About this time two years ago, I wrote this:
My own view, as outlined here, is that the EDL should be banned as an organisation. I’ve seen them for myself on marches and they’re little more than a bunch of football hooligans who give both football and free speech a bad name. They go out to provoke and they glory in trying to outwit the likes of Anjem Choudary and the police when it comes to the former’s demonstrations.
So the Met’s decision yesterday to ask Theresa May to ban the EDL marching through Tower Hamlets last week is a good thing. Well done to Mayor Lutfur Rahman and all the other politicians and grass roots activists who helped persuade Scotland Yard. It was an easy win-win for Lutfur, but he grabbed the opportunity.
Plus ca change.
Credit must again go to Mayor Lutfur and his advisers for seizing yet another gift on a plate from the thickies of the EDL. How he must secretly love them.
And how his people must be laughing at Labour on this: he’s run rings around them.
Last year, Labour’s then group leader Josh Peck and many of his councillors decided to abstain from attending the counter-EDL rally. Josh’s view was that the UAF (Unite Against Fascism) was staging a demo as a precursor to a punch-up with the EDL. As it happens, he was right on that point of fact. But politically, even some of his allies think that was a mistake.
I’m told John Biggs thinks it was an error, which is why he was there in Altab Ali Park yesterday. Yet even under his leadership, Labour has allowed itself to be the object of ridicule and on the back foot. Their long-planned summer barbecue scheduled for yesterday was unfortunate timing, but how anyone failed to spot much earlier that it would be politically problematic is really quite odd.
If they are to beat Lutfur next May, they need to sharpen up their PR act big time…and quickly.
But let’s look at Lutfur’s tactics. His strategy for more than three years now has been to present himself to the Bengali community (via the press, satellite Bangladeshi TV channels and The Guardian) as the martyred Muslim victim of an evil racist plot by the Right-wing media, the institutionally racist decision-making bodies of Labour’s NEC and the anti-Muslim Peter Golds-led Tower Hamlets Tory party.
So when the English Defence League threaten to march this way, he becomes not just the martyr but also the hero leader: a modern-day Boudicca of the East End (in a Mercedes, not a chariot). He’s been telling his friendly uncritical TV channels (including the ones he now so generously helps to fund with council money) that it’s all Labour’s fault the EDL are coming.
He tells them that Andrew Gilligan’s Channel 4 Dispatches programme in March 2010 (disclosure: I appeared in it) was the main inspiration for the EDL. He says because Labour also played a part in that documentary (Jim Fitzpatrick was another interviewee), and because the accusations he was linked to Islamic fundamentalism were a big factor in his expulsion from Labour in summer 2010), Labour is thus responsible for the arrival of Stella-swigging monsters on the borough’s doorstep.
He then gleefully adds: “Look at what Labour are doing to stop them coming: they’re having a barbecue!” He has skewered them.
A classier group of politicians would then have let their actions do the talking; if you have the moral high ground, keep quiet and stay there. But Lutfur’s people can’t help themselves: they say any political leader not at yesterday’s rally cannot be in favour of Lutfur’s One Tower Hamlets mantra. The irony of this rally fascism is undoubtedly lost on them.
So where were the borough’s two MPs yesterday, they ask? Where was Peter Golds? I had a Twitter conversation about this with Lutfurite councillor Kabir Ahmed this morning.
@TedJeory what do you think about Tory Cllrs not attending today? Are you gonna hold Golds and gang to account?
— Kabir Ahmed (@CllrKabirAhmed) September 7, 2013
There seemed to be some underlying implication that Peter is not as opposed to the EDL and fascism as Kabir is. Which given the sufferings of Peter’s family in the Holocaust is more than unfortunate. I then asked Kabir if he condemned the homophobic and anti-Semitic abuse that I’ve witnessed aimed at Peter by Lutfur’s supporters in the council chamber.
He was among the first Tower Hamlets councillors to sign the Hope not Hate pledge, he told me; he was a Hope not Hate champion…but repeatedly, Kabir refused to condemn those specific incidents by his own supporters. Such leadership.
There were probably other factors in the decision by some to stay away yesterday. They probably didn’t want to be associated with two of the rally’s predominant contingents: those strange bed-fellows, the Socialist Workers’ Party and the Islamic Forum of Europe.
