Anyone who thought the question of the EDL protest in Tower Hamlets had simply vanished the moment Home Secretary Theresa May announced a ban last week is in cuckoo land.
The following email has just been sent out by the Respect party to its supporters (it makes reference to an email from Fozol Miah – he’s a Respect councillor in Spitalfields).
New meeting place for anti-EDL protest in Tower Hamlets.
Further to the recent email from Fozol Miah about the EDL in Tower Hamlets, the meeting place for the anti-EDL protest has now been changed to Whitechapel.
The new assembly point and time is 11am, corner of Vallance Road and Whitechapel Road, London E1.
Further details from http://uaf.org.uk/2011/08/new-whitechapel-assembly-point-for-3-sept-anti-edl-demo/
Although it has been banned from marching, the EDL has confirmed it still intends to turn up in Tower Hamlets for a “static protest”.
The Home Secretary’s ban, of course, referred to all marches through Tower Hamlets and four other boroughs. It means that Unite Against Fascism is also banned from marching.
However, UAF, on its website, is still issuing a rallying call for the largest possible turnout on Saturday and it many hope and probably intend to march. UAF has this petition:
Right to march against racist EDL
We, the undersigned, welcome the banning of the racist English Defence League’s march through Tower Hamlets.
However, we believe the headlines claiming the EDL have been ‘banned’ from Tower Hamlets are misleading. The EDL will still be holding a static protest in the borough.
We are also appalled to discover that the home secretary, Theresa May, has agreed to the Metropolitan Police’s application for a blanket ban on ALL marches across five London boroughs – Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest – and the City of London for 30 days.
This is a huge attack on everyone’s civil liberties and prevents people’s rights to oppose racism.
We have the democratic right to peacefully march through Tower Hamlets on 3 September to show unity of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Black, Asian and LGBT communities, trade unions and all those against fascism and for freedom, and to voice opposition to the EDL’s attempts to divide us.
Our legal advice says there is no law that says if one march has been banned, all marches in that area must be banned.
It is our human right to peacefully march in Tower Hamlets.
We therefore support the joint Unite Against Fascism / United East End protest on Saturday 3 September.
I’ve just spoken to the Metropolitan Police who told me that anyone who marches on Saturday will be “liable to arrest” under Section 13 of the Public Order Act. The protests will be “policed accordingly” in terms of numbers and officers will use “discretion” in deciding what constitutes a march.
It’s looking like a recipe for disaster on Saturday.
UPDATE – 6.45pm
The Press Association reports that Theresa May has now extended the ban to the City of London. I guess they’ve just realised how close Tower Hamlets is to the City..
Trial by Jeory 
That ‘petition’ from the UAF is so appallingly badly written it’s risible. And the hypocrisy of criticising the EDL – who sound like they are going to comply with the ban – while themselves calling for a march in defiance of the Home Secretary’s order, is shameful.
But then, aren’t those the hallmarks of so much stuff from UAF/IFE/Rahman et al; incoherent logic, blatent hypocrisy and poor command of the English language.
I have little time for the EDL, but behaviour like this from the UAF makes me warm to them.
Tim
Well why not join them at Sainsbury’s car park near the waste bins.
Having contacted Sainsburys HQ to explain exactly why I will NOT be shopping at the Sainsburys Whitechapel store as I had originally planned on Saturday, I got their perspective on the situation.
The official line from Sainsbury’s is
1) There will be no assembly point on their property – for any group. Rumours to the contrary are completely untrue.
2) Their security firm will be bringing in extra people on 3rd to protect both store, car park and customers
3) Sainsbury’s is working very closely with the Borough Police and Scotland Yard with a view to preventing public disorder by whoever.
IMO any ‘static assembly’ by “whoever” on or near a major road junction AND one of the major supermarkets in the borough AND one of the major streets markets is also an extraordinarily bad idea – and I hope that this is also just another bad rumour!
Such notions just serve to mix up the innocent public – who have got no idea any of this is going on – with the potential for troublemakers to kick off.
Right now anybody who is saying that any of the ‘static assemblies’ will be a peaceful demonstration automatically gets added to my list of people who are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Have people forgotten so quickly that it was a peaceful static demonstration which deteriorated into three days and nights of rioting last month?
Let’s just hope we won’t be having a formal enquiry somewhere down the line as to which bright spark forgot to factor in the fact that the public might get hurt when deciding where people can assemble.
In all of this I am quite appalled at the extent to which the ordinary people of Tower Hamlets are being totally forgotten by those who like to posture and pontificate.
Anybody who was genuinely concerned about all the local people living in Tower Hamlets would be directing all “assemblies” to a nice quiet patch of the borough where they won’t get mixed up with the population trying to go peacefully about its normal business.
Oh dear, looks like Sainsbury’s dustbins are too good for the EDL and their sympathisers…
http://edlnews.co.uk/edl-news/edl-tower-hamlets-updates
Good to see that somebody finally saw sense and that the demonstration was moved away from Sainsbury’s.
I still think any static demonstration should be well away from the public who are unaware of what is happening.
There are plenty of open spaces in the borough which can
* Accommodate large numbers of people
* Avoid non-stop encounters with traffic and pedestrians
* Avoid the massive disruption to traffic and people getting about the borough which happened on Saturday.
[…] group has protested that the blanket marching ban is against people’s freedoms. Please see here all details of the problems that we can anticipate for the coming […]
Here here Tim! I don’t know about warming to the EDL though. What the SWP front UAF want is a confrontation which degenerates into violence so that they can claim that they, and only they, are confronting fascism.
These deluded little nobodies, some of whom have addresses in Tower Hamlets but don’t actually seem to live there, are living out fantasies of the defense of Madrid and Cable St. It is street theatre en absurdum extremis if you will forgive my dog latin.
What is important to this bunch of opportunistic losers is selling the paper and recruiting members to pay their membership fees which fund the lifestyles of the full timers. I had thought that after the collapse of the Respect project they would have given up but, it seems, you can;t keep a good opportunist down.
Anyone who knows Tower Hamlets will be aware that where they are proposing to assemble is a busy junction which on Saturday is also a street market. There is simply nowhere to assemble more than a handfull of people without blocking the pavement or one of the busiest main roads in and out of central London.
Private Eye’s Sid and Doris Bonkers couldn’t have organised it more badly. Oh I don’t know though. Possibly they could have if assisted by Tarique Ali Baba and the Fourty Thieves of Neasden with a little input from Citizen Smith. The extreme left are a joke but when there is the possibility of violent disorder with injuries and arrests they have become a bad joke.
I agree Tim. A case of double standards.
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