STATEMENT ABOUT YESTERDAY’S ARRESTS ON EDL WEBSITE
On Saturday 20th February 2010 Members of the leadership team of the English Defence League were arrested as they traveled to Scotland to support the Scottish Defence League demonstration.
While in custody the team members homes and families homes were raided by police armed with automatic machine guns which terrified the leaderships family which included small children and other older family members. Computer equipment was seized during the 3 hour raid.
Leadership team members were banned from attending any meeting with more than 3 edl members then bailed to return to a police station in Sheffield in the near future. STATEMENT ENDS
The so-called ‘leadership team’ has now called off their Bradford demo on May 20th and since conditions of their bail prevent them attending any meetings of more than three EDL members they are basically fucked in terms of street demos. If othes call them then the EDL Leadership team will be able to exert even less control over the ragbag nazi nutters who turn up than they do now and whoever organises them can expect similar bail conditions in future. Apart from whinging it’s difficult to see where the EDL goes from here and the hasty abandonment of the Bradford demo by the leadership ‘as a concession’ doesn’t exactly say these leaders are made of very stern stuff.
Increasingly of late the police have been seizing mobile phones and computers and enforcing strict and restrictive bail conditions which makes continued political operation of those arrested impossible. Bail is extended to often over a year before any charges are brought. Just because it’s currently the EDL who are copping it tonight doesn’t mean we won’t be next.Protestors arrested at the Radcliff power station school raid were similarly banned from contacting each other.It’s an insidious development brought in by the poice with connivance of the Home Secretary and proving extremely effective at disabling political movements from effective action on the streets.
Ian Bone 
Raided with automatic machine guns? Bit fucking over the top don’t you think?
Down the shitter where they belong!!!!
Yep. As you say, ‘Just because it’s currently the EDL who are copping it tonight doesn’t mean we won’t be next’. No one should even crack a smile over this. The EDL is an anti-working class organisation, for all its appearences, and an obsticle to a mass, class-based, anti-capitalist egalitarian fight-back. So is fundamentalist Islam. But that isn’t why the state is repressing them.
But for the sublime to the ridiculous: http://www.igrooves.net/Alex_and_the_bandit/#share
Nail on the fucking head not I give a toss about the so called rights of this racist scum, but we need to think on the likes of The SWP fronts The UAF along with some people within our own circus have played into the agenda of this no fucking conspiracy here good news about the planed Bradford Demo, also bad news as it was certain the youth and olders was planning to give them a good kick in do what the likes of The SWP alleged anarchist I say alleged because some people refused the nature of The Problem before us now I hope we wake up smell the fucking coffee understand our own fucking failings and begin to organise as a well known person said of late the events of the last few years, have some positives, it gives us as Anarchist golden opportunity ill repeat this once more we either take now or stay the same, our only way foreword is to organise one of the biggest Don’t Vote campaigns the working class are not only under threat from the far right, an elected Conservative Party with a majority will simply continue to see the rise of fascism, the attacks of New Labour on the working class will seem nothing in comparison, we need a hung parliament alas it will not involve gallows (fucking shame) but will further weaken the sham of democracy along with the far left who are asking the working class to vote New Labour, it is our time comrades.
Obviously the political state fears race war more than class war and given that class war favours the present political incumbents none of this should come as a surprise. The Islamic vote is therefore secured.
Machine guns, terrorised kids and families, IT seizures etc are comparable to the states activities against Bin laden sympathisers. Exactly the right time to secure those drifting asian constituencies.
These comments Gitane look like right wing conspiracy theory – ‘class war favours the present political incumbents’ is just NOT true at all.
The raids do not simplistically mean that the Asian vote will go Labour either, that’s just rubbish. There is no automatic recognition of ‘vote labour’ resulting from those actions in diverse communities as you are assuming.
Great report of the anti sdl/edl action in edinburgh on saturday here http://ssy.org.uk/2010/02/square-go-wi-the-sdl-in-edinburger/
Was a fucking quality day, anarchists, socialists and others working together to ensure grassroots militant oppostion to the fascists. We absolutely humiliated the fuckers.
it pissings me off when anarchos are thick enough to believe that this is somehow a victory when our major criticism of the UAF/ANL were the fact that they call upon the state to close down these movements i.e. call for more powers for the police to repress.