I’m told the IFE had a 1,000 stewards out on the streets of Whitechapel yesterday. They were everywhere, even guarding the main stage in Altab Ali Park where speakers couldn’t help talking about the need not to strike Syria (the EDL would have applauded that). It was also the same stage onto which John Biggs was apparently initially declined entry.
I also saw a couple of IFE stewards standing guard opposite the Yummy Yummy sweet shop in New Road. I thought that might have been a coincidence, but it probably wasn’t. That sweet shop was no doubt highlighted as a potential EDL target…because, as I revealed earlier this year, it’s run by Anjem Choudary and his crowd.
You see, although the East London Mosque hasn’t exactly helped itself by failing to prevent homophobic and hate-fuelled sermons from the likes of Anwar al-Awlaki in the past, Anjem is the EDL’s biggest enemy. They follow him and his helpers everywhere. They’re on the same intellectual level.
Wouldn’t it be nice to see the United East End umbrella group of community groups etc etc take a stance on Anjem’s presence in the borough? Perhaps Lutfur and Kabir should organise a rally against him and his gang of terror groupies. I doubt we’d ever see the EDL again if he did that.
(And by the way, I hear that the Black Bloc anti-fascist group, many of whose members were arrested trying to attack the EDL yesterday, have started taking an interest in the Islamofascist tendencies of some Jamaat e Islami groups in the borough: that could be very interesting…).
Its really depressing.
The Labour rabble, full of alleged ‘working class’ values, just isn’t up to the job of politically representing normal people. Ditto the Tories. Yet at election times they want your vote so they can be elected and then feel important and superior.
Instead a skilled immigrant is, and has been for years, using his Labourite training to seize and retain political control. He masters and manipulates non-speakers of English, the poorly educated and subservient immigrants from the former British Empire.
Add rent-a-mob and street-brawls-r-us plus a generous helping of fanatics and one of the biggest messes sprawls across the streets of Tower Hamlets.
Labour want power but don’t know the meaning of responsibility and community leadership. The Tories are damaged by their Wealth Party image and their leaders educated in places like Eton.
‘Une grande coalition’ is needed but no one has the brains, ability, inspiration and leadership to make it work. The local political failures deserve their pending defeats. Meanwhile the public continue to get a bad deal from their crap local council.
Pardon me, where is all the claimed democracy gone? Its no where in sight.
Never mind, lets continue giving votes to people who can’t read and write.
Who is proud of this ffffing mess ? Not me.
Has Cllr. Kabir Ahmed considered that Tower Hamlets Conservative Councillors might not wish to be associated with left-wing anti-democratic scum like the SWP and UAF…….and Cllr. Ahmed?
Well hopefully Labour will sharpen up its act when they get all their councillor candidates in place and clear some of the dead wood out of group. Would make a good discussion topic I think. The deadline is today at 5:30pm.
I make no comment,
Christopher Hitchens wrote about the similarity between Islamism and Fascism…
“Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. (“Death to the intellect! Long live death!” as Gen. Francisco Franco’s sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined “humiliations” and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual “deviance”—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.
Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately the way in which al-Qaida has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and green movements.
There isn’t a perfect congruence. Historically, fascism laid great emphasis on glorifying the nation-state and the corporate structure. There isn’t much of a corporate structure in the Muslim world, where the conditions often approximate more nearly to feudalism than capitalism, but Bin Laden’s own business conglomerate is, among other things, a rogue multinational corporation with some links to finance-capital. As to the nation-state, al-Qaida’s demand is that countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia be dissolved into one great revived caliphate, but doesn’t this have points of resemblance with the mad scheme of a “Greater Germany” or with Mussolini’s fantasy of a revived Roman empire?”
Hitchens, C., ‘Defending IslamofascismIt’s a valid term. Here’s why’, Slate, 22.10.07
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2007/10/defending_islamofascism.html
Very interesting, thanks for the link GM. He makes no mention of the clear parallels between Kafir and Untermensch, which have long occurred to me to be an obvious link between the two.
Tim.
Trialbyjeory
The EDL are the most vilified group since England stopped hanging witches.
I am not a member and never will be (I’m 74) but I’ve been watching them for a couple of years now. I live in Whitechapel and I remember the last time I saw them here how it was the UAF/SWP that deliberately provoked them, with no protection from the police. They certainly did nothing to help a woman who was knocked to the ground and kicked by UAF middle class thugs at the Whitechapel station bus stop. There were injured EDL members but I didn’t see any of the white and Muslim protesters bleeding.
