This amounts to a non-freedom of speech amongst those who consider themselves the gatekeepers on the political platform of the left. To reasonably question whether the left should be critical in it's giving of support to those in need of it when they fall short of the standards we expect and demand of ourselves in terms of patriarchy and whether toleration of religious identity should be met with toleration of the good conduct and standards of what we consider to be the hallmarks of a free and open democratic society. Is it not right to question the strictures of a faith in which some of it's followers justify corporal punishment in the home? Is it not ridiculous to at one time extol the virtues of the advance in women's liberation and the same time deny there is any need to discuss whether a particular religious stricture denies core progressive values of equality in it's conception and continued practice and how the left should be open to have a proper free debate on this?
My opinion is that it's better to have an open and honest debate about these issues, than not to have one, because of fear of upsetting a community relied upon for a large base of your political support. In having an open, intelligent debate instead of limiting the parameters of debate from the outset, one can more easily reach a position whereby one might better understand both sides of the argument. The counterbalance to the view just expressed takes account of the excesses of modern western consumerist culture as being a debasing influence on moral ethics in tandem with female liberation to which Islam moral stricture is a refuge in the following quote by Naomi Wolf: “Many Muslim women I spoke with did not feel at all subjugated by the chador or the headscarf. On the contrary, they felt liberated from what they experienced as the intrusive, commodifying, basely sexualizing Western gaze. … Many women said something like this: …’how tiring it can be to be on display all the time. When I wear my headscarf or chador, people relate to me as an individual, not an object; I feel respected.’ This may not be expressed in a traditional Western feminist set of images, but it is a recognizably Western feminist set of feelings.”
chattel discourse
The EDL are not all working class.
08.03.2010 01:32
The EDL are mostly people who are sick of the way soldiers are treated and the fact that the UK have a lack of housing etc. Our soldiers beg in the streets in uniform for heaven sake!They are likely to wipe out the UAF and the BNP...you can bet on that.
This EDL are not haveing a class argument.
As for the two guys chasing after Geert Wilders ..it was funny, the guys were drunk and other EDL people find it amusing too. They are big enough to take a gentle piss take.
anon
Not Nazis My Arse!
08.03.2010 17:15
Obvious Trevor KKKelway has been active in trolling Indymedia with lots of pro-EDL comments.
If you had just come from another planet, reading this playing down of the EDL's racism, you would assume they are Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandella and the D'ai Lai Lama combined.
If you want to see what ordinary EDL members think, check out Facebook, YouTube, and numerous news comments postings where Islamophobia is peppered with racist comments about black people (n*ggers), Asian people (p*kis), and Jews, with talk of wiping out Asian people in acts of genocide. Such widespread EDL hatred is impossible to play down, Mister Kelway, EDL Troll In Chief.
Even the Daily Star acticle features a comment by a BNP member suggesting that there needs to be a violent pre-War Hitler-style far right revolution to put someone like Wilders in-charge of the country.
It's about time Indymedia stopped being politically correct and called the EDL neo-Nazis, neo-Nazis.
If it barks, it's a dog, if it quacks, it's a duck. If it makes racist comments, Hitler salutes, and calls for the expulsion of all Muslims in the UK, or worse still, mass genocide, it's a fuckin' nazi.
As for Wigan Mike, Liam Pinkham, and the quasi-terrorist "British Freedom Fighters", the EDL have refused to speak out condemning these hardcore nazis, and worse still, are allowing them to help organise the Bolton EDL Punch-up.
Then there's the LTE, Lincoln's EDL hardcore white supremacist crew who wholly support Combat18 as well as the BNP and the National Front. No mention from Kelway, Renton or even Joel Titus etc. on banning the fascist crews like the LTE from taking part in EDL events.
Black and Asian passers-by were racially abused by the EDL at the march, so the trolls bigging up the motherfuckin' neo-Nazi EDL know jack shit!
True anti-fascists and anti-racists are not gonna stay at home fiddling whle British cities burn with deadly facsist race riots.
