This Saturday June 29th, anti-racists mobilise in London against the Islamophobic EDL's provocation, as they attempt to use Armed Forces Day and a murdered soldier to turn people's sympathy for his family into vitriolic hate against all muslims. Join South London Anti Fascists to stop them.
1978 Altab Ali demonstration against the NF
1978 Altab Ali demonstration against the NF - lollipops
no more blood on the streets - annual Altab Ali rally 2012
I noticed that the UAF are opposing them with a march ending at Altab Ali Park (Adler Street) just down the road from the East London mosque which the EDL *think* they will be going past.
A little history on the park. 1970s: right-wing extremism and racist attacks on the Bengali community in East London had risen to unprecedented levels with the National Front standing 43 candidates in the area. Altab Ali was a young Bengali textile worker who was stabbed to death by a group of racists in an unprovoked attack on 4 May 1978 on Adler Street. An organisation against racist attacks was quickly formed, and ten days after the murder, between four and seven thousand members of the local community gathered in the park and marched against the NF. Anecdotally, I heard that in a quick burst of rain at the start of the demo, the cardboard Anti-Nazi League lollipops melted away, leaving many thousands of angry anti-racists waving sticks. It was a turning point which began a movement that eventually forced the National Front out of the area.
This Saturday's mobilisation against the EDL likewise comes after a period of rising racist attacks - it can also be a turning point that is the beginning of the end of the EDL.
https://www.facebook.com/events/161516007362471/
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/histories/race-equality/71/altab-ali-murdered-in-whitechapel-london.html
http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/news__events/news/march/opening_of_altab_ali_park.aspx
A little history on the park. 1970s: right-wing extremism and racist attacks on the Bengali community in East London had risen to unprecedented levels with the National Front standing 43 candidates in the area. Altab Ali was a young Bengali textile worker who was stabbed to death by a group of racists in an unprovoked attack on 4 May 1978 on Adler Street. An organisation against racist attacks was quickly formed, and ten days after the murder, between four and seven thousand members of the local community gathered in the park and marched against the NF. Anecdotally, I heard that in a quick burst of rain at the start of the demo, the cardboard Anti-Nazi League lollipops melted away, leaving many thousands of angry anti-racists waving sticks. It was a turning point which began a movement that eventually forced the National Front out of the area.
This Saturday's mobilisation against the EDL likewise comes after a period of rising racist attacks - it can also be a turning point that is the beginning of the end of the EDL.
https://www.facebook.com/events/161516007362471/ http://www.runnymedetrust.org/histories/race-equality/71/altab-ali-murdered-in-whitechapel-london.html http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/news__events/news/march/opening_of_altab_ali_park.aspx
Comments
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Build a real Altab Ali Memorial structure in the Park NOW!
28.06.2013 18:33
There were others before him.
Tosir Ali had been murdered in the same Tower Hamlets Borough in the previous decade.
Then in July 1978, weeks after Altab Ali's murder, Ishaque Ali was murdered in hackney.
The 1960s and the 1970s witnessed so many racist murders that some of the victims were not even named. Like the Bangladeshi man who was murdered in Greenwich. To this day, it is impossible to find his name on any accessible record.
Some victims have been remembered more accurately, like Blair Peach, the East London school teacher who was murdered by the Police in Southall.
In Southall itself, racist attacks were very very frequent. As they were in Newham.
So why is it that some of the later UK legislation that was clearly influenced by the
movement against racism is being allowed to be delegitimised?
Like the Human Rights Act?
Like the many versions of the original “race relations” Acts?
A new genuinely anti-racist Movement is needed in Britain today.
A start can be made by getting the focus of the space known as Altab Ali Park back on
opposition to racism and towards a non-racist world and Societal view.
Anyone who is familiar to Altab Ali Park and has been there in the past few days will have noticed that there is no immediately attractive physical structure or symbol that tells you that is is Altab Ali park.
Being a mostly mentally bankrupt agency, the local Council has neglected this fact all throughout the years since then ordinary public gave the space the name in memory of Altab Ali.
Tower Hamlets Council has shown its contempt to factual accuracy by allowing the Bangla language description on a diluted narrative say that Altab Ali had been murdered a year before he actually was.
Given that the most prominent installation on the Park called Altab Ali is about an event that had taken place in Dacca [now Dhaka] in 1952 about getting the then State of Pakistan to recognise the Bangla Language as one of the State Languages of the then Pakistan, how is it that a script written in Bangla in the UK by an apparently Bangla Language-rights-supporting contractor used by Tower Hamlets Council has been allowed to show contemptuous ignorance of the year when the particular martyr [Altab Ali] of the Movement Against racism in Britain was actually murdered?
GetAltabAlifactsright
Joe Marsh junior threatens mosques
28.06.2013 20:12
Ryan
Meant to post this
28.06.2013 20:13
Ryan