Just because some of them look tough doesn’t mean they start the fights. YouTube evidence, such as it is, is there to see who seems to be starting the trouble. They also happen to be the only protest group I am aware of who are not afraid of marching in Islam’s heartlands.
You insult these people because they have shaven heads, and look like football hooligans. That’s no different from me insulting blacks because they have shaven heads and look like drug dealers.
The EDL have every bit as much right to protest against the Islamisation of whole areas of our cities, and they aren’t funded with taxpayer’s money like the UAF are.
Shame on you, just whose side are you on?
Have to say, Ian makes good points about the EDL. They are a rabble, and an uncouth one at that, but they deserve their airtime as much as anyone else. Hating them seems to be the modern “PC” thing to do, but their leader Tommy Robinson is no fool and is worth listening to. (Yes, he makes a fool of himself in other ways.)
Everyone who says that the EDL is a hateful organisation and shouldn’t exist should bear in mind that without the likes of Rahman and the ‘Muslim Community’ the EDL [b]wouldn’t[/b] exist.
Tim.
Without the existence of the Muslim community, the EDL wouldn’t exist.
By your logic, without the existence of the Jewish community, the Nazis wouldn’t have existed.
Disgusting.
No, OldFord, you’re wrong. The National Socialist German Workers Party existed from 1920 and had it’s roots much deeper in history. It most certainly didn’t appear as a direct result of any vast Jewish influx into Germany – indeed Hitler appealed directly to unemployed Jews to become chancellor and then Fuhrer in the 1930’s, and only turned against them later on.
The EDL came about in around 2010 as a direct opposition to Islamism, Shariah Law and Islamic Extremism, as is written in (what passes for) it’s articles of association. To say that without these things the EDL wouldn’t exist is an undisputable fact
The two situations have no similarity at all, and your knee-jerk comparison of the two is typical of the uninformed vilification that Ian McKenna speaks of.
Tim.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good old fashioned smear, eh oldford1?
‘EDL Mission Statement’ page 1, paragraph 1, line 1-7 (read it yourself)
“The English Defence League (EDL) is a human rights organisation that was founded in the wake of the shocking actions of a small group of Muslim extremists who, at a homecoming parade in Luton, openly mocked the sacrifices of our service personnel without any fear of censure [in March 2009]. Although these actions were certainly those of a minority, we believe that they reflect other forms of religiously-inspired intolerance and barbarity that are thriving amongst certain sections of the Muslim population in Britain”
Source: http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/mission-statement/
I think to say that “without the Muslim community” the EDL wouldn’t exist is taking it too far. It was that particular, notorious demonstration in Luton by those pernicious islamofascists ‘Al-Muhajiroun’ in March 2009 in front of homecoming troops which was the direct cause of the EDL being formed.
For the record, the NSDAP was formed in Munich in 1918 by Anton Drexler. Drexler was opposed to the Treaty of Versaille (1918). He also denounced international capital as being dominated by Jews who profited from the war (very much like the SWP and The Guardian newspaper, which I suppose you read, does in England).
The Jews did absolutely nothing to provoke Nazism but, my God, the Islamists through their fascism, their Bengali supremacism, their cultural imperialism, can’t help but be provocative in Tower Hamlets.
I have looked it up and you are quite right Tim; the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) was formed in 1920 after Hitler had resigned from the DAP, which was originally founded by Drexler in 1918).
What I think needs to be understood (by the ostriches) about the EDL is that (despite their hopes) those 500 yobs who participated in this EDL march only represent a minuscule fraction of EDL support. The biggest EDL rally had about 3,000 people on it whereas over 158,000 individuals have the nerve to “like” the EDL Facebook page and probably double that would like to “like” that page if they were confident there would be no repercussions attached to them doing so – so the whole organisation cannot be judged by the very small proportion of EDL supporters who are actually prepared to demonstrate. Because of the violence around such demonstrations the people seen at EDL demonstrations are mainly a hardcore of racist skinheads and football hooligans with “nothing to lose” and unperturbed by the prospect of violence usually initiated by the UAF.
