Will
Nick Ryan, 15 June 2010
OPEN DEMOCRACY
http://www.opendemocracy.net/nick-ryan/will-londons-east-end-witness-return-to-confrontation
Nick Ryan is author of Homeland: into a world of hate (Mainstream, 2003) and Into a World of Hate: a journey among the extreme right (Routledge, 2004). He was creative producer of the BBC television drama
This Sunday two armies are threatening to clash on the streets of the East End of London. One involves a broad coalition of ethnic, Islamic and far-left groups, plus trade unions, churches and teachers. The other is a loose collection of far-right thugs, football hooligan 'firms', UKIP aficionados, and the odd Sikh or two, united by a fear (or hatred) of Islam.
When the English Defence League (EDL) announced it was to protest outside a local student Islamic conference in a cinema on the
The usual carpet-baggers have appeared: Unite Against Fascism (UAF), chaired by Ken Livingstone, was first on the scene, offering its foot soldiers to the local community. A massive counter-demonstration against the EDL is now planned for Sunday. The community was bound to react – after all, local Bangladeshis saw off the National Front, the British National Party and neo-Nazi gang Combat 18 over the last two decades – but the actions of the Far Left in jumping on a 'cause' are reminiscent of so much in east London politics. It does little to calm tensions and, in my opinion, does little to serve the community in the longer term. The UAF, inheritor of the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) mantle, is great at demonstrating, sometimes less well-prepared for understanding the real tensions and issues on the ground.
There are modern parallels, too. Just a few weeks ago, British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin was ready to declare himself 'king' of the east
In 2006, the BNP became the official opposition in the area, taking 12 council seats. I wrote about the neo-Nazi movement's growing power in east
The local Barking economy was hard-hit, reliant on the now-much-reduced Ford motor plant at Dagenham. Pressure on council housing stock, plus some of the cheapest private housing in
Meanwhile in Tower Hamlets, lying in the shadow of the City, massive levels of commercial property development and the marketing of
Anti-Iraq war sentiment was a huge factor in unseating previous Bethnal Green MP Oona King from her 10,000 seat majority and propelling a pre-Big Brother George Galloway into the limelight. A year later, in 2006, Respect took 12 seats on Tower Hamlets council and it too, like the BNP, became the official opposition: a doomed marriage between the hard Left, particularly the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and politically-active Muslim activists, some of whom were reformed gang members and now dreamed of bringing Islam closer to the heart of government.
As I wrote in 2006, the two radical groups – BNP and Respect – shared an interest: "One party had long-opposed 'Zionist' occupation of
The irony was that the vote for both collapsed at the May 2010 general and local elections. A series of disasters saw the BNP losing all its seats in Barking & Dagenham:
Things were not much better for George Galloway, who came third in the Poplar parliamentary contest, where he was challenging Labour stalwart and former Farming Minister, Jim Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick had fallen out with one of Tower Hamlet's powerful Islamic factions and
This Sunday it is the rabidly-Islamophobic EDL that is threatening to upset what American author Jack London once described as "the Awful East". Barely has one set of battles ended before another has arrived.
Drawn from the ranks of the UK's ignoble football hooligan tribes (or "firms" as they prefer to call themselves), thousands of Islam-hating thugs from the EDL have been threatening to descend on the East End to picket a student Islamic conference at former cinema. Previous EDL events have ended in riots. Despite the event itself now being called off by the venue, message boards have been running riot with dire warnings and erroneous claims that the EDL is planning to come and attack the massive East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel. A huge counter-rally is now planned by local Bangladeshis, Muslim groups, and anti-fascists (notably the UAF). Most of the prominent power brokers in the Bangladeshi community are less worried about the sight of beer bellies and tattoos than their own young men, many of whom have served their apprenticeships in gangs, doing serious harm to the interlopers.
The irony is that, according to an undercover investigation by The Guardian, many of the EDL supporters trumpeted a recent Channel 4 'Dispatches' programme,
What was not apparent in the 'Dispatches' programme and follow-up reports by reporter Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph was that there are two Bangladeshi factions battling it out for power and influence right now in the
'Dispatches' most readily-quoted criticism from the secular-linked Muslim/Bangladeshi faction, leveling accusations against the other group, in what seemed like a clear-cut case of an Islamic fundamentalist organisation trying to infiltrate local political parties. In reality, the picture is much more muddied and 'village politics' – ensuring your friends and contacts stuff the ballot box with votes for your faction – still plays a big part. The names of the political parties do not matter so much as which individual supports 'your' interests (which is why votes can change hands so readily).
All this has been grist-to-the-mill for the EDL, right-wing cranks and conspiracy theorists. The subtleties of
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