We are Bradford (our defense from the threat of the far right fascist EDL)

Below here is Lenin from Lenin's Tomb's analysis of yesterdays event in Bradford. I went there ready to stand firm against the EDL and yes we did that, but also we had a really good time; a party in fact, some prayers for peace, some singing, dancing and meeting up with old and dear friends. The MDL, Muslim defense league also did a beautiful job of stopping the EDL as Lenin writes...

Saturday, August 28, 2010
The 'big one' was a washout for the EDL posted by lenin
Well well. I haven't time to update you on everything that happened yesterday. You should have been following me on Twitter if you weren't. You can see some pics too. But the big picture is perhaps best encapsulated by the well known acronym: wtf? As in, wtf was all of this hysterical nonsense about 'riots'? As in, wtf was all of this about the EDL making Bradford their 'big one'.



Because the first claim, that holding an antifascist demonstration in Bradford would inevitably provoke a riot and couldn't be carried off peacefully, was the rationale for the police delivering leaflets through people's doors warning people not to attend the counter-demo or risk being arrested - reminding people of how many years people were (disgracefully) sent down for after 2001. It was the rationale for the council, supported by the police, calling a poorly attended 'multicultural event' out of its fundament and telling Asian lads effectively that if they didn't want to get arrested they should go to Manningham instead of the city centre. It was the rationale for local council-funded mosques organising day trips to take the youth out of the city. It was the rationale for all the smearing and nonsense from Searchlight and the Telegraph and Argus and the police and the council - though, to their credit, eight local councillors supported the 'We Are Bradford' protest, and one of them turned up and spoke.

The combined forces of the national and local state, the local media and an anti-fascist group with union funding were all against this protest happening at all, and they put incredible pressure on people. We couldn't mobilise many people at Exchange Square. I would have expected a few thousand people under normal circumstances. In fact, it was closer to one thousand, though admittedly it was a rather boisterous one thousand, with music, dancing and brrrraaap-brrrrraaap aplenty. Many of those present would probably rather have been out there with the local people when they decided to confront the EDL directly. But that would not have been possible with so many police present. And the point, that antifascists could stage a peaceful protest in the centre of Bradford without triggering a 'race riot', and that it is the racists and fascists, not antifascists and not local communities, who start riots, was made.

As for the EDL's big day out, it was a shambles that ended with fascists and racists getting their arses kicked and their collars felt. This wasn't mainly because of the police. It was because lots of the normal crowd were scared off by the possibility of having a fight with local Asians. This is going to be a long-term problem for them. They can't physically intimidate Muslim communities in Britain, which is supposed to be their rationale. They can build a periphery of racists, some of whom will come along to their demonstrations if there's little risk to themselves. They can provide the (almost bankrupt) BNP with a recruiting base. They can write acres of masturbatory 'poetry' for their websites, and produce little black hoodies with the EDL logo on. They can beat people up in small numbers. Indeed, where they think they've got an easy target, they can mobilise several thousand people who are ready for a ruck, prepared to break police lines and go on a riot. But Braford, 'home turf', 'the big one'...? No, the majority of the 'infidels' didn't dare turn up to that one.



For most of the protest, 800 EDL were penned into a mothballed shopping centre project surrounded by large fances. They had spent the morning getting tanked up, on an agreement with the police who laid on double decker busses to take them to and from the pubs. They presumably had more than a few carry outs while they were in penned in to the 'Urban Gardens'. During this time, they regaled onlooking journalists with their usual repertoire of 'Allah is a paedo', and added a new chant of 'we love the floods' in reference to the recent catastrophe in Pakistan. When it turned out that a small, multi-racial crowd of local people had arrived opposite the EDL protest zone, the EDL started throwing bricks, bottles and even a smoke bomb in their fury. My understanding is that, unlike in 2001, local Asian kids made it clear to police that they weren't interested in fighting with coppers and that their main goal was to defend the local community. To that end, they tolerated a lot of shit and provocations from the police, refusing to be goaded into brawling with them: a lot of tactical lessons have been.

