English Defence League: It is time to act
Searchlight Magazine July 2010 by Nick Lowles | Wednesday, 21 July 2010
The decision by the Troxy to cancel the booking for the Islamic conference that was due to be held in East London last month was met with a huge sigh of relief. The English Defence League cancelled its own counter-protest and a potential serious clash with the local Muslim communities was averted.
The decision by the Troxy to cancel the booking for the Islamic conference that was due to be held in East London last month was met with a huge sigh of relief. The English Defence League cancelled its own counter-protest and a potential serious clash with the local Muslim communities was averted.
A taste of what could have happened occurred a week later when EDL and Muslim extremists protested and counter-protested at an Army homecoming parade in Barking. Rival groups clashed outside Barking station, before the main EDL group went to Whitechapel causing more trouble. Back in Barking, a large group of local Muslims attacked the remaining elements of the EDL.
All this involved relatively small numbers. The EDL protest outside the East London mosque would have brought out thousands for each side and could easily have been potentially explosive.
The Troxy was left with little choice but to cancel the booking for the Islamic conference after strong pressure from the local council, including threats to withdraw future support.
While the situation was defused it did highlight the Government’s politically impotency in dealing with the EDL. The threat of a disturbance in East London was averted, but all it did was transfer the problem to another city on another date.
The previous and present Governments have shown absolutely no leadership in their attitude towards the EDL. While Searchlight has been critical of the Public Order Unit, a Home Office group that advises and briefs ministers, the main blame has to rest with the politicians who seemingly have not had the political courage to craft an approach that questions the advice they have received and, more importantly, to lead and direct policy.
The EDL poses one of the greatest threats to social and community cohesion at the moment and the Government is a mere spectator, hoping, no, praying, that police can contain trouble.
The Government was a mere bystander as tensions and concerns rose over the planned EDL events, with local councils and police forces left to identify imaginative reasons for stopping or limiting EDL initiatives. Each time either have looked to the Home Office for support they have been dispatched with a pathetic “there’s nothing we can do” response.
In the absence of political leadership the Government’s approach to the EDL is being dictated by the Public Order Unit, which apparently continues to play down the EDL threat. According to its initial assessment of the EDL, which was not accepted by Phil Woolas, the Home Office Minister at the time, the group had no known links to the far right and organised football hooliganism and did not pose a serious public order threat.
As our exposé of “Tommy Robinson” proves, the far-right links of the EDL leadership are extensive. The connections with football hooligan gangs are clearly evident at any EDL event and the violence that resulted from the Barking protest is a taster of the trouble that could occur in future.
The EDL can easily bring out thousands of people in almost any English city just by internet and word of mouth organising. The protests are becoming more regular, more aggres-sive and certainly confrontational. A forthcoming EDL protest is set for Bradford, a city where 40% of the population belongs to minority communities and the scene of serious riots in 2001.
Looking at the EDL from a purely law and order perspective has allowed the Public Order Unit, by its very nature conservative in outlook, to dismiss the EDL. They will point to the fact that it is clearly not a terrorist organisation, its leaders call for peaceful demonstrations and happily work with the police and it has a disorganised structure and incoherent political goals.
But this limited way of viewing the EDL fails to put the group into a wider context. It fails to appreciate the widespread and growing Islamophobia in society which the group is tapping into and articulating. It also fails to accept that despite the millions pumped into regeneration and community cohesion, Britain is a more divided and less cohesive society than it was even in 2001.
Since then we have had 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the London bombings, the rise of the British National Party and recession. Trouble now could potentially be far more serious than anything we witnessed in 2001.
It is not just numbers that determine a threat. It is also intent and opportunity.
We should remember that the trigger for the Oldham riots of 2001 was the actions of 12 white people who ran through a predominantly Asian street in Glodwick attacking local people and their property.
This followed weeks of rising tensions and racist incursions, the likes of which the EDL wants to emulate today. Back then the Oldham hooligan and Combat 18 callout for help fell on largely deaf ears. Today, EDL supporters seem only too willing to travel the country in search of trouble.
Understanding of the cause and effect of EDL activities seems to be lost by the Home Office and its Public Order Unit. Ministers have repeatedly moaned about their hands being tied by the law and the advice they receive, but they are the politicians and their job is to lead, something of which they appear incapable.
This is partly because they lack a real understanding of the EDL pheno-menon, which is far bigger than the organisation itself. It is also because the official response is being driven by the Home Office rather than involving other government departments, such as the Department for Communities and Local Government, which, one would hope, would take a wider view of this issue.
The absence of an adequate response is also because there is a general crippling fear of consequences, which itself derives from a lack of coherent and bold political leadership. From a Government minister overriding an official’s advice to a local council or police force challenging the Home Office’s interpretation of the law, there seems to be a lack of incisive political leadership.
It is clear that there is a problem with the law when a council or police force cannot stop an EDL protest, because it is static not a march, even when there is a serious risk of major disorder. We can stop a “suspected” football hooligan or striking miner (as happened in 1984) travelling around the country but we seem incapable of preventing thousands of EDL supporters descending on a city centre with a racist agenda.
What is even more ridiculous is that in the interests of public order and safety the police actually escort the EDL into the area of their “static” protest. It is a march by the backdoor.
There is no simple official solution to the EDL, not least because it draws its support from a society that is becoming increasingly hostile to Muslims. Banning the EDL is impractical because it is not an organisation and a ban will not necessarily reduce growing tensions between communities.
Calling on the Government to introduce a law giving the police powers to ban static protests might also be an act too far. While there should be times – such as the planned protests in East London and Bradford – when the threat of disorder is so severe that the council, in collaboration with the police, should be able to prevent the EDL from protesting, there will be understandable fears about other ways such a law might be used to silence dissent and freedom of speech.
But at least there needs to be a discussion, which is something that is not happening at the moment. The current policy, followed by the past and present Home Secretaries, of hiding behind a (questionable) legal opinion that nothing can be done is simply an abdication of responsibility.
If and when serious trouble does occur let us not forget that it is our elected politicians who have allowed the EDL to prosper by their failure to show clear and bold leadership. In the meantime, the HOPE not hate campaign will work to build community resistance to the English Defence League.
