EDL revert to type

fascism with a feathery face

Times are hard for the English Defence League. As they drift ever further into obscurity and irrelevance – continuing to insist to anyone who’ll listen that the single greatest threat to the British working class right now is the impending arrival of islamofascism – their tactics are becoming increasingly desperate.

Britain’s inevitable transformation to an Islamic Republic could, according to the dogma to which the EDL subscribe, come from anywhere. So while the minds of the population have been concentrated on slightly greater issues – namely the path of total destruction of the welfare state that the Tories are currently taking us down with glee – the EDL have spent the past few months running around in chicken suits outside fast food restaurants, in a bid to halt the encroach of halal chicken across Britain. Sharia law is surely only a step away.

And just last week, it was reported that dozens of EDL members have submitted compensation claims after they were involved in a “horrifying” (read: minor paint damage) coach crash en route to a demonstration in Preston in November. With 78 claims submitted, it soon transpired that there was only about 25 EDL supporters on the coach. Although maybe they’re keen to recoup some cash from all the lucrative merchandise money they’ve been losing out on after their transactions list was leaked recently. Understandably, the coach company aren’t amused.

However, while laughing at the English Defence League has become a new national sport, it would be foolish to write the organisation off. The growing sense of political polarisation, which will intensify as the cuts begin to be felt, is not lost on the EDL. Earlier this month, leadership figure “Tommy Robinson” (real name Steven Yaxley-Lennon) gave a flavour of the direction the EDL are moving in. Responding to the student demonstrations which shook the country in November and early December, Robinson told an assembled mob in Peterborough that the EDL are “disgusted with the behaviour of the so called fuckin’ students in London… we support British police, we are their allies…. we never want to see the British police attacked by people of this country”, with no sense of irony.

What followed was a confused mess of misdirected class anger, casual racism and out-and-out jingoism. There’s the references to ‘our boys’ and Britain’s imperial wars abroad,  much more adoration of ‘British police’, the usual digs at ‘the Muzzies’ and then a lot of OUTRAGE at the people who ‘desecrated’ the statue of Churchill in Westminster, a man who represents “every single thing this country is about” and is a “fuckin’ prophet”. He even tells the mob that ”every EDL member should shake the hand of a British policeman”. It’s unclear whether the eleven arrests that took place later in the day were actually just the police overreacting to friendly handshakes.

But beyond this fawning patriotism, his greatest vitriol is reserved for ‘the students’, who “do not understand what it is to be a working class member of this community” and “never ever lived a normal day in their life”. Pretty remarkable given that that the demonstrations have been precisely about access to uni for working class students, battling a government determined to raise fees to a level that will burden all but the richest graduates for life.

Tommy Robinson (far left) at a BNP meeting in 2007 - he's consistently denied any connection to the party

But it’s an identical narrative to the one that the tabloids have been ramming down our throats over the past two months. Within hours of the Millbank demo, journalists were pouring through the facebook pages and backgrounds of so-called ‘ringleaders’, attempting to smear them, and by implication all, students as upper class, undeserving and spoilt. Similar tactics have since been used against UKuncut. The agenda here is clear – to make their predominantly working class readership feel distance from the student and anti-cuts struggles, by painting all those within them as either reckless militants (Bob Crow, Len McLuskey) or upper class kids living out their teenage rebellion. The idea that normal people are out on the streets terrifies the media – which is why they’ll do everything to convince their readers otherwise, and place that distance between them.

The EDL are not a traditional party of the far-right, but the consequence of years of tabloid lies about Muslims, immigrants and asylum seekers – their politics more  The Sun than Der Sturmer. But the EDL are adapting to the times and it’s little surprise that they’re now concentrating as much of their ire on ‘students’ and ‘reds’ as ‘the Muzzies’. It also neatly fits in with their bullshit notions of ‘old Albion’ and bizarre view of British history, with the students, allegedly, seeking to destroy everything that makes Britain great – statues of racist Prime Ministers, for instance, while the EDL frame themselves as the valiant last defence against Islamo-Bolshevik takeover.

In a time of crisis, the English Defence League are reverting to fascist type. They claim to be the true voice of the English working class – but it’s clear on which side they really stand. They idolise the Queen and Winston Churchill, who was an admirer of Italian fascism, ordered troops to march on workers during the 1926 General Strike and held a racist and anti-semitic worldview. For all that they claim Britain is a “two tier” system, they crucially fail to see the real dividing line – not their fantasy of a system that favours Muslims above all others, but of the class divide.

Currently, the EDL are content with running around after Anjem Choudary’s equally deranged Jihad4Anglia warriors and scrubbing graffiti off of Churchill’s statue. But is it beyond the realms of possibility that, over the coming twelve months and as class conflict intensifies, the EDL will be turning up at pickets to intimidate striking workers, beating up students protesters or, as in Greece, providing back-up militia to riot police? History tells us it is not – underlining the crucial importance of class-oriented anti-fascist work in the period we’re now in.