Today’s protests against the EDL in Slough were a pretty good start to 2014. Slough showed loud and clear that no one at all in the town had any sympathy with the EDL. The universal message was “you’re not wanted – go home”
The down-on-their-luck EDL only managed less than 200 for a ‘national’ demo following large numbers of splits, defections and internal arguments. This is looking like the ‘new normal’ for them – the die-hards who haven’t figured out yet the EDL is dying on its feet.
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With only 3 days to go, things are beginning to shape up with the Slough demo against the ailing EDL. London Anti-Fascists and Berkshire Anti-Fascists have been very busy leafletting in the town and talking to locals as well as organising numbers of people to come from outside Slough.
The route of the EDL march has been announced and also UAF and the local Trades Council have announced a counter-demo in town.
Jobbik beseiged in the tube station
Hungarian far-right group Jobbik were chased across London by anti-fascists on Sunday as their leader Gábor Vona visited the UK to try and drum up votes from ex-pat Hungarians living in London ahead of elections.
Despite calls from MEPs and other politicians to ban Vona’s entry in to the UK and a 14,000 signature petition sent to the Home Secretary by Hope not Hate, Theresa May was strangely relaxed about this particular immigrant and Vona was not denied entry. Thus it was left to anti-fascists on the streets to oppose the arrival of “the most successful fascist in Europe”.
The relentless diet of anti-migrant hysteria served by the mainstream press for the past few months has been staggering, even by their standards. The Daily Express in particular outdid itself, promising a “crusade” against Bulgarian and Romanian immigration.
But as a study in the Guardian showed, there’s rarely much of a correlation between the headlines and the reality. The study showed that headlines about migrants have increase out of all proportion to the actual levels of immigration, which have tended to rise only slowly, and with the occasional dip.
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This Sunday 26th anti-fascists are gathering in London to oppose Hungary’s neo-Fascist Jobbik party. The party’s leader Gábor Vona is planning a rally in London to rustle up votes from ex-pat Hungarians.
Jobbik are Europe’s most successful far-right party and are openly anti-Semitic and racist. Their London rally is nicely timed to be the day before Holocaust Memorial Day. Jobbik don’t go in for the kind of thinly veiled anti-semitism popular here in the UK – nope they’re straight out the 1930s – In November 2012, Marton Gyongyosi, the party’s deputy parliamentary leader, called for a security register of Hungarian Jewish legislators and ministers. Gyongyosi said: “I think such a conflict makes it timely to tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian parliament.”
It’s now only 10 days till the AFN demo against the EDL in Slough on Saturday 1st Feb.
Tell your friends and relatives. Organise yourself to get there and make sure that the EDL’s first demo of 2014 is also their last!
Things are moving rapidly. As mentioned in our report on recent actions in Lincoln and London the EDL seems to be fragmenting and whole divisions are defecting to a loose alliance of splinter groups (the Infidels, South East Alliance, Casuals etc.) So the EDL may be struggling for numbers in Slough. This is all the more reason for us to mobilise and to make sure we outnumber them and they have to scuttle out of Slough with their tail between their legs.
Saturday saw mobilisations against the far-right in both Lincoln and London. The bad guys this time were not the EDL but some of the plethora of tiny but even nastier far-right groups who think the EDL are a bunch of liberals.
Lincoln
The demonstration in Lincoln was called by the ‘East Anglian Patriots’ but supported by a number of allied far-right groups. They parachuted in from the outside (Lincoln is not in East Anglia!) to impose their views on the population of the town regarding the proposed construction of a mosque.