As to the accusation that the EDL are “fascists” then comparing what the EDL leadership and their website actually say with typical fascist political ideas is a better indication of understanding what the EDL (and its 158,000 “likers”) are all about than a critical assessment of the haircuts of the few.
According to their website the EDL do not seem to want to deliver a social transformation or revolution in this country. As to whether they want to see a “national rebirth” and a political and moral renaissance there is not a hint of it. They also do not want a restored British Empire and are not even particularly fussed about potential Scottish independence. What is repeatedly made clear is that they are ardent supporters of individual freedoms and of democracy. Many of them are royalists (as most people in the UK are) and have affection for traditional power structures – they do not want to destroy them. Regarding regimentation and conformity to ideology, well, clearly some people appear at rallies wearing EDL t-shirts but there are no EDL training/indoctrination courses, edicts of faith, vows, oaths, youth movements or labour movements so far as anyone knows. Indeed, from what I have read the EDL has a lot of problems dealing with internal division. They also do not appear to be in favour of a purifying war which would bind the people to the state.
The only aspect of the EDL remotely fascistic is the fact they are led by a ‘charismatic leader’. But even Tommy Robinson’s greatest admirers are far from being participants in a “personality cult”. Anyone with any knowledge of political theory knows that the EDL are not “fascists”. Some of them, particularly those on demos, maintain racial prejudices but neither they nor their organisation could be considered to be “fascists”.
Now think for a moment about what sort of society the egg that is the IFE and the sperm that is the SWP (currently gestating in the politically-correct vagina that is the UAF) want and how they propose to get there…. that is far closer to genuine fascism.
It is also worthy of note that of the 300 people arrested during that day some 299 were from groups there ostensibly to oppose the EDL march. Fourteen of whom were arrested for violent disorder whilst trying to break through police cordons to get at the EDL (one of whom was a fifteen year-old reported to have been armed with a weapon of some sort) and the other 285 were part of a large group of “anti-capitalists” and anarchists who were kettled on Minories for breaching conditions imposed on the UAF demo by the police.
Ted, I think you have made some very pertinent and, may I say, brave points in this posting. They are brave because any discussion of this topic is fraught with danger and can very easily lead to accusations of secret membership of the Waffen SS unless the EDL are repeatedly denounced with the same panic and hysteria as found at a 12th Century blasphemy trial. It is fair to say that any expressed scepticism of “multiculturalism” and mass migration (which between 1998 and 2007 oversaw an historically unprecedented demographic change in this country) has to be couched in such a cryptic way that a tabloid horoscope would often appear more candid.
However, in my view your conclusions are pleasingly provocative and right on the money.
Lutfur is indeed running rings around Labour but he would not be able to run such rings were the turnout in local elections better. Anyone who has gone canvassing for Labour will know that most non-Bangladeshi households don’t vote anymore. And the reason why they don’t vote can only be put down to the way Labour has run Tower Hamlets over the past thirty years. John Biggs (together with Michael Keith and Denise Jones) would know more about how Labour lost the support of working-class white people in the East End than almost any other alive today
I think that John Biggs committed a greater error yesterday by going to that rally than by staying away. His presence there amidst the Islamo-fascists, anti-capitalists and anarchists actually diminished him in the eyes of the people whose votes he needs and did nothing to increase his support amongst the people whose votes he went there trying to get. He had to stand there looking weak whilst Ohid Ahmed stridently told the crowd that they should thank Lutfur and Lutfur alone, for saving “our community”. I heard Ohid also say how those who are “against diversity” should “fear our community” and other similarly heart-warming sentiments in what was basically an election-rally for the mayor.
Not far from these scenes were groups of drug-fuelled UAF rent-a-mob hooligans jumping up and down and insulting the police and several mobs of men with “ostentatious beards” patrolled Middlesex Street as a vigilante patrol challenging anyone they thought looked “suspicious” presumably using the racial profiling techniques which I thought they were so against…
The ‘Grave Maurice’ was a pub just a few doors west of Whitechapel station.
It was wrecked by Muslims who went on the rampage in the mid nineties. It was a quiet, very civilised pub with classical background music. A perfect place for crossword addicts and subdued conversation.
It closed a few years ago, like most of the pubs in this Muslim colony. There are very few left now.
“It was also the same stage onto which John Biggs was apparently declined entry.”
I was there when John Biggs joined the platform in Altab Ali park and spoke to the masses.