This latest raid will make the EDL more determined, there conspiracy theory is all becoming true and all it’ll take would be some crank-pot nationalist to start planting nailbombs.
jesus wept!
What’s that saying…? oh aye, “first they came for….”
Well in this case it seems it’s “first they came for the nationalists…and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a nationalist” So brothers and sisters, in this case we need to see this as State Repression which as Ian highlights, also affected those at Radcliff, at the end of the day State Repression is State Repression.
By the way, we all know SWP/UAF and their fellow Marxists are the keenest of all advocates of State Control and Repression.
Al is 100% right. The actual banning of Islam4UK and the effectual banning of the EDL will only create more and more tension until something finally gives – which, in turn, will give the state an excuse to come down on ALL supposed dissident groups, including anarchists.
We’re rightfully proud to be anti-fascist, but in the meantime our everyday life is becoming ever more fascistic as basic liberties – such as Habeas corpus, the right to silence, trial by jury, the right not to be tortured, etc., etc., etc. – are being whittled away in the name of ‘security’ and ‘for our own protection’.
Some people believe that these liberties are merely concessions granted by the powerful, but they can also be seen as a work in progress. Each represents a hard-won victory on the slow march towards a free society founded on equality, mutual aid and cooperation – i.e. every liberty brings us closer to anarchy.
Conversely every affront to liberty takes us further from our goal. The EDL are wankers and we should be thankful that the highly provocative Bradford march has been stopped, but armed police raids against political organisations – regardless of whether they’re fascist scum like the EDL or Islam4UK – should never be seen as a good thing.
Ya done know… well said Class War Barnsdale Brigade.
More to say on this but I ain’t got the time now.
Hi mate,i know there are some people in the edl that are racist.But there are racist people who attend football matches at the weekend,but it doesnt mean their clubs are racist.Im reading a book at the moment called “Me against my brother”.Im reading the part at the moment about Sudan,and how christians are being killed and ethnically cleansed by the Muslim north.We at the edl see what is happening all over the world,Muslims are using religion to oppress and use violence to try and force Islam on people.The only way they know is by forcing their religion onto others.We are having whole communities changed by Muslim immigrants.It used to be racist this country against blacks asians and irish,but now its against white christians.
Yes Barnsdale Brigade, your views here are classic E.P. Thompson.
Al. As for the right wing extremists turning more violent then that is exactly what the state wants cos it easily leads to more repression.
Where that leaves us depends upon whether we remain exposed and easily isolated by refusing to work with other groups in civil society or United Fronts.
OR whether we embrace the British democratic tradition and work with other groups and thus become somewhat more protected by connections with these groups. Thus if the state tries to pick us off when we have links with wider society, then those people would become more politicised and hopefully work in any resulting defence campaigns. I favour the latter. That is not to say that there is not a need for imaginative action, or mobilisations, but they must be more embedded in the actually existing class struggles rather than the voluntarism that easily leads to isolation & repression.
YES!!!
You’re FACKING NICKED son!
Hope they get banhammered for the extremist nitwits they are. Then they can spend the rest of their lives changing the name of their poxy outfit, crying to Amnesty like a bunch of pussies and whining into their beers about political correctness.
RESULT!
I wonder if the machine guns where the same they used when they cracking through the doors of antifascist up and down the country a few months ago?? The state is cracking down on all groups who take to the streets to act, wether it be fighting fascist or the opposite. There’s a general pattern emerging… State reppression, but hey not to worry. The anarcho scene is 100.000 strong, take away the people who fight from behind their laptop and I’ll buy a pint for remaining three of us. Up the revolution….
Tommys right. Its also interesting to note that they “were arrested as they traveled to Scotland”. I’m guessing on the railways and by British Transport Police and once again, the fact that they were a national force was used inorder to allow national raids to take place. In the future BTP will be increasingly used in this way to help break up national political groups. After all, only one member needs to be arrested on a railway to justify them raiding all the groups members round the country.
