Open letter to the UAF repost

I haven't read anything so moronic for a long long time:

http://www.DELETETHISenglishdefenceleague.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=181:labour-partys-affiliation-to-union-criminality&catid=42:feature-stories

IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

In that case also throw the RMT into the conspiracy.

Well, there's little to respond to from you anarchoskin, so let's just agree to disagree for now.

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/features/Businessman-bankrolls-street-army.php Alan Lake works as an IT consultant in the CofE, lives in Highgate and bankrolls the EDL, their first demo was in Whitechapel followed by a subsequent one in Wood Green, neither of which got any attention from the left-wing (and rightly so at the time; they were a handful of wankers that no one gave a shit about).

An old AFed article basically said it in very simple terms concisely: http://www.afed.org.uk/blog/society/125-smash-the-english-defence-league.html

As for the comments about mobilising against them, I think it's a valid thing to do, nowdays, when they can mobilise enough people to actually raise the possibility of ethnic minorities being attacked in the streets, of course the police apparently try to limit this like they did in Harrow by splitting all non-white and white counter-protestors away, and this naturally needs to be avoided at all costs.

@communalpie; I'd like to know on what grounds you think the IWCA organise around identity politics, I find that a ridiculous assertion about a group which has been exposing the lib/left obsession with identity politics for almost 20 years, since back in '93 when nobody else saw the ramifications of multiculturalism.

Its like saying the BNP organise around anti-racism!

Right from the start I've been saying the EDL leadership are irrelevant compared to the motivation of ordinary people attending the demos, and I don't believe demonising them all as 'racists' is helpful, as even the AF article does somewhat disappointingly.

As I'm mixed race and partly of pakistani origin, I feel I see things slightly differently from some on the left, though it shouldn't matter if I was completely white. I feel that many muslim youths in the UK now have a culture which at least tacitly consents to extremism, whilst mainstream muslim culture does little to oppose it, and continues to promote homophobic and misogenistic values. This has to be opposed from within and without the muslim community, and is our responsibility too.

Nevertheless, I can't see anyone on the UAF demos having the balls to display an 'Anarchists against Fascists and Islamic Extremists' placard. The lack of this makes it look like tacit consent for what the EDL claim to oppose.

If some on the EDL demo have the balls to have placards opposing the BNP, Blood and Honour and the NF in their midst, then we should be able to do the same with regards to our anti-religious beliefs, no?

I wouldn't hold my breath as the white liberal-left are still obsessed with either not causing offence to 'muslims' (as if they are just one homogenous group - quite a racist but prevalent assumption), or else in worse cases see Al Quaida etc as distant allies in the fight against Imperialism and Capitalism. Which is just bullshit.

And I agree that the EDL anti-union stuff is hilariously paranoid nonsense. Nevertheless I don't like seeing communist flags on demos either; historically these people have not been on our side and we know it.

I never said that their polemics against multiculturalism were wrong, on the contrary, I think it is very valid to point out the errors in multiculturalism, however, you do not really seem to propose a replacement to multiculturalism which is an error, if you point it out I would expect you to offer some form of a substitute.

While not being a Trotskyist in any form, I think "revolutionary integrationism" was an excellent idea espoused by Trotskyists and is something we can use, you should read up on it.

Except, I'd defend the IWCA in some respects unlike the BNP.

When more than 20 of them say racist things and make nazi salutes without any condemnation from the rest of the EDL crowd and it clearly causes more jeering and chanting from them, at the counter-protesters, it seems as if there might just be a few racists there you know, but maybe I'm wrong, maybe it was some kind of a clever trick.

By the way, I don't think we can say every single person there is a racist, or even right-wing, don't think I ever said that either.

Welcome to the club.

How odd, have heard plenty of people in AF say things such as this as well as seen "no to the IDF, no to HAMAS" banners and such at their demos.

Oh yes, so they know how to sloganeer, they even put Israeli, Jamaican and other flags up on one of their police-arranged buses out. This obviously means that they have balls as well, perhaps there really is no double meaning when they burn nazi flags with a flag above them saying black and white unite.

Of course. I don't want to cause offence to muslims even though I have a consistent record of challenging one of my best friends on every aspect of islam, as well as many other people I know, not that it feels like a matter of total importance above everything else to me, as that would mean I'm kind of placing it as a higher priority than it is.

I'm not being lazy by copying part of the website, I think its a good condensed summary of a number of issues:

IWCA Programme:
Race & class

For many years racism was opposed because people recognised that it divided the working class. Increasingly, however, there are calls for the state funding of religious schools, for segregated schooling and for segregated housing. All of which is promoted in the name of anti-racism.

