(Leeds area) For an Antifascist coalition

Nick Lowles of Searchlight has written about the state support for the EDL protests stemming from the Public Order Unit at the Home Office:

"The problem appears to stem from the Public Order Unit at the Home Office, who have taken it upon themselves to act as the champions of free speech in advising successive Ministers that EDL protests should be allowed to happen. Their analysis and advice has been so shallow that one Minister refused to accept one report they prepared on the EDL and another commented "I learn more about the EDL from Searchlight than I do from our own official briefings"."

He goes on to say that is is for "ideological and short-sighted" reasons that they are doing this, whatever these may be...

"They currently hide behind the legal opinion that static protests cannot be prevented but their real reason is far more ideological and short-sighted."

Bob Pitt picked up on the above over at Islamophobia Watch where he quoted from Leanne Wood, the Plaid Cymru AM for South Wales Central, who said:

"she was "appalled" that South Wales Police had spent money "building a steel fence and kettling in the anti-racist protesters, while the English Defence League were escorted to a pub and then escorted on a march around the city centre"."

Back in March Barry Kade posted EDL blows its cover and reveal its anti-trades union & anti-working class agenda to this site:

"Soon we will all have to fight the massive wave of job cuts, as Labour / Tories /Lib Dems all prepare to implement the big business and billionaires agenda of massive cutbacks. This is the final battle for Britain’s welfare state, a battle between rich and poor, between the working people and the global banking and financial elites, and the EDL are a weapon being made to be used against us. This attack on our schools, hospitals and other public services will be to pay for the crisis caused by the greedy ultra-rich banking elite. Such moves will represent an enormous transfer of wealth away from the working people in the interests of this global elite, with our rights to decent pensions, jobs and services all axed. Future generations will suffer. And in order to do this, the capitalists will need to divide the working class."

"Thats why the EDL, the bosses new tool, in collaboration with the media that the bosses also own, are whipping up their stupid phony ‘islamophobic panic’. They make the bizarre and exaggerated claim that the tiny British Muslim ethnic minority, who make up just 2.7% of our population, are about to take over Britain and impose Sharia law! The EDL’s master plan is to set worker against worker, first dividing us on religious lines. Anti-Muslim hatred is the thin end of the wedge, the easiest prejudice to whip up because of the climate of fear already generated by Blair and Browns bloody and criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. From this start, the EDL’s secret bosses hope the poison of division will spread, tearing the working class apart and leaving it defenceless in the face of the growing offensive by big businesses and global finance …"

"The EDL are bankrolled by millionaire buisinessman Alan Lake to do this dirty job. Lake talks of dominating the streets, and has said: “Football fans are a potential source of support. They are a hoi polloi that gets off their backsides and travels to a city and they are available before and after matches.” These are the puppets he intends to use to promote the right wing agenda of big business against the trades unions and the English working people. Any working class person who supports the EDL is a fool and a class traitor."

"First they came for the Muslims, but I did not speak out because I was not a Muslim. Then they came for the Trades Unionists … "

Divide and rule, the latest encarnation of the Strategy of Tension to boost support the "Clash of Civilizations" and the "War on Terror" — consider that the "arch enemy" of the EDL, ISLAM4UK's backing organisation al-Muhajiroun were sponsored by MI6:

"Omar Bakri and his al-Muhajiroun network had been first hired by MI6 in the late 1990s to recruit British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. His UK underlings even continue to maintain a website for him which curiously remains devoid of his hundreds of most inflammatory statements supporting al-Qaeda terrorism. Despite exiling him to Lebanon, authorities have done nothing to curb his ongoing influence over his UK network, except to protect him from official investigation in connection with the radicalization of that very network. Al-Muhajiroun incubated those involved with Dhiren Barot’s grand plan to bomb targets in the US and Britain, with which the fertilizer and 7/7 plotters were also intimately linked.

And Nafeez Ahmed again

"al-Muhajiroun, which is supposed to be a proscribed organization. It now turns out that it was never proscribed - rather, its successor groups were banned, and now that its members are mobilizing under the banner of 'Islam4UK', they're free to run around mouthing the usual inflammatory drivel, which often includes inciting to violence and terrorism.

According to senior government and intelligence officials, at the time of al-Muhajiroun’s founding in 1996, the network was mobilized by MI6 to send British Muslims to Kosovo – coinciding with British and American military assistance to the Kosovan Albanians. This has been confirmed for instance by John Loftus, former US Justice Department official; as well as by former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in his memoirs.

This was part of a general post-Cold War strategy of co-opting Islamist extremist and terrorist networks to exert influence in Central Asia, the Middle East and beyond.

nice1 chris, i think your rigth but organising against EDL and islam4uk is part of the of the same resistance to the crisis

state funded or not, the EDL running through our towns is detrimental and will lead to violence, polarisation and all the other shit. I don't have to explain this to anyone who's seen them at their demos. This excuse of "state funded" seems to be shouted over and over by those too scared to oppose the EDL.

Islam 4 UK are, in my opinion just as much the enemy and we have no interest in defending them. When they start running riot through our streets, we'll organise against them too. I don't feel like the UAF leadership has been effective in highlighting this and they have been too much in bed with reactionary dickheads. The EDL's presence, however doesn't serve to combat radical Islam, but instead divides communities, giving credibility to the voice of a minority of nutters (see report on whitechapel earlier today from someone in London for an example).

