Who are the English Defence League?

On Sunday I attended a demonstration outside a Mosque near Harrow Civic Centre. The reason, to oppose plans by the English Defence League (EDL) to intimidate Muslims going to the Mosque.

Who are the EDL?

Well, in my opinion they are a ‘football hooligan’ unofficial arm of the BNP. It would not surprise me to learn that those in the EDL are also in the BNP.

The BNP have decided that they need to look address their image in order to appeal to voters, so this sort of thuggery would be bad for votes. So we have the EDL.

The turn out from across London on a very, very cold Sunday afternoon was fantastic and a big thanks needs to go out to those organisers.

Whilst the turn out was good, what was worrying was the official response I have been hearing to the EDL is to stay at home if they target your place of worship in order to avoid any incident.

I think this is a dangerous strategy which appears to allow these thugs to dictate when and where citizens can go to worship. I thought to myself, what if they had targeted St Paul’s Cathedral, would the advice to the congregation been to stay at home? I would suggest not, so why should Muslims in Harrow feel they need to hide away. We need to send a message to all faith groups that they have our support and should have the right to attend their places of worship without fear of intimidation.

As a Trade Union it is important that we are rooted in our communities and understand our members represent a broad cross section of faiths.

How to deal with EDL, BNP?

It would be foolish to think that by calling then Nazi’s (some of them were Seig Heiling today)

They are much more sophisticated and have recognised that mainstream politicians have lost the confidence of the electorate.

We need to address the issues that the likes of the BNP try to monopolise with sound bite outbursts.  

Today I saw them use the Israeli flag it is obvious they are trying to divide communities. It was good to see a Leader from the Jewish Community stand up and condemn them for using the Israeli flag and promote inter faith cooperation.

I think today was a warning to all our communities of what is to come in the run up to the national and local elections.

Nick Griffin is standing in Barking & Dagenham and I believe this will be signal the start of a London wide campaign to elect as many candidates as possible across London.  

We need to organise quickly across trade unions, faith groups and local& national politicians.  

Unfortunately I don’t think this will be the last time I will be attending one of these rallies on next time I hope some of Barnet UNISON members may want to join me?