In the end, a few hundred EDL succeeded in breaking through the police cordons and started to run riot. Now, I put it to you that if 8,000 cops, with helicopters, mounted officers, surveillance and superior control of the geography, couldn't contain a few hundred fascist and racist thugs, this is because they were more obsessed with 'controlling' Asian youths (the paranoid racism of West Yorkshire Police hasn't changed) and antifascists than anything else. This vindicates the argument that the state can never be relied on to combat fascism. As it happened, it was hundreds of Asian kids, almost a thousand of them, who appeared as if from nowhere and stopped the EDL in their tracks, giving a few of them a good battering before sending them running back to the police to be voluntarily kettled again. If the high point of the EDL's day was getting back under police protection and saving themselves from the local community, you know it's an #EPIC #FAIL.

The tragedy is that those kids had to do it by themselves. The tragedy is that an antifascist group, and the local media, and the police, and the council have spent months mobilising against a counter-demonstration. The tragedy is that people's energies were not harnessed to building up local capacity for resisting the EDL, such that tens of thousands were out in opposition to the fash, so that they didn't dare try to riot. If that had happened, there wouldn't have been a peep from the EDL. They would have been extremely well behaved, for a bunch of bevvied racists, and left early. Instead, that vital energy was wasted in a campaign for a ban that was only ever going to lead to exactly the pattern of 'static' protest followed by EDL rioting, ultimately contained by well organised local people, that ensued. It's a disgrace that people were organising poorly attended separate events (the 'multicultural event' drew about 100 people at its height), doing everything they could to prevent unity on the day. Lessons will have to be learned from this.

One last thing. How is it that all the news noticed that there there was a peaceful UAF protest in the city centre, and that neither Hope Not Hate nor the Telegraph and Argus appeared to? Why were there surreal reports, obviously written from miles away, with wholly invented details and wholly separate events blurred? What is the point of that, after everything else that has transpired?

Labels: anti-fascism, bradford, edl, english defence league, fascism, islamophobia, racism, uaf, unite against fascism

The anti fascists who came to Bradford were royally entertained, what a way to go; superb tactics on the day, and a nice victory for all anti fascists.

The years of the Independent Woman

I just love this hip hop track by Roxanne Shante, she was one of the first female hip hop artists and dates way back to I think around 1984, or it might even be earlier than that, she was fourteen when she first started to use the mic and she is roughly the same age as I am.

When hip hop started to get rough and mean with things like gansta rap, it was difficult for the ladies to be part of it as there was a lot of disrespect towards women with them either being referred to constantly as ho's (whores) or if the music and lyrics were not about women at all the rap videos became soft porn massive with marketing and objectification of women going on at that time.

Roxanne Shante made one rap song bringing down her female counterparts like Monie Love and others who I can't think of their names at the moment, she was basically saying that she (Roxanne) was the first, which she was, but there was no need to dis those that came after her.

They say and I think its true that imitation is the highest form of flattery.

But at this time say early nineties, the days of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, the industry was more about porn and ganstas and it was not what hip hop had been about originally.

It was the girls who really added flavour in the beginning, when they got mistreated, they left hip hop by and large and got into the new R and B, formally and briefly known as swing.

There are girls in hip hop now, like Missey Elliot, good as she is, some of her earlier stuff reflected the bitches and ho mentality when she said that women involved in sex industries are the winners, 'ahead of the game' is the term she used. This is the sort of pressures that women were under then and perhaps to a lesser extent still are now, giving support to an industry that totally undermines women, our health and relationships.

We are not sex objects.

Those early days of hip hop certainly were inspiring and encapsulated a feeling of liberty like no other music form before. Although it has been pointed out to me that groups like 'the lost poets' from the 1960's civil rights movement days where probably the roots of 1980's hip hop.

It is so good that it has lasted coming up for four decades, today there are many political hip hop rappers like Lowkey and Immortal Technique and all kinds unsigned and really excellent ones.

