For the past year the English Defence League (EDL) and its local variants, the Scottish and Welsh Defence Leagues, have been staging regular, vocal demonstrations throughout Britain, directed ostensibly against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. In reality their target appears to be Muslims in general. Although the EDL is clearly nowhere as dangerous as the British state, which has an entire machinery at its disposal with which to attack the Muslim community, its persistent and confrontational street presence means that anti-racists must have an understanding of what it is and be prepared to join mobilisations to physically oppose its racist message.
Some anti-fascist campaigners maintain that the EDL is virtually the same as the British National Party (BNP). Others say the EDL is just a confused bunch of football hooligans. While there is an element of truth in both assertions, neither provides the full picture. Although both the BNP and EDL do appear to reflect the same disaffection among sections of the white working and lower middle classes, who feel abandoned by mainstream political parties, the organisations have substantially different political platforms. As we have detailed in previous articles, the BNP is a ‘little England’ party; it wants immigrants to leave Britain and British troops and British capital to return to the country. It only reluctantly dropped its white only membership policy when confronted with court action and – although the frequent accusation of ‘Nazism’ is not accurate – undoubtedly remains anti-Semitic. The EDL, on the other hand, is far more in step with the mainstream imperialist parties, boasting of its ‘multi-racialism’ and vocally supporting Britain’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is difficult to make a fully reliable assessment of the class basis of the EDL. An undercover journalist told the Unite Against Fascism (UAF) conference in February that many of the EDL were ‘little businessmen types’, while businessman Alan Lake has publicly supported the EDL and is thought to be a major financial backer. However, a BBC documentary, Young, British and angry, aired on 19 May showed the EDL is also attracting young men angry at unemployment and poverty pay, with no illusions in the political establishment, seeing a way out by ‘making Britain great again’. This mix is consistent with claims that the EDL is reported to have actively recruited via football hooligan ‘firms’.
The EDL was formed after a group of anti-war Muslims protested against British soldiers from the Anglian Regiment, who had just returned from Iraq, parading through Luton city centre in March 2009. The protestors held up placards reading ‘British government – terrorist government’, ‘Illegal war in Iraq’ and ‘Anglian soldiers: butchers of Basra’. They were physically attacked by a group of army supporters.
Since then the EDL has held protests around Britain, initially only drawing a few dozen people, but more recently in Stoke (23 January), Bolton (20 March) and Dudley (3 April) attracting up to 2,000. In Bristol, Manchester and Newcastle it has disrupted left wing meetings organised to oppose its activity.
While there have been arrests of EDL members, the police have increasingly acted with greater ferocity against anti-racist counter-demonstrators. In FRFI 214 we reported on the hardening of police tactics at Bolton, where they viciously attacked the UAF-organised counter-protest, using police dogs and making dozens of arrests.
On 2 May EDL members occupied the roof of a building adjacent to the site of a proposed mosque in Dudley and used a PA system to broadcast anti-Muslim propaganda and fake calls to prayer. When they were confronted by hundreds of anti-racists, the police sealed off the surrounding area, warned that anyone coming into Dudley to cause ‘disorder’ would be ‘dealt with swiftly and robustly’, and allowed the EDL to remain on the roof for nearly three days before arresting them and charging them with burglary and inciting racial hatred.
The EDL’s public show of its few Sikh and black members to ‘prove’ it is not racist and its claims that it opposes only fundamentalism and not Islam as such are belied by its members’ chants, such as: ‘If you build a mosque we’ll burn it down’ and towards counter-protesters: ‘We hate Pakis more than you’. At an EDL protest in London on 5 March, Guramit Singh, a frequent EDL leadership spokesperson, told the crowd ‘God bless the Muslims, they’ll need it for when they’re burning in fucking hell’, and was met with massive cheers and applause. Where the EDL has had the numbers and a lack of effective opposition, mosques and Asian individuals and businesses have been physically attacked.
The SWP and UAF have made a lot of the involvement of former BNP member Chris Renton in the EDL leadership in order to claim that the EDL is a ‘Nazi’ front. It is not surprising that there is a crossover in membership between the EDL and other racist groups, but there seems little evidence that the EDL is a front for the BNP or any other organisation. In September 2009 the BNP made it a disciplinary offence for any member to have anything to do with the EDL, following which Chris Renton resigned from the BNP. Since then Nick Griffin and other members of the BNP leadership have made public accusations that the EDL is a ‘false flag’ operation set up by the British state – hardly something they would say of a BNP front organisation. There have also been several reports of fights between the EDL and Combat 18 and other fascist groups.
But if the EDL are not ‘old style’ fascists, what are they? A very visible aspect of the EDL’s politics is its political affinity with Zionism. Israeli flags have been flown since the early EDL demos, and flew alongside the England flag at the Dudley rooftop occupation. The ‘Links’ section of the EDL website points to a number of Zionist blogs and sites for international news, and in September 2009 the Bristol Evening Post reported that the EDL had approached the Jewish Defence League, a Zionist organisation, seeking an alliance; an offer which was reportedly rebuffed.
Capitalist states have only resorted to supporting fascists when their economic domination has been threatened by powerful revolutionary movements backed by the working class and oppressed. Today no such movement threatens the British state directly. But there are movements which identify with the forces resisting imperialism in Palestine and Afghanistan, which are prepared to act in anti-imperialist solidarity. In the months before the EDL was established thousands had come out on the streets to protest against the Israeli massacre in Gaza.
The EDL is not a ‘Nazi’ organisation; it is a populist domestic reflection of the British state’s imperialist interests in the Middle East and its vicious attacks on Muslim communities in Britain. Having originated in physical opposition to a controversial but entirely lawful and peaceful anti-war protest in Luton, the continued threat of an EDL response provides the state with a convenient excuse to curtail and attack such protests in future.
FRFI 215 June/July 2010
