protest

i am not the world’s greatest protester.
nor am i the world’s greatest demonstrator.
(it may be that i am in contention for being the world’s not world’s greatest, not a title i covet.)

however there are times when all men need to stand up and be counted sunday june 20th was one of those days.

recently the, less than pleasant group, english defence league (edl) had made an appearance on the streets of whitechapel. it wasn’t successful; they were confronted by locals and carted off by the police.
on the sunday in question they were going to stage a rally in tower hamlets.
various groups put the call out for there to be a demonstration, a show of community. posters were dotted all over the area: meet at stepney green station, 12.30pm and march to altab ali park for some speeches. the umbrella organisation for the march was unite against fascism (uaf).

for those who don’t know much about the english defence league here is the science part. the english defence league see themselves as a single issue party – they are against the spread of islamism and islamic extremists. the edl claim to be multi-ethnic and multi-faith, they even have a jewish division – just how progressive are they? they say they do not have a problem with muslims in general, just extremists.
the rest of us think they are a group of racist neo-fascists.
i’ll come to the reason why they were preparing to march in tower hamlets later. although there was a specific reason for their planned march there are other reasons why tower hamlets is an ideal target for them, the borough is home to europe’s largest mosque, it is also home to england’s largest muslim population (east london advertiser breaks down the borough’s population as 35% bangladeshi with 10% somali), it is also a borough that suffers from great social deprivation with high rates of unemployment, crime and drug dependency among the youth. in short the borough has its problems, in the main people get along and get on with their lives.
end of the science bit.


some of you who know me might actually claim there is something that i am great at: not being on time. that sunday was no different. i left my place just after 12.30pm. all it meant was that i had missed the start of it all, no matter i would be able to catch them before they made it to the park, where i could join in. fifteen minutes later i am at an empty park. a look along the whitechapel and all i can see is traffic. at the park entrance are the boys and girls of the socialist workers party (swp). as ubiquitous as they are the ever present petition is more so.
a quick chat with the swp and it turns out that there might have been several posted start times for the rally. obviously when marx was labouring over das kaptial he didn’t feel the need to add a chapter about punctuality (he left that to adam smith).
as it was a nice day i sat in the park and waited.
and waited.
and waited.
when the revolution comes it won’t be televised because it will happen in the ad breaks, the irony is that for all the theory about a vanguard party what they really need is a frederick taylor in charge of them – it might not be lenin was thinking of, but it would be on time.

and that is where the humour stops (what do you mean? did it ever start).

with a growing rumble of cheers and shouts the parade of protest arrived at the park. organisers put the numbers at around five thousand; i think they are being very generous
once everyone is in the park the speeches begin. they are short, almost perfunctory. little more than ‘edl out’, ‘bnp out’, ‘community unite’. to be honest on a normal day they probably don’t need to be more that. turns out that this wasn’t a normal day.

now remember that this was all about community, standing shoulder to shoulder. as someone who doesn’t do this sort of thing on a regular basis i was struck by a couple of things when i was looking around the park. once you took out the organisers, press, police and members of the swp (and other such organisations) the number of non-asians there could be counted on your fingers and toes (and i am being generous here). that there seemed to be an awful lot of placards that had been stripped down to no more than large wooden sticks – their original message replaced by a new, and unmistakable, one that had little to do with community. that there were a fair few youths who were walking around with their faces covered, and not because of some belief in female modesty, rather a case of keeping their identity secret.

one of the reasons for the speeches being short and sweet was because the reason for the protest had disappeared as during the week the edl had called off their march. the parting shot from the speakers was to ask everyone to leave the park peacefully and to go home and enjoy the nice weather.
you would have thought that was a victory.
evidently not.
a few members of the swp walked by and they were getting excited about a possible edl march in barking the following weekend. close your eyes stretch your imagination just a little and a new t-shirt range comes into view: philosophy hooliganism.
while a bunch of asian youth strut by each telling the other that they are not going home, they are going out to look for the edl.
an atmosphere of whipped up anger and potential violence permeates the park.
for all of that nothing happens in the park. people linger. some wave banners. some chat. some take photos. others look to get petitions signed.
i left the park and went about the rest of my day.
much later i am on my way home and the police are still out in force. they are preventing people walking down the whitechapel high street in the area of the east london mosque. throughout the area around the mosque there is a heavy police presence.
the next day i learn from a local shopkeeper that a group of youths kicked off with the police. he was less than sympathetic towards the youth.