Benj
Don't believe the hype......
08.03.2010 17:27
Funny language from the anti-homophobic EDL.
In the words of Malcolm X and Public Enemy, don't believe the hype!
The EDL has made piss-weak comments about blood and honour, but they allow racists to post pure nazi hate comments on their own website.
Ignore the EDL apologists (Kelway and Trolls), and view the evidence, or else we will all be blinded, and it will be too late to act. By the time Wigan Mike and Pinkham's genocial idol Adolf Hitler was in-charge of Germany, he was much harder to remove. Please bEar this in mind before appeasing the EDL.
The pro-EDL indymedia trolls are the Neville Chamberlains of the indypendent media scene.
Stoke A
EDL - Not Racist, yer Avin' A Laugh!
08.03.2010 17:39
Obviously, the trolls want us to turn the other way while the EDL storm British cities like they did in Stoke, trying to enact Krystallnacht.
Let's all close our eyes for long enough until the EDL are too big to do anything about.
Forget the UAF. I do not want to live in Nazi Germany, so I will be opposing the BNP with fellow Bolton anarchists and squatters, while the keyboard warriors sit at home stroking their male members idly.
Bolton
"A Gentle PIss-Take....."
08.03.2010 17:54
Pauline Flower
does this mean all on indymedia hate whites
08.03.2010 18:04
simon
Uncle Toms Cabin
09.03.2010 00:38
Sorry mate. It's not gonna happen.
Genuine Indymedia antifascists (not trolls) hate nazis and fascists whatever colour they are, including your small handful of Uncle Toms.
You don't have to be white to be full of racist shite!
.
FAO Simon AKA Trevor Kelway
09.03.2010 00:42
Searchlight has not-so-surprising info that Wigan Mike and Liam Pinkham are helping to organise the EDL's Bolton march?
you know who
disinfo continues
09.03.2010 20:09
What does it tell us? That the @ movement and the Left are not confident enough of their own beliefs and need to lie to get people to support them? It's not good.
And then Troll destroya appears with a series of different persona as always! when are you going to stick to one?! you might get more respect to be honest. You know the story about the little boy who cried wolf??
And it is sad because the facts you talk about of Wigan MIke/Liam Pinkham/Lincoln/ etc etc get lost in amongst the facts you leave out and the dogmatism you display and become part of the disinfo babble.
And please note ONLY 150 maybe 200 anti's showed up .. if that was a neo Nazi march then you falied in your scaremongering.
If it is the case that Pinkham is involved with the Bolton demo you need to screengrab and show it. And again as you must know he has been pushed off the EDL forum so you need to mention that too. Honesty is the way forward in defeating fascism, not disinformation.
This subject is too important to reduce to screaming Neo Nazi and KKK every post
D02
Are the EDL Complex?
17.03.2010 19:18
I work in and amongst the muslim community in bradford, and over 15 years, I've never spoken to a parent or a student who wanted their child to be an "exteremist". Certainly, the odd one or two have turned out a bit weird, but then other people join the BNP so it takes all sorts to make a world. If the EDL were truly concerned with "extremeism", they'd be heavily involved with the muslim community, because they are too. And yet, they're not. No-one seems to have contacted the mosques and asked " hwo can we help". Instead, we have the same chanting, bawling thugs as of old.
next, what is an "extremeist"? Anjum chowdry and his 50 or so supporters are, but they'd have trouble filling a double decker bus, so they're hardly any sort of threat. We know who the groups are, and they're no mainstream in the muslim community. what's mainstream in that community is a love of late model BMWs and chilling out with mates. in fact, a lot like any other community, just with less booze.
until the EDl can come up with some sensible policies and start to actually work with other communities, they'll still eb a bunch of marching, quacking sub-fascist idiots. the day I see them down the local mosque organising summer schools or communtiy events, then they'll maybe be a real inclusive organisation.
Stewart E
e-mail:
s_ellinson@hotmail.com