The English Defence League protest on 9 October in Leicester showed yet again that they are a violent racist force whose protests and demonstrations cannot be ignored but need to be physically opposed and if possible prevented by mass mobilisations.

Whilst the bulk of nearly 1,000 EDLers were bussed from their congregation point in four local pubs to their static protest in Humberstone Gate, organised gangs of their supporters wandered across the town provoking confrontation with Asian youths. There must have been at least fifty thugs carrying out such provocations around the town with a great many attacks on Muslim and Asian people. Some at least of which were physically answered by groups of black and Asian youth.

The official counter protest called by the UAF was a minor and embarrassing sideshow of probably no more than 300. The UAF on the day were not only bad with their event they were even worse with their propaganda. The leaflet they gave out on the day even explicitly counselled Asian youth to refrain from engaging in physical confrontation and therefore even self-defence from the EDL: “Sections of the press and TV as well as some of the police … believe that the anti-racists and young people of this city will react to the EDL and cause trouble. Today we must prove them wrong”! (‘Leicester Unite Against Fascism – Safety Guidelines’ leaflet).

Meanwhile probably about 2,500 other anti-racists were out on the streets opposing the EDL. The vast majority of these were Muslim and other black and Asian people in the Highfields district of the town. The rest from a great many uncoordinated socialist and anarchist groups without any central organisation. The lesson learnt by these groups, and not just the non-UAF organised left, is that the kettled carnivals held by the UAF are no answer to the racist thugs of the EDL.

A number of the anti-EDL groups acting independently from the UAF were able to respond in kind to the EDL attacks. But the racist intimidation and violence of the EDL was very real and very frightening to many Asians in town, or moving around town, on their daily business. Such organised racist intimidation cannot be continually allowed to happen.

The most aggressive of the EDL's attacks occurred at the end of their static protest as they were being directed to their coaches to leave the town. At that point abysmal policing allowed something like 300 EDLers to push through their lines and chase local Asian youths and other anti-fascists.

For 10 minutes there was chaos as EDLers spread across the wide inner-ring road and attacked cars and people on the ring-road who were Asians.

Fortunately they had no plan and no idea where they were going. Nevertheless a proportion of them did make their way 600 yards towards the strongly Muslim area of Highfields. After 10 minutes of police chaos, whilst some Asians defended themselves and the area from the EDL, the police eventually were able to regain some control over the EDL breakaway.

Had the EDL made their way further up into Highfields they would not have fared well. The local people in Highfields had been out on their streets all day in several hundreds. But as news spread of the continuing attacks in town by the EDL and especially their break-out at the end of their protest, people poured out of their houses and the number of anti-racists on the streets of Highfields grew to about 2,000. The main organising force was undoubtedly religious groupings around the Mosque. The prominent one probably being the Muslim Defence League which had contingents mobilised across the region.

It was admirable that the local Muslim population were prepared to ignore the advice of both Hope not Hate and UAF not to defend themselves on the streets against the EDL. It is regrettable that the only people to join them were small number of activists mainly from the Stop Racism and Fascism network and the very recently formed and still small Leicester United Against Racism campaign.

With the weak public visibility of these campaigns, reports as usual have attributed the activities of physical self-defence to the UAF. But in Highfields they were even less visible than they had been in Bradford when the EDL were similarly physically confronted.

The working class movement has to recognise the futility of the advice given them by the both Hope not Hate and the UAF. The violent racism of the EDL will not be stopped by the police. It will not be stopped by prayers or multi-racial carnivals, either before and after the EDL protest as promoted by the Hope not Hate campaign or on the same day as organised by the UAF.

The EDL will not be given publicity by anti-racists mobilising directly against them. They have enough publicity as a result of the police action. They do not gain support because they seem harmless racists; they gain support because they are a focal point for racism and violence. They get publicity by 'kicking their way into the headlines'.

The EDL will be stopped by anti-racists of all races and ethnic backgrounds, who are not embarrassed as identifying themselves as a working class force, taking to the streets. Not merely defending the Muslim areas but stopping the EDL from sending their racist gangs across the area as was so successfully done in Bradford. But that takes organisation and engaging and refuting the nonsensical arguments raised by Hope not Hate and UAF. It means building accountable local campaigns of working class anti-racists before they appear in your town. Importantly, it means building those campaigns even more energetically and widely when they threaten to march.

It means connecting up with the Stop Racism and Fascism Network which is attempting to do that along with the Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance.

Dave Matthews

(See www.srfnetwork.org for more information)