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The EDL Member Who Turned His Back On Far-Right Politics

It was fear that drove people there. Many family men, they want to know what the future holds for their families. Then you’ve got other lads who are simply crying for help. … A lot of them can’t articulate how they feel, so they let someone else speak for them. These lads have never had a job. Never visited a dentist in the last 20 years. Around 30% of the EDL was made up of unemployed lads. I could see them going out looking for hope. And what is presented to them is just like that video “This Is My England” on the EDL website: It’s a mirage. The beautiful landscape and the pretty things they see of rural England on that video, about their country, their nation, are not within their reach. … It’s not theirs. But they followed it. They acted out their feelings. They follow their instinct looking for some meaning. But they’d been defeated years ago. Just defeated.
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Drugs have become a huge problem. Opposite the Parrot pub (on the Farley Hill estate), you have some lovely little council flats. The council just put crackies in there. It was never like that. Heroin was creeping in. If you’re not working, you’re gonna be taking or selling drugs. The local government stopped investing in the estates. There’s no more affordable social housing. The estates were turned into slums. The government doesn’t care about young people. Gordon Brown talked about apprenticeship; my son is 24 and is one of the few lucky ones who got apprenticeships. There’s none for his generation. All my son’s mates are out of work, desperate to get an apprenticeship. They want progression. They want to do something. They want to be called something.
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I’ve come full circle. I see it as going back to my working-class roots. I think I’ve always been a socialist deep down, without knowing. I look back at the 1980s as if it were a black-and-white era, without any colour. The struggle remained fresh in my memory – it was a real hardcore decade for the working class, following on from the winter of discontent. … In the past, individual working-class people were never afraid to stand up and have a say. We’d had that since the 1970s and all the way to the 1980s. … There was very much a community spirit back then. We had the Toxteth riot of 1981. … We had the miners having a say. … But it’s been different since. The community spirit was all smashed during the Thatcher years. … I regretted having joined the EDL. It ain’t nowhere to go. I want to be part of making a difference. For me, putting the EDL street movement behind and joining the union and labour movement was one of the most important decisions in my life.
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Vs

some egs on way off life

- do rubish job you hate or no job and no money

- crap wether most of time

- town looks grey and concreet evrywhere

- everyone rips you of (agane dont say too much about this sounds leftie if you do)

- maybe drink a lot

- football x factor or britain got talunt are high light of week

- blame muslims and imigrunts for any off above that is bad

- think about muslims having sex with kids
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all in all way off life can be depresing a bit so balance it with the other things

use all above in clever ways as what you are realysaying is NO MORE MUSLIMS (AND PROBERLY BLACKS REALY) BETER BE RID OF THE ONES HERE THEN THINGS WILL BE OK AGANE WHEN EVERONE IS LIKE US (apart from left for who theres other ways of shuting up and geting rid off)
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treelover said:
hope this gets circulated, some of the people I am aware who protested against the EDL had very mixed motives, especially some of the posher ones.
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I've not seen a single one of the dedicated anti-edl 'groups' circulate it - despite appearing to send 10 tweets or write a blog piece every time some edl supporters farts.
 
Good piece. Speaking broadly: these guys, they are mainly men, have been and are generally ignored. Since they were kids even. They might not have always behaved well, football, fighting, drugs, partying. And some are bone fide racists, no hope for them. But personally I feel with these people and Ukip voters groups/people/political parties simply need to talk to these guys. Approach them, treat them with basic manners and respect, have a sense of humour and treat them as equals. Not keen on anecdotes or personal stuff on the internet but I'm 99pc sure it would work. Of course it should have been done a long time ago. Of course what structures do you use to do it? But it's not impossible. The way the caste have withdrawn like the tide from difficult men, often but not always working class men, the contempt they are held in gives us this. Feeds it. The left too I'm afraid in my experience.
 
Again very broadly: it's like the saying `bored alienated kids cause trouble`. These are bored alienated men. It is pretty obvious. Some big chunks of British society have been left to rot in the last 35 years. Also the problems with men, gender issues. Who cares for troublesome young men? They are almost universally hated, especially by other men. Men in between the ages of 15 and 40, older even *coughs*, need a lot of handling. Not when they commit awful crimes, it's not an excuse for them. It's easy to see, not just in UK society but in every nation state, through history. But when the EDL are on the streets. Well, fuck them and their minders in blue.
 
it seems many people who oppose them think that the EDL is over, as do many EDL, especially after robinson left and who is currently sniffing round UKIP - altho being exBNP he may not be accepted. it will be no surprise that EDL will vote Ukip. also, there are perhaps 'fariweather anti-fascists' as there are 'fairweather fascists.'
 
Is a 'fair-weather anti-fascist' someone who refuses to get out of bed to oppose an almost-defunct group on a drizzly Saturday morning?
 
malatesta32 said:
it seems many people who oppose them think that the EDL is over, as do many EDL, especially after robinson left and who is currently sniffing round UKIP - altho being exBNP he may not be accepted. it will be no surprise that EDL will vote Ukip. also, there are perhaps 'fariweather anti-fascists' as there are 'fairweather fascists.'
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Thunderfist said:
No - they're somebody who never got out of bed at all.
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Name names.
 
I know a bloke in the EDL , half Brazilian full Manc , who aside from ' we want our country back ' hates the far right , hates UKIP , the coalition sees Labour as no solution and pretty much agrees with my pro working class views.
Quick to make a dig at Muslims though.

Get the feeling that if there were more us he'd be one if us .
 
The EDL's a funny forum for his views then. 'Cos they want the country back from militant Islam. Bit like me going on a Countryside Alliance demo because I'm anti-police.
 
What was your point? That some people have been snobbish about the EDL online and therefore that makes them paragons of gritty authentic working class resistance?
 
From the case Butcher's links to above - What kind of nonsense is this charge? Presumably something aimed at the blackshirts given the date of the act, but still. Maybe they can use it against the dicks wearing V for Vendetta masks too.

On that day, Golding also wore a political uniform in the form of a Britain First members only jacket, which is an offence under the Public Order Act 1936.
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(From http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/Bri...tory-25808029-detail/story.html#ixzz3O41rxNNO )
 
Dogsauce said:
From the case Butcher's links to above - What kind of nonsense is this charge? Presumably something aimed at the blackshirts given the date of the act, but still. Maybe they can use it against the dicks wearing V for Vendetta masks too.



(From http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/Bri...tory-25808029-detail/story.html#ixzz3O41rxNNO )
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That's what it is - first prosecution being against an anti-fascist i seem to remember. Don't think they can use it against those clowns - they do have something to use against people masked up though.
 
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Act_1936

In November 1974, 12 people were each fined the maximum £50 under the Act for wearing black berets at Speaker's Corner during a Sinn Féin anti-internment rally.[7]
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It's one of those discretionary laws for use against people the state doesn't like isn't it? I've no sympathy for Golding, but this charge smacks of vindictive bullshit.

Maybe they could nick a few Orangemen?
 
it doesn't count in NI for some reason.

I saw a docu on the Cable Street mural a week or two back and the historian bloke was saying how it was the thin end of the wedge and ended up being used against organised dissent throughout the empire
 
Dogsauce said:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Act_1936



It's one of those discretionary laws for use against people the state doesn't like isn't it? I've no sympathy for Golding, but this charge smacks of vindictive bullshit.

Maybe they could nick a few Orangemen?
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completely discretionary because what constitutes a 'political uniform' isn't defined in law. Think Golding's got good grounds for appeal - back in the day members of the Social Credit party were acquitted of the same charge despite wearing all green with armbands displaying the party's insignia.
 
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