Of course, the Met’s advice to people today was to stay away from the EDL march, so what does Kabir Ahmed’s criticism of the Tories boil down to? That, unlike him, Lutfur, and John Biggs, the Tories did not ignore police advice? That unlike him, Lutfur, and John Biggs, the Tories did not go out of their way to jeer at and try and provoke a bunch of beer-swilling, tattooed, football-shirted hooligans? Perhaps the Tories have better ways to fill their Saturdays?
Presumably Cllr Golds was just following the example of bold resistance to bigotry and solidarity with a minority laid-out so admirably by Mayor Rahman, UAF, Hope Not Hate and others in the wake of the Gay Free Zone campaign – i.e. staying at home.
Meanwhile the ‘moderate’ East London Mosque is guarding the shop run by Anjem Choudary himself. Fancy that.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to see the United East End umbrella group of community groups etc etc take a stance on Anjem’s presence in the borough?”
You are kidding. ‘Community groups’ in London can’t get enough of homophobes and anti-semites (sorry, ‘anti-zionists’).
Mayor Rahman didn’t ‘stay at home’ after the disgusting ‘gay free zone’ stunt. He spoke at the East London Gay Pride parade.
Do you think he’d organise a rally against Anjem Choudary’s mugs in LBTH? Would be a clever move, no?
There is this really eerie silence emanating from oldford1.
It speaks volumes about the masochism and old fashioned denial endemic in parts of the left. Any white person who questions the rate of immigration or aspects of a foreign ideology is automatically denounced as a nazi but when the same righteous man is presented with actual, real fascism, promoting racial supremacy, violence and separation he is unable to condemn it because of the apparently mesmerising qualities of brown faces. Is it denial, ignorance or just plain treachery?
Black bloc is not a group, Ted – it’s a tactic.
Apologies. Care to expand on the tactics re Islamofascism?
“I hear that the Black Bloc anti-fascist group, many of whose members were arrested trying to attack the EDL yesterday, have started taking an interest in the Islamofascist tendencies of some Jamaat e Islami groups in the borough: that could be very interesting…”
A few years ago I got into a discussion with a member of Whitechapel Anarchist Group. He told me they’d been distributing their newspaper around Brick Lane for years. I asked them if they were opposed to all religion, and he agreed they were. I then asked him: in all those years of selling your anarchist newspaper, how many articles criticising islam had there been? “Not one”, came the reply. I asked him why, when his anarchist group was surrounded by the growing evidence of religious domination in that area, islam had been exempt from criticism. He had no answer. A few months later, Whitechapel Anarchist Group shut down. A few months after that, the Anarchist bookshop in Aldgate was torched.
“Black Bloc” will do nothing. These middle-class chumps think they are back in the 1930s fighting Mosley, Hitler and Mussolini. If they knew anything about fascism, they would know that the UAF are far closer to a fascist organisation than the EDL. They’d also know that muslims across the Middle East supported Hitler (after WW2 Britain wanted to try the Grand Mufti at Nuremberg, that’s how much of a Nazi he was).
It doesn’t bother the Left in Britain that major figures from Jamaat e Islaami have been convicted for genocide, and that devout, major figures from East London Mosque, Islamic Forum of Europe, and the Muslim Council of Britain are also wanted for genocide. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/bangladesh/10032961/British-Muslim-leader-Chowdhury-Mueen-Uddin-indicted-for-genocide-and-crimes-against-humanity.html
The Left will stand by whilst the last 3 gay bars are driven out of Tower Hamlets. When I lived in Hackney in the late 1980s, Tower Hamlets had as many gay bars as Soho. Now almost all gone. I have spoken to the manager of one of those bars, who says they come under frequent attack from gangs of muslims. That’s diversity for you.
Actually the black bloc wasn’t trying to attack the EDL – it was trying to block Tower Bridge from the opposite end to where the EDL were meeting to prevent them crossing it into Tower Hamlets. An example of peaceful direct action, and akin to the Cable Street demonstrations of 1936. Just because the UAF are happy to stand in a park miles from the racists pretending they are stopping them, doesn’t mean that all other alternatives are violent. Please do your research before you smear activists with whatever suppositions you hold. Thanks.
What are your thoughts re Islamofascism? How is being confronted in Tower Hamlets by UAF and BB?
