UAF and EDL: Kick the fascists off the streets – no platform!

Just a matter of months after the British National Party (BNP) won two MEPs in the Euro elections, the English Defence League (EDL) – a gang of Nazi thugs – have been on the march. Twice they have visited Birmingham. They have threatened to march in Luton. Manchester is next up, with the EDL planning to march there on 10 October.

The EDL is a bit like the old Combat 18 – a violent wing of fascism that pretends to be independent of the BNP but one that everyone with half a brain knows full well is the tooled-up, street fighting wing of that party. Check the mug shots from the demo photos if in doubt.

During their attacks in Birmingham the EDL smashed up a bus, assaulted black and Asian passers by and tried to beat up counter protestors. Fortunately, on both occasions they failed. They were met by determined resistance from Birmingham socialists and anti-fascists. The community mobilised, even while community leaders told people to stay and home, to avoid trouble and do nothing. The message was “rely on the police”.

Unite Against Fascism (UAF) put forward tactics that, despite the best intentions of consistent anti-racists in its ranks, served to undermine and demobilise the opposition to the Nazis. Salma Yaqoob, a leading councillor for the Respect Party, demanded that the council ban the EDL demonstration and sought to build a broad, non-political, cross-party front against the Nazis.

She stressed that whereas the EDL did not obey the niceties of agreed marching times and locations, UAF worked with the police “before, during and after” the EDL march. It was only due to the spontaneous determination of mainly Asian youth, bursting through lines of UAF stewards and the police, that the EDL were driven away the first time.

Salma Yaqoob and UAF were determined there would be no repeat. Before the second EDL demonstration, they demanded that the police and the council ban the demo, built a “unity carnival” far from any possible confrontation in an attempt to divert the opposition from confronting the fascists. When the anti-fascist carnival was banned by the council, it opposed any mobilisation in order to maintain “unity”.

They were prepared to allow the EDL to march through Birmingham unopposed rather than break their hoped-for but unrealised alliance with the Tories, Liberals and New Labour. What sort of anti-fascism is this?

Two days before the second EDL demonstration the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) finally saw sense. With UAF refusing to act, they called a mobilisation.

Actually there was already one underway. Fortunately, anarchists, socialists, anti-fascists and Asian youth, were not prepared to wait around until the SWP made up its mind whether or not to heed the advice of UAF to stay away from Birmingham town centre and leave the EDL to strut their stuff. The sporadic resistance on the day was more than enough to send the EDL packing again.

In Manchester the SWP and UAF seem to have learnt nothing from the experience of Birmingham. At a meeting on 8 September, the UAF chair defended the decision of UAF to absent itself from the streets in order to “maintain unity”. UAF in Manchester resolved to call for a state ban with every member of the SWP present supporting that resolution. The UAF chair proposed, just as in Birmingham, that UAF organise a carnival well away from any threatened confrontation with the EDL. Unlike in Birmingham this was too much for the SWP, who insisted that they would confront the fascists if they sought to come to Manchester.

The SWP are right to call for a direct mobilisation against the fascists, but they need to quickly realise that calling for state bans is a disastrous tactic in fighting fascism. It has nothing in common with militant anti-fascism. Indeed Chris Bambery, a leading SWP member, explained why in Socialist Worker back in 2001:

“We cannot rely on the ruling class, whatever liberal noises it makes, to stop the Nazis. This is especially true over the question of banning the Nazis. It seems an attractive option – after all, how better to get the Nazis off the streets – but the experience is that such bans have nearly always been used to stop the left mobilising. The 1936 Public Order Act was rushed through after 100,000 workers stopped the British Union of Fascists marching through the East End of London at Cable Street. The police had made a determined attempt to clear the way for the fascists but were defeated by mass mobilisation. A Tory government promised the new law would stop the fascists. In reality it has been used against trade unionists and the left.

Bans have been used to demobilise the anti-fascist movement. What is happening under New Labour is worse than that. The bans are primarily aimed at preventing anti-fascist and anti-racist activities. It reached a new low in Welshpool, where the BNP staged a ‘Red, White and Blue Festival’, when Anti Nazi League activists were individually banned from the town, an exclusion zone was created round the town, and police said nobody would be allowed through unless they produced a BNP membership card! Anti-fascists are then presented as the problem.”

Given the SWP’s current wobbling over state bans we would suggest Bambery tells the SWP to stick with the line he outlined back in 2001. But that would probably mean breaking with the organisation the SWP took the lead in founding – the UAF. It is by no means certain the SWP will do this. But it should, and quickly.

UAF – the unity of
the graveyard

David Cameron, the Tory leader, is a member of UAF. He didn’t turn out to oppose the EDL in Birmingham. Salma Yaqoob, the Respect councillor, is a member of UAF. She didn’t turn out to oppose the EDL in Birmingham. Peter Hain, the former New Labour minister, is a member of UAF. He didn’t turn out to oppose the EDL in Birmingham.

UAF seeks to build broad non-class, cross party, coalitions to oppose fascism. Above all they want to be respectable. So they have consciously sought out politicians and reactionaries from the bosses ranks to try and bolster their credentials. Funded by the trade union bureaucracy, UAF employs many SWP apparatchiks.

Under the circumstances it is literally more than their job’s worth to fight for a militant and                         socialist strategy in UAF. Unfortunately, the political concession made in founding this organisation, now threatens to poison its founder.

The EDL have broken the rules of the game. The BNP’s search for respectability fooled some into thinking that old style anti-fascism was out of date. Many on the left wrongly began to suggest that an orientation to the working class self-defence and self-organisation were no longer the way to smash the Nazis. By marching, by taking the battle to the streets, the EDL have exploded the entire strategy of the UAF, and exposed the contradictions in the SWP and the right wing of Respect almost overnight. UAF have failed the test of struggle.

Under the circumstances it is even more remarkable that in spite of everything the anti-fascists still drove the EDL from the streets and scored a major victory. This will be what is needed in Manchester and anywhere else the EDL target.

Some groups like the CP or Weekly Worker think that the fascists have the right to their opinion, that they should have the right to free speech and democratic freedoms. They think that the fascists should be allowed a platform to spread their ideas.

Socialists and anti-fascists on the other hand have fought to impose a position of no platform for fascists for many decades. Ask yourself what is the content of the fascists’ “free speech”? They propose and organise vicious unprovoked assaults on black and Asian people. In 2000 the Oldham riots began after Nazis broke down the door of a pregnant Asian woman’s house and assaulted her and her family in her own home. The EDL want to do the same thing in Manchester.

Democracy and free speech are not the real issue; the real issue is racist violence by fascism, the suppression of all democracy by fascism and their ability to build themselves up so they can actually start carrying out these attacks. We have to smash them before they become powerful. That is the lesson of Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the early 1930s and Spain in the late 1930s. We don’t want to repeat the nightmare of those two decades.

Anti-fascists need to organise independently of UAF. We certainly can support and participate in their actions, provided we are not bound by their leadership’s decisions to avoid confronting the fascists. Nor should we be dependent on them for intelligence or organisation.

We need to re-iterate that fascism will be defeated by independent working class organisation, by the self-activity of the working class people, lesbian or gay, black or white or Asian, women or men, working or unemployed, in every working class organisation, uniting together to drive the Nazi scum from the streets.

We call on all who oppose fascism to join us on 10 October to keep Manchester a Nazi-Free Zone and to support mobilisations in any other town and city where the Nazis – in the guise of either the BNP or the EDL – try to take the streets.

Thu 17, December 2009 @ 11:22