However, experience shows that the funding of social projects purely on the grounds of race can only foster an us and them scenario, with the result that instead of being united by anti-racism, the working class can just as easily be divided by it. Multiculturalism, which insists everyone be treated differently, also undermines the concept of fairness at the core of anti-racism. For example, in America recent research has found that the application of the multicultural strategy has increased segregation in many cities and created a black middle class, often directly at the expense of the black working class.

The IWCA is against any strategies that artificially divide the working class against itself. In order to rectify past mistakes there will need to be recognition that:

* Orthodox models of equal opportunities racialise social questions in such a way as to set communities against each other.
* Equal opportunities models which assume there is a uniform access to power by all white people and a uniform denial of access to power by all black people must be rejected.
* Systematic cuts in youth and community provision and a subsequent rise in racial tension are often linked by a straightforward relationship of cause and effect.
* Anti-racist strategies that are not broadly accepted as reasonable and rational by working class communities are counter-productive and can deflect attempts to tackle the most extreme forms of bigotry.
* Multicultural strategies which promote or result in segregation, particularly in housing and schooling, must be scrapped.
* Organised and systematic racial violence needs to be dealt with from a political as well as criminal perspective.

I checked out the wikipedia for quickness so correct me if I've misunderstood.

My main concerns with RI is that it pretty much postpones the solving of racial or cultural integration until 'after the socialist revolution;' the usual panacea for difficult problems. If the 'transition' solution is not to wait for a revolution but to work for class unity across racial lines, well then, that's not any different from the IWCA goal and methodology.

The other thing is that the USA a century ago is certainly not the UK today. There is an established middle class in most UK immigrant communities and this class is often represented politically at the highest levels, and there is no legacy of slavery to contend with. My point is that currently the left is reaching out to 'the muslim community' as a whole.

I also feel that the RI theorists would probably have been surprised at the emergence of a black middle class and the possibility of a black president without a socialist revolution. Maybe that's why the Republicans think Obama's a socialist...

Well thats good then. Sorry, I just get really fucking wound up by SWP front groups.

I presume you were being sarcastic and meant burning 'anti-nazi' flags like in Swansea. Those guys clearly were not hard to pin as fascists.

Personally, I can't think of much else with a higher priority than addressing racial and cultural divisions in society. And beyond the UAF/EDL pantomime. Right now it seems like divisions are growing, and if current trends are allowed to continue it doesn't look hopeful for the future. The more multiculturalism sets its teeth in, the harder it will be to organise along class lines.

This doesn't really offer much of an alternative except for "it has to be opposed", although you say in a second that the IWCA would probably endorse RI. So we're in agreement pretty much.

We're in agreement pretty much. I just think it is noteworthy to include the goal of completely uniting workers as being only possible post-revolution.

It depends what parts of the left you mean, the reformist and revisionist left, yes, of course they are reaching out to the Muslim bourgeois but then again, what else would you expect?

Not really, CLR James wrote many polemics against this separation by ethnicity a very long time ago, himself having rebelled against the idea of being rightfully better off than others (being brought up in the Trinidadian intelligentsia) and taking up the positions of socialism against this. I think he endorsed revolutionary integrationism.

Yes, we do need to outnumber them.

Multiculturalism has already set in, I can't think of anything more multicultural than the race separated schools in tower hamlets and south hackney, or in manchester, or in so many other places. Yes it needs to be opposed, yes the workers need to be united along class-lines, but you will not really appeal to the working-class by taking either extreme of talking about speculative support for a group like the EDL, nor for talking about speculative support of a group attached to something like the UAF (not that you have done this).

It's good that you've had no problems with holding stalls and distributions but this neglects the fact that in Manchester recently UAF/Socialist Students stalls in the town have been disrupted by people under the EDL banner, as well as a recent UAF meeting having to be disbanded- these actions have also occured in other cities, with videos uploaded upon youtube.
If anyone knows their British antifascist history, then they would know that it was due to these more aggressive moves by the National Front and Loyalists, both types of whom have somewhat into the EDL (though not always welcomed nor appreciated by the EDL leadership but nonetheless have both been attending the recent flurry of demostrations over the UK), that lead to the creation of the Squads. So, learning from the experiences of radical political history, and the grow of fascism/far right groups in general, it would be reckless to assert that this is a non issue and let it grow when it can potenially be diverted.