Anyone celebrateing the EDL’s problems has entirely missed the point. Once the state has the power to smash any political organisation, it then has the power to attack you for your political activitys. That is why, only the working class and not the state can be used to smash fascism.
It’s a bad precedent. The EDL might be a bunch of chauvanistic, semi-alcoholic fuckwits, but the state will use these powers to crush dissent elsewhere.
The euphoria of groups on the left might prove to be short lived. Hiding behind ‘democratic’ credentials will not save them from the next round of domestic repression. I suppose none of this bothers the Trots, whose paper sellers tend to leg it at any sign of trouble anyway, and who regard the smallest act of civil disobedience as ‘low level terrorism’ or adventurism.
Still, with the imminent collapse of the Labour government, even the SWP/UAF might end up getting a taste of the state repression that they’re half in love with.
For fuck’s sake! Not all Trotskyists are against civil disobedience – in fact, the Socialist Party regularly calls for and supports wildcat strikes which are clearly acts of civil disobedience.
I have sold papers on demos and I can assure you I don’t “leg it at any sign of trouble”; if the situation calls for it I get stuck in against the fash, the pigs or whoever.
I thought Andy Newman’s comments on Hospitalised Copper were ludicrous, so don’t tie me and other comrades in with that Stalinist prick please.
We’re also opposed to state repression, and in the “What We Stand For” section of the paper call for repeal of the anti-terror laws, and the anti trade union laws.
I do take a libertarian view of most issues, and I know not all people on the left share this view, but I can assure you there are a lot in the SP who do.
It’s been a huge relief to see some sense being talked on this blog. Sure it’s tempting to crow cos the police have fucked over someone else for a change, but I reckon it does us no good. Anarchist politics should be about standing up to the police and this kind of shit. We have a reputation to reclaim.
If we don’t sort our act out, it will be the EDL who will capitalise on the anti-police sentiments that are so widespread amongst working people. Already much of their support on the streets comes from people knowing they can have a row with the cops without being shat on by their own side.
Meanwhile we have a reputation of being allied to the liberal-left-pathetic-cowardly UAF, which does us no favours. Fair play to the folk in Scotland though, seems they had a good go.
But the EDL are not anything remotely like the SWP or any other political group. Even the BNP prefer to wear a facade of respectability these days.
The EDL a bunch of right wing skinheads who run around the country beating up / racially abusing minorities.
In fact they were on their way to beat up some minorities when they were arrested – for being on their way to beat up minorities.
(It probably didn’t help their standing with the authorities that they beat up that copper either, of course)
I don’t like (putting it mildly here) the police or the EDL, but if you had to ask me as a Black man which is the bigger threat to me, it’s the police hands down.
“family members’ homes were raided by police with machine guns terrifying children and elderly”
Children aren’t responsible for their parents’ opinions… and no way am I going to come out in support of armed raids by police on people regardless who they are… I used to stay by NYC when they were mowing us down like flies it seemed like… Amadou Diallo Patrice Dorismond etc etc, one right after the other… trust that britain will turn that way real soon if people ain’t careful….
Anarchists should never support the police full stop. I don’t hate all individual police, there are a few who might be “nice people” when not on duty representing the state, one or two in the rank and file could possibly be won over to our side even (it’s not impossible… and that goes for the EDL too for that matter… although having said that, looking at both the police and the EDL, would you WANT any of them on your side?) But we should never be in support of any repressive measures by the police no matter if they are directed against our enemies. They will DEFINITELY be used against us in the future.
You do realise the EDL were almost certainly on their way to start a race riot?
http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/2010/02/edl-neo-nazis-plan-bradford-race-riot.html
Oh and did you know that Fascists have been caught stockpiling weapons on various occaisions – see these links:
BNP bomb factory busted – biggest weapons haul EVER:
http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=544131
“A network of suspected far-right extremists with access to 300 weapons and 80 bombs has been uncovered by counter-terrorism detectives:”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6638139.ece
There are many, many times when the police don’t get it right, but this isn’t one of them, both legally and “morally”.
