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EDL watch

Kev Scott LTJ said:
Is it because the EDL are now so washed up / in the Met's pocket that the Police can now turn their attention to the anti's?
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No it's the opposite. The EDl are hardly washed up. The opposition to them is increasing and is hard for the police to manage. The police are all about control. The mass arrest of anti EDl protesters enables the Met to set restrictive bail conditions for ages thus keeping the anti's from continuing opposition (or so they think), and enables the police to conduct a huge fishing operation in collecting finger prints, DNA records, addresses, phone contacts etc.
 
malatesta32 said:
plod have not had a great history of containing the fash - leicester, stoke, bradford, brighton - so they really use heavy manners to avoid embarrassment.
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I must say from what I have seen (although I've not been to an EDL demo for over a year) the EDL were contained more forcefully than the opposition.

I think other than Bolton and this last Tower Hamlets demo, the EDL have been treated worse than the anti-fascists. In Bolton they clearly had some sort of agenda with the size of arrests and the people they arrested. I reckon it was pre-planned in Tower Hamlets too, they were just waiting for a reason which the anti-fascists were always going to give them.
 
Red Storm said:
I must say from what I have seen (although I've not been to an EDL demo for over a year) the EDL were contained more forcefully than the opposition.

I think other than Bolton and this last Tower Hamlets demo, the EDL have been treated worse than the anti-fascists. In Bolton they clearly had some sort of agenda with the size of arrests and the people they arrested. I reckon it was pre-planned in Tower Hamlets too, they were just waiting for a reason which the anti-fascists were always going to give them.
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Definitely. Though I think UAF's bizarre 'strategy' in Bolton played a significant role in the way things turned out too. I still haven't got a clue wtf they thought they were doing.
 
I've never entirely worked Tatchell out - but this initiative strikes me as a good one. Kinda runs contrary to a significant part of the EDL rhetoric, and demonstrates it with incontrovertible reality.

edl-demo-1-7-Sep-13-lr.jpg


http://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/anti-edl-rally-tower-hamlets-7-september-2013
 
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Red Storm said:
What strategy do you mean?

I can't really remember much and I was nicked really early on.
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I put it in scare quotes cos there didn't really seem to be one. But there was a row of coppers at the back of the cordon (furthest away from the EDL) who you could just walk around. Why you'd have wanted to I don't know cos it would have taken you away from the EDL. But anyway, they had people pushing against the police at the back there, and against the harris fence at the side in the corner despite the fact that you could just walk around it. They were coming over to other parts of the cordon and saying 'we need comrades to help in the corner over there' to get more over there pushing. I have no idea why. But it ended with people being pushed into the old bill and getting arrested for no good reason, and some appearing to get quite badly hurt. I went over thinking some EDL had got through or the coppers were beating someone up who needed help or something but just ended up getting pushed into the coppers who tried to arrest me but I got pulled back out.

It looked as though they'd done everything they could to make sure as many people as possible came into physical and often violent contact with the police. I have considered the possibility that this was indeed their intention and they did it to show how violent the coppers were so people wouldn't trust them - like they were trying to radicalise people. I don't think they were though, I think they were just trying to be as wadical as possible and everyone knows that you need to kick off with the old bill if you want to be wadical.

I vowed not to go to another UAF demo after that but was tempted a few months later by one in Dudley - just to see what was going on and whether anything had changed. This time I got there early and went for a wander but since it was just me, a blind man and a 13 year old we decided it was prudent to return to the cordon when EDL got there cos we couldn't have run or faught really - but the stewards wouldn't let us in because they thought we were EDL cos I have short hair and was wearing an addidas top. If the bloke I was with hadn;t known the phone number of a SWP organiser who came and got us in we could have got battered. That was the final straw, never going near their counter-demos again, I'd rather run around with the dog on a string brigade than that.
 
Has anyone done a summary of last saturdays goings on in Tower Hamlets?

Who won?:)

I listened to the Yaxley lemon speech on Youtube, no more talk of terrorists, just direct racism directed at muslims and tacit support for Assad's regime dressed up as concern for our troops.

Highlight of events was not the crossdresser at EDL but UK Apache singing at Altab Ali park.

 
Yeah, he got it in between David Cameron and Syria. He definitely said, Charity walk.

Here's another charity walk
 
Those arrested on Saturday represent the London I have come to know: ethnically diverse, of all ages and from a range of economic backgrounds; bound together by mutual respect of difference and recognition of shared commonality. On the other hand the actions of the police on the day represented the continuation of a strategy based on a complete disdain for the principles of free association and assembly. A bronze commander standing by a number of empty buses, soon to be filled with protesters, smirked when he said: "We're not leaving until these wagons are full." Such words and the equivalence he drew between a politically engaged public and cattle to fill quotas belies the contempt in which the public, when they choose to disagree, are ultimately held.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/peaceful-protest-anti-fascist-protesters-edl
 
SpineyNorman said:
I put it in scare quotes cos there didn't really seem to be one. But there was a row of coppers at the back of the cordon (furthest away from the EDL) who you could just walk around. Why you'd have wanted to I don't know cos it would have taken you away from the EDL. But anyway, they had people pushing against the police at the back there, and against the harris fence at the side in the corner despite the fact that you could just walk around it. They were coming over to other parts of the cordon and saying 'we need comrades to help in the corner over there' to get more over there pushing. I have no idea why. But it ended with people being pushed into the old bill and getting arrested for no good reason, and some appearing to get quite badly hurt. I went over thinking some EDL had got through or the coppers were beating someone up who needed help or something but just ended up getting pushed into the coppers who tried to arrest me but I got pulled back out.