However I would argue that there is still a lack of female rappers unlike in the early 1980's when there were so many.

Roxanne Shante now works as a psychologist.

Do I, do I, do I? No, sorry, I do not marry

Now this may be controversial, not that I am known for this type of writing or behaviour of course, I have just seen yet another set of wedding photos and after a very short while in, the pictures and the whole scenario starts to grate on my heart, I start to feel terribly inadequate and the more you watch, the greater these feelings get.

Its all about the beautiful young couple, their devotion and dedication to one another, that's ok, I'm not knocking that, but why do they have to emanate being rich and posh for the day?

I guess these are the weddings that are on the market, and just the done thing.

These imposing environments are just a reminder of whose world this belongs to and people buy into it just for a day, but a very significant and what should be a most poignant day of expressing love gets turned into property relations sanctified by privilege and all the negativity that goes along with it. Things like pride, jealousy, feelings of inadequacy, feelings of loneliness and so on.

Most young girls and children want to get married and I was no different, at the age of about ten years old I asked my father if I could have a horse drawn carriage at my future wedding, and was shocked by his abject negativity towards the idea. I pursued him with the idea he basically said that they cost too much money, a factor a ten year old has the bliss of not taking into consideration while dreaming, until my dear father burst that bubble.

Perhaps if he had said yes, I will do anything for you my lovely daughter I might be married to this day, who knows.

As a teenager, I was very rebellious and decided at about fifteen or so, the age I decided to become a left wing political activist that I did not want marriage for myself. I was not going to go around denouncing it for other people but I had made a personal choice and one that was based on witnessing the break down of my parents marriage and the impossibility they had for a while of ending it amicably as incompatibility was not an option in those days.

My heart strings were pulled on the idea of marriage during my first relationship, and I remember having vague and intermittent fantasies of being in our local church with my lover then to be my husband turning around to see me look beautiful in a fantastic dress.

However that bubble was burst when I found out you had to be a member of the church and for quite sometime before they will allow you to declare your love and commitment to someone while looking beautiful, oh well bang goes that idea, church membership doesn't sit well with left wing political activists you know.

My first boyfriend knew that I had strong views about marriage and so he never asked me for my hand, so I remained a free and single woman after that relationship eventually ended.

So the next time I brushed with marriage was during my second serious relationship, being much older by this time, my views on marriage and the desire not to was just part of me and part of the furniture, so when he popped the question, although it was more in an enquiring and roundabout manner, I had to explain that I did not believe in marriage as an option for myself.

Incidentally, I had been asked by two other men just prior to this second serious relationship; to which I had replied that I was not the marrying kind!

This second relationship was quite serious and we both wanted something to formally mark our dedication and commitment to one another, so he came up with the idea of a friendship blessing where we would also be able to exchange rings as a token of our love for one another. I thought this was a wonderful idea and went about organising everything with my Mums help.

I managed to convince the clergy at Rochester Cathedral to perform the ceremony there. They agreed and said we could use any part of the Cathedral we wanted for our purposes. Brilliant. My partner wanted to have the ceremony in the crypt so that is what where it was held.

It was a thanksgiving and blessing of our friendship and was also a healing service on our request. The Canon used healing oil for any person there who felt that it would help with their healing needs and we remembered the dead, we were all invited to light a candle for the deceased, particularly those who we had loved dearly.

I have still got the ring he gave me, although our relationship did not last, but just as the Canon had said to us when we exchanged them, 'let this be a reminder of how much your friendship is valued by this man and how much he loves you'.

I rarely wear the ring now but its there and is precious to me because it is a reminder that I have been loved, that thought encapsulated in the ring helps at certain times, times when I feel unwanted and lonely. Its not a magic cure for the loneliness I feel, but there is a warm thought there.

That friendship Blessing was a positive experience and one to blog about for sure, a great alternative to marriage for someone like me who doesn't believe in it and just won't do it!