Sure, you might not like the Old Bill but surely you don’t feel sorry when they catch rapists and murderers? And yeah, I think neo-Nazis ARE the same as rapists and murderers. Fuck ’em, and fuck their “right” to beat people up because of their skin colour and / or religion.
We haven’t coped the lash yet.
But we will.
From where I stand and see it-thumbing our noses at the right as they cop it, is a suicidal tactic.
The xtreme right have been ranting on about state repression of their groups for years whilst organisations like CW,crowbar etc, got away with literary murder.
It won’t be long,before people like Ian are banned from demonstrations and meetings.
The wave of oppression is about to break over our collective and individual heads ,people.Snickering at the opposition as they cop it,means we aren’t seeing the big picture clearly and we are in need of a clear perspective that is honestly realistic without political compromise.
To Bad News Wade:
I can see where you’re coming from, but look at it this way: if the EDL, BNP and them was to come and try march through Brixton, or Lower Clapton for that matter, or nuff other neighbourhoods in the U.K. where there is a significant amount of Black and Asian people and whites who are friendly with us, they are definitely the ones who would get a battering, if not be killed. Why do you think they haven’t tried to? Sure they go to towns with big Asian populations, but to the city centres, not to the actual neighbourhoods and estates, or definitely some of em would not make it out again. Nuff NF would’ve definitely ended up sliced to ribbons if they didn’t have the cops protecting ’em when they tried to march through Black areas in London in the 70s and they know better than to try that sort of thing now. Maybe it would be good if they were dumb enough to try again cos then maybe some of us would start using the weaponry we have (***that “we” doesn’t include me personally btw… that’s for all you feds reading***) on THEM instead of on one another over what fucking post code we live in and all this self-hating self-destructive stupidness that has been foisted upon us.
If the police were to be routinely fully tooled-up USA style and decided to invade our Black and Asian communities though, there wouldn’t be a damn thing we could do about it. (They started the machine gun raid thing recently in housing estates in South London with high Black populations… I almost see this EDL raid as a PR thing so as to avoid seeming racist… look we’re equal opportunity machine gun raiders…)
“All the guns of Brixton” might well be enough to wipe out even a tooled-up army of EDL, BNP etc. types… but there’s no way they’re going to stand up to the full force of the state armed with the latest paramilitary technology.
That’s what I meant when I said that at the end of the day the po po are a bigger threat to I and I than the EDL etc. EDL could be a bigger threat when they corner me alone somewhere, and I might even have to call upon the po po for help (in the highly unlikely event that they would do anything more than send me a crime number two weeks later at the hospital if I survived), but as far as invading peoples’ hoods, the EDL couldn’t do it, whereas the police can.
Re catching murderers and rapists, etc, I think for every one they catch there’s probably two they’re in effect protecting (think Worboys or whatever the black cab driver serial rapist is named). Plus bear in mind that nuff of them ARE rapists and murderers. (note that I said “nuff”, not “all”).
Of course if there is credible evidence of a bombing plot and stockpiling tons of machine guns and ting I would want em to do something about it, regardless of me considering them the enemy: I don’t want to get blown up or mown down obviously, so that would be case of my enemy’s enemy is certainly not my friend, but I’m not gonna object to em too much in such an event.
Now I could be wrong but I haven’t yet seen any credible evidence in this particular case to justify battering peoples’ doors down armed with machine guns. Bruv, end of the day I do not want to see nervous-ass twitchy police armed to the teeth with fucking machine guns. They kill enough people as it is (disproportinately Black people btw).
And like I said, trust that if we let them continue the trend towards these sorts of tactics, they WILL DEFINITELY be used against us. Not possibly, DEFINITELY.
So while I do see your point we gon have to agree to disagree on that one.
I just wanted to quickly explain something as this blog has an international readership… “Worboys the black cab driver” refers to a London taxi-cab driver who is white but drove a black cab (London taxi cab). He raped over 100 women and got away with it for years because police dismissed all complaints and ignored the victims and basically said they must be a bunch of drunken tarts cos their mates the cab-drivers would never do such a thing.