It looked as though they'd done everything they could to make sure as many people as possible came into physical and often violent contact with the police. I have considered the possibility that this was indeed their intention and they did it to show how violent the coppers were so people wouldn't trust them - like they were trying to radicalise people. I don't think they were though, I think they were just trying to be as wadical as possible and everyone knows that you need to kick off with the old bill if you want to be wadical.

I vowed not to go to another UAF demo after that but was tempted a few months later by one in Dudley - just to see what was going on and whether anything had changed. This time I got there early and went for a wander but since it was just me, a blind man and a 13 year old we decided it was prudent to return to the cordon when EDL got there cos we couldn't have run or faught really - but the stewards wouldn't let us in because they thought we were EDL cos I have short hair and was wearing an addidas top. If the bloke I was with hadn;t known the phone number of a SWP organiser who came and got us in we could have got battered. That was the final straw, never going near their counter-demos again, I'd rather run around with the dog on a string brigade than that.
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I agree about the lack of strategy on the day, in fact my first thought when you said UAF strategy, was what strategy.

Strange thing is people like delroy claim it wasn't UAF pushing in the corner but UAF trying to stop it. My impression was the same as yours though.
 
emanymton said:
I agree about the lack of strategy on the day, in fact my first thought when you said UAF strategy, was what strategy.

Strange thing is people like delroy claim it wasn't UAF pushing in the corner but UAF trying to stop it. My impression was the same as yours though.
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I like delroy but he's completely wrong if that's what he's saying - they were going round inside the cordon appealing for people to come over and push.
 
malatesta32 said:
me, raknor, nanker and a few others were with EDL news:
http://edlnews.co.uk/index.php/latest-news/latest-news/1182-500-edl-fail-to-make-it-to-tower-hamlets
i was gonna do one but it wd have just been repeating EDL News's.
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"the group reached that point as the EDL reached the top of Tower Bridge, forcing police to stop the EDL march while they decided what to do, and when the police found they couldn't push the antifascists back they had to divert the EDL march into the city and away from the residential areas of Tower Hamlets as the EDL had planned."

The above statement just isnt true, unfortunetly, Plod had always planned on Minories being the route

From the met

EDL: March from Queen Elizabeth St. Tower Bridge Rd, Tower Bridge Approach, The Minories, Aldgate High St no further than Mansell St junction, and same return route. No more than 30 minute static protest at Aldgate East. No joining or leaving march at any point on route after start. Time limited to 12 - 3pm (by which time they mist be back at Queen Elizabeth St and disperse.
 
emanymton said:
I agree about the lack of strategy on the day, in fact my first thought when you said UAF strategy, was what strategy.

Strange thing is people like delroy claim it wasn't UAF pushing in the corner but UAF trying to stop it. My impression was the same as yours though.
Click to expand...

Where did I say that? There's some confusion here I think, although that's not surprising it was a quite confusing situation at the time, maybe my recollection isn't perfect, I don't know tbh.

SpineyNorman said:
I like delroy but he's completely wrong if that's what he's saying - they were going round inside the cordon appealing for people to come over and push.
Click to expand...

^ This definitely happened I saw that. and this:

I put it in scare quotes cos there didn't really seem to be one. But there was a row of coppers at the back of the cordon (furthest away from the EDL) who you could just walk around. Why you'd have wanted to I don't know cos it would have taken you away from the EDL. But anyway, they had people pushing against the police at the back there, and against the harris fence at the side in the corner despite the fact that you could just walk around it. They were coming over to other parts of the cordon and saying 'we need comrades to help in the corner over there' to get more over there pushing
Click to expand...

Also tallies with what I remember. One of the strangest things I've ever seen that was.

I remember there being some other pushing and shoving around that fence to the side, which was to do with a police snatch squad going in to nick Weymann and Martin iirc, although again i'm going off hazy memories so maybe I'm wrong, I think that's what happened at the time.
 
Twitter's a twitter about the UAF being informed of potential for mass arrests if they left the park. Shame nobody else got told.
 
Delroy Booth said:
Where did I say that? There's some confusion here I think, although that's not surprising it was a quite confusing situation at the time, maybe my recollection isn't perfect, I don't know tbh.



^ This definitely happened I saw that. and this:



Also tallies with what I remember. One of the strangest things I've ever seen that was.

I remember there being some other pushing and shoving around that fence to the side, which was to do with a police snatch squad going in to nick Weymann and Martin iirc, although again i'm going off hazy memories so maybe I'm wrong, I think that's what happened at the time.
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Could be the time of day getting confused, over on the SWP thread I thought you said you said you tried to push it if the corner against the wishes of UAF. But I think that might have been earlier in the day while spinney was talking about latter? Can we all agree that UAF strategy on the day was shit?
 
emanymton said:
Could be the time of day getting confused, over on the SWP thread I thought you said you said you tried to push it if the corner against the wishes of UAF. But I think that might have been earlier in the day while spinney was talking about latter?
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I think there's some crossed wires here, but I don't want to be going through it all again. Bad enough having to endure it the first time without re-living the horrors.

I don't even trust my own memory of what went on that day any more, didn't help that I got shitfaced as soon as I got home from Bolton. :D

emanymton said:
Can we all agree that UAF strategy on the day was shit?
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Yup, no arguments from me on that one. I've avoided UAF like the plague ever since.

The only people who are winning in this EDL/UAF merry go round are the police, who've got an easy way to collect information on right-wing and left-wing protestors they don't like. They're the ones who win, not us.
 
On a friday afternoon? These things regularly popped up down here the week after the last 'big' edl thing in bristol - OMG the EDL are in fishponds, marching to town!!!!
 
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