Rain disperses far right group

Efforts by the English Defence League to hold a "meet and greet" in Kingston fizzled out in heavy rain yesterday.

The far-right group had been due to start their first formal event in the borough at 1.30pm on Saturday. Police, who maintained a highly visible presence in town and outside Kingston Mosque, said they recognised a number of suspected EDL members around town. However, they did not deliver any leaflets after heavy rain hit the town in the early afternoon.

About 20 people from the GMB union, Kingston Green Party, Socialist Workers Party, the Union Against Fascism and the South London Anti-Fascist Alliance held their own counter demonstration.

Matthew Smith, of Kingston GMB, said: "Unlike eight EDL members stuck on a table in Wetherspoons, we were out in the rain distributing 500 leaflets. It was an effort to make sure anyone who could be suseptible to know why the EDL are wrong."

David Gair, of Kingston police, said: "Whether their resolve was weakened by the weather I don't know. We have seen a few suspected EDL members, but they did not come out in great numbers."

Surrey Comet

Cheers to Zaahid and others for the heads-up

English Teabaggers: The EDL vs “COMMUNISM!!!!”

A couple of left-wing websites have noted the English Defence League’s new target: union power and Communism. A couple of days ago the EDL’s site told us that

The EDL know that unions have a part to play to protect workers’ rights, to ensure that employees are treated fairly in the workplace. However it would seem that these unions have become more powerful, more influential and more militant in the political sphere, this is where vested interests infringe upon a democratic political platform, so much so that democracy seems to be ebbing away right before our eyes and its replacement………COMMUNISM!!!!

Great Britain doesn’t do Communism, it never has, yet Communists are afforded more influence and more power as the Labour party look to fund its upcoming election campaign.

Lenin’s Tomb and Barrykade suggest that this is the organisation’s “true colours”, and this is shows that the EDL has an agenda beyond simply opposing “Islamic extremism” – attention is drawn to the fact that the EDL has a millionaire businessman sugar-daddy.

There are, though, a couple of other factors: It’s clear that the EDL would rather people support parties such as UKIP or the English Democrats over mainstream parties, and Labour’s association with the Unite union is a topical knocking-point. Perhaps we are also seeing the importing of rhetoric from the USA, where the crudest 1950s-style anti-Communist posturing has enjoyed a renewed lease of life over the past year or so. I recently noted Pamela Geller’s reference to Obama as the “mad Commie clown”, and this kind of thing is now commonplace among the “teabaggers” – Geller has written posts commending the EDL to American conservatives, and the EDL in turn has directed traffic to her site.

More widely, Communist groups have shown up at Unite Against Fascism anti-EDL events waving around hammer-and-sickle iconography, and the Trotskyist SWP looms large within the UAF. Naturally, just as the UAF denounces the EDL of having semi-hidden far-right links (a subject I have also written on), so the EDL will point to the UAF’s far-left links, as a matter of tit-for-tat. There are also, of course, actual links between far-left groups and Islamists.

Meanwhile, EDL members are also planning a rally on a “Not Compatible with Britain” theme, attacking the BNP along with neo-Nazis and Communists. Anarchists don’t get off lightly, either…

Bartholomew's Notes on Religion

Fascists show their faces in Liverpool

The fascist BNP today continued their campaign of intimidation and racism on the streets of Liverpool. At around 2pm Andrew Tierney, again claiming to be a freelance journalist, set up his camera tripod directly in front of the Socialist Workers Party stall. This was a clear attempt to unsettle and intimidate people as they engaged in legitimate political activism. Tierney also filmed a local former Big Issue seller who now works advertising for local companies. This man, who has no association with the SWP, was going about his job and became frightened when the camera was put about a foot from his face.

After the police intervened the BNP made it clear that they were not going to disappear and the four or five of them began to attempt to distribute their leaflets to a less than susceptible public. Anti-Fascists soon rallied around and began to arrive at the street in numbers shouting “Nazi Scum, Off out Streets” and “Sing it loud, Sing it clear, BNP not welcome here.” The timely arrival of some Hope not Hate leaflets meant that the anti-fascists had some literature which they could give out to the public revealing the fascist and violent nature of the BNP. These leaflets were quickly snapped up by passers by and left the fascists looking dejected as they stooped to pick their own leaflets off the floor before people realised the reaction they were receiving. One confused lady, who thought we were the BNP, refused to accept a leaflet off me because she wasn’t a racist. If people refuse my literature because they hate the BNP it is fine with as me the message is already out there.

The growing group of anti-fascists soon began to get even louder in their shouts and the BNP group made their way up Bold street. A few of their supporters, mainly young skin head males, joined them and began to shout back at the group with phrases like “BNP all the Way” and “White Supremacy”. Seeing that they were by now outnumbered and were not getting their message across the BNP, who had filmed anti-fascists throughout the two hour standoff, made their way up Bold Street and home. Not the kind of thing we want to have to do the weekend before Christmas but wherever the Nazis show their faces we will oppose them, even at short notice.

Merseyside Coalition Against Racism and Fascism