interestingly the reason the edl had planned to be to in the area was because they were going to protest a conference, at a local venue, featuring ‘controversial’ islamic speakers scheduled to take place on the same sunday. although the uk islamic conference gets mentioned a few times in the local press, details are always vague, except, once, to say that none of the speakers were on the government’s proscribed list. pretty much the conference was ignored in the protest literature that could be found.
according to the people at indymedia (a grouping of social and political activists) the uk islamic conference would have featured speakers who condoned killing homosexuals and anti-semitism, among other things. (in a little dose of irony the venue in question had only just signed up to tower hamlets’ “no place for hate” campaign, needless to say they agreed to cancel the conference).

the cancellation of the uk islaminc conference lead to the edl cancelling their march and claiming victory on their website. the call then went out for the unite against fascism rally to be called off. however it went on because (to quote the east london advertisers) community leaders were concerned about tensions still running high and that a peaceful rally would give people a chance to express their feelings.
ah if only that had been the case.

as with all these things it is difficult to grasp the full picture, yet reading some of the accounts of the events i can’t help but think that there is a wilful decision to ignore aspects of the whole thing in favour of just the bits that promote your point of view.
strangely i believe that sort of blinkered vision of the world means you are never going to be able to overcome divisions.
unite against fascism are there to campaign against racism and fascism. their goals are noble, no one wants hate on the streets, no one wants to see people discriminated against or attacked because of the colour of their skin (or the faith they choose). yet the uaf said nothing about the uk islamic conference. now i admit i only have the word of indymedia about how extreme the speakers may have been, yet i doubt that tower hamlets would have pushed so hard for its cancellation if there were not some truth to it. so from the point of view of the uaf hate can only come from one direction and if we are blunt here; that hate has only one colour: white.
the uaf, respect, whitechapel anarchist group and others praised how demonstration brought the local community together, yet the evidence in altab ali park pointed to the fact that this was predominantly an asian gathering. the other parts of the community seemingly unaware of the protest or not caring about it both are a little worrying.
when it comes to violence everyone is quick to condemn the edl for bring their thugs on to our streets, yet the sunday in question saw violence for the sake of violence. there was no edl for the local youth to lash out against. the whitechapel anarchist group may see it as being heavy handed policing while ajmal masroor (former liberal democrat candidate) may see it as a symptom of disaffected youth being angry at the world. either way it was still violence (a van driver and a skinhead were attacked, photographers threatened).
yet their violence is not subjected to the same outrage that would have greeted violence perpetuated by the edl. instead excuses and reasons are found. disturbingly groups such as respect and socialist workers party seem silent on the violence.

perhaps this is where the problem lies, or begins. groups like the english defence league or the british national party are not really much of a threat in the great scheme of things. give them the oxygen of publicity and they soon show themselves to be the idiots that they really are. prevent them from having a say and you create victims and lead others to wonder what it is they have to say and they stand for.
yet if you try to prevent them from having their say while staying quiet on the anti-democratic and racist language and actions of others then you stop being a fighter for the truth and just become a hypocrite.
none of which is to say they have to have a free ride. their claims and arguments can be debated, challenged and shown to be false. democracy can only work if it works for all groups. frankly if you are scared of the debate then perhaps you are scared that you can’t answer their claims.
hate and fear and lie at the root of many evils, they are not overcome by ignoring the hate spewed by one group while concentrating on the same sort of hate that comes from another group. if communities are to truly stand together then hatemongers no matter what their colour or faith have to be confronted and challenged.
for diversity to work it has to be colour blind and the champions of diversity have to be able to stand up to hate, oppression, racism and fascism no matter what colour it comes in.
it seems that is harder than it sounds.