Hi Ted,
I know from conversations that some people around the Antifascist Network (who may or may not participate in the black bloc – as Peter says that’s merely a tactic) are well aware of the local situation and the fact that the East London Mosque is run by the heirs of Jamaati Islam, which many would define as fascist.
People around WAG know about it in 2010 and in fact their name was put to the anti Jamaat/IFE statement put out by some secular Bengalis, “Against fascism in all its colours”. They even wrote a pamphlet all about the 2010 mobilisation that you can find here http://whitechapelanarchistgroup.wordpress.com/whitechapel-united-against-division/. They wrote very critically of the UAF/UEE not just for its tactics but for its alliance with the the Islamic Right at the ELM and its promotion of Lutfur Rahman.
Knowng about it and doing something about it are two different things.It’s not so easy to pose an opposition to the EDL that doesn’t also strengthen the IFE/ELM, but that’s what they attempted to do.
The AFN is not WAG, and their main interest seems to be in taking away the hegemony of the UAF in antifascism locally: that can only be a good thing. As far as I know in the mobilisation for 7 September they didn’t directly deal with the issues around the ELM, I did see they did have a building event where there was a secular Bengali woman talking about the history of antiracist struggles in the 80s/90s ( I think) – this is a very different view from the UAF who thinks the only people who can speak for ‘Muslims’ are the leaders of the ELM/IFE.
I believe there are some around the AFN who would like to engage with the issues but realise it needs to be done carefully. The IFE might be heirs to a fascist movement but the thousands of people who pray at the ELM or use their facilities are not fascists. They need to find people to build alliances with, but because they are anarchists/left wing they aren’t going to jump into bed with just anybody who opposes the ELM/IFE (for example Egghead above may know some facts about the Jamaat but is also an anti-Muslim bigot. Anarchists aren’t going to want to ally with a racist like Egghead). They also don’t have the community ‘infrastructure’ that the UAF has (and its oh so easy to slag them off as middle class, not local, rent a mob, or whatever) so would hesitate to wade in where they aren’t clear about who’s who or what’s going on.
Give them time and give them support and maybe there will be a little more breathing space for all of us to operate in a way that opposes both racism and fundamentalism.
I’m not in WAG or AFN or anything else. If I’ve misrepresented them, sorry and please contribute.
@new pseudonym – From my knowledge I feel you have given an accurate portrayal of the events and activities you refer to in your comment.
I would add in reply to Mr Jeory that UAF have never addressed ‘islamofascism’ and it seems they never intend to – I doubt they even recognise the term as anything other than a racist slur. Members of WAG and other anti-fascists were called racist in 2011 by UAF leaders when they attempted to discuss the problem of visiting imams preaching homophobia and misogyny in Whitechapel. They seem oblivious to – and uninterested in – the nuances Bangladeshi politics in general and how it relates to different groups in Tower Hamlets, including the more secular mosque on Brick Lane. The SWP and UAF treat muslims as one homogenous group, and as a result of their (willful) ingnorance, have made alliances that are extremely contradictory to their proclaimed politics.
Again, the black bloc is a tactic, not a political group, and so to talk of the BB ‘confronting islamofascism’ is like asking what “people who hold placards” or “people who sit in roads” have done about it…
Interesting article as always, so thanks
I noted with interest the most recent Tower Hamlets council meeting (Sep13) which put forward a motion for the council to work more closely with the IFE in part as recognition for their stewarding of the recent anti-EDL counter march.
I am however uncertain about the role of IFE at this march, I understand that they were there as were many others to oppose the EDL and that stance has much to be commended, however simply because they were wearing hi-vis vests does not confer a higher authority than that of other anti-EDL participants (of which there were many) or does it?
I might be mistaken, but were they there in any official capacity and was this written up (as whole or part of an official report) which would then form the basis for the council raising a high profile motion (as it did in Sep2013’s council meeting) to seek to work with them more closely? Otherwise the threshold for getting support from the council in high profile public council meetings seems to be somewhat low. I would expect sustained community involvement in official/recognised capacities at least and even then for the motion to be more focused, not just blanket terms of “the council will engage more fully….”, what parts of the council and how will they engage?
I actually saw one of the stewards get tapped on the hand by a police officer. He then moved off towards a group of young bangladeshi guys and started telling them basically not to kick off. I asked him if he was working for the police and he said no, he was working with the police.