The analysis above is interesting, but take it with a pinch of salt because Al-Muhajiroun were NOT, for instance, founded in 1996. According to Wikipedia (OK, not necessarily the most authoritative source, but) "Bakri founded Al-Muhajiroun in Mecca, Saudi Arabia on 3 March 1983". Al-Muhajiroun is a splinter of the notorious Hizb ut-Tahrir group, founded in 1953 by Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, a follower of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni - who recruited Muslims to fight for the brutal SS Handschar Division during WW2 and who produced Arabic language broadcasts for the Nazis. HT were particularly active (though not necessarily actually popular) in Tooting when I lived there and to describe these people as nut-cases would be a serious understatement.

Don't get me wrong, dozens of times more Muslims fought for Britain against Hitler during WW2 than fought for the Nazis, but still Anti-Fascists MUST remember that fringe elements like Al-Muhajioroun, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and their Islam4UK and Muslims Against Crusaders fronts are the latest incarnation of a hard-core and very violent Fascist movement which collaborated with the Nazis in WW2. If the EDL and HT / Al-Maj succeed in beating 7 shades of Shaitan out of each other then to be honest I for one won't be shedding any tears.

To put all this perspective there's an interesting You Tube called "Awami Bakshali attack on London BNP meeting" (which does exactly what it says on the tin), and according to Wikipedia "The Bangladesh Awami League... is the mainstream center-left, SECULAR political party in Bangladesh". Bangladesh's national poet is an anti-extremist Muslim called Kazi Nazrul Islam (pronounced Kobi Nazrul) who was a avowed Anti-Fascist, sometimes referred to as "the Anarchist poet", whose work is celebrated in the ADF track "Rebel Warrior" (as used in the You Tube video "Antifa Smash Nazis in Prague") and by the Kazi Nazrul Centre off Brick Lane, near the scene of the recent EDL trouble.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3giHaAJco_I

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Awami_League

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazi_Nazrul_Islam

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m24hjw-DXNg

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yinhIK9FyfQ

Well done people, much better to see people building alternatives than complaining that there are none. Will try to make it up on the day with full support.

"If the EDL and HT / Al-Maj succeed in beating 7 shades of Shaitan out of each other then to be honest I for one won't be shedding any tears."

couldn't agree more. Unfortunately we can't put them all into a giant cage away from the rest of us and screen it on-line - therefore we get arseholes walking down our streets attacking random asian people as if they're islamists and creating exactly the kind of division that they complain about.

i think WAGs recent mobilisation was a good example of how to operate in this situation. EDL cancelled their match so the full 'defence' mobilisation/action never happened, but i think for Bradford the idea should be the same.

Organise to defend bradford against outside interefernce. There are issues across the board in Bradford communities as in all, and EDL should be told ( in NO uncertain tems) not to interfere ( to fuck off )

. Physical defence should be organised to stop confrontation and attacks by EDL on Muslim areas but imho EDL should not be attacked as like everything THEY do, this would be counterproductive. We must be against the Islamists and the EDL loyalists but friends to the kids/people who are attracted to either/both sides. Above all if these EDL events are provocations ( which seems likely regardless of their protestations) then we must do all we can to stop race riots.

The strength of the EDL comes from the fact they will travel. They can therefore guarantee at least a few hundred wherever they go.

In contrast, we only seem to want to build a militant response when it's in our own back yard.

If we are serious about building a strong anti-fascist opposition, we need to have a strong travelling force too.

Let's see a good militant force out against the EDL in Wembley on the 26th June, and in Dudley on the 17th July.

af sure EDL travel in numbers but you are entirely wrong to think replicating there strategy will bring us success. the divisive message of the EDL will not be beaten by entering into their circus spectacle but by building local unity against bigotry and division by race/religion etc

What mobiliastion? Their mobilisation was to endorse a press release that had faked signatures attached to it. [Unity Platform Against Racism and Fascism]. Then they handed out leaflets and issued statements that led to them being chased by a gang of what they said are 30 masked Asian youths who said they are Islamophobic. WAG really messed it up in Whitechapel this time. They are mostly misguided middle class University educated anarchists who talk about class war on behalf of the poor who find them sweet but amusing.
WAG are very sweet people and probably mean well and think that they are doing the right thing but I think they should stick to campaigns about allotments.

Anon dont talk shit. What you have claimed is absolute fantasy. The only person who has ever claimed we are Isalmophobic...is you!
The 4 people (not Wag but mates) attacked by an a group of asian lads were randomly targeted in the week before the march as tensions were hightened in the area with the appearence of the EDL at whitechapel tube. One of the attacked was wearing a fuck fascism T-shirt and had a green mohican...hardly EDL attire.There was absolutely no sense in which Wag was being targeted. You attempt to equate two completely seperate events, this attack and the WAg activities on day of the anti-edl action in whitechapel, to create a narrative that fits how you would like events to have turned out. IN OTHER WORDS YOU ARE LYING!
When we were chatting with youths ON THE DAY outside and around the Mosque we experienced no ill feeling and word soon got passed around that it wasnt the EDL attacked the week before. It seems you have lost the political argument surrounding the last few weeks and can only resort to name calling.

Is it relevant that I've worked in heavy industry since leaving school whilst some of Wag have indeed been to university with some mature students amongst them? Or is it more relevant that I have a decent analysis on events in my local area. In fact are you saying that working class kids don't go to uni these days? I think you will find a lot have and are pissed off and ven politicised by the experience. We should embrace them as we do other members of the working class.
If you are the same anon who has been posting crap all over the internet, please stop trolling.

And allotments? WTF??????

Who the fuck would want to work with this shower of shite? They couldn't even keep 4 EDL members out of their own meeting. They're even more clueless than the UAF. Go to Bradford with them?! I'd rather go with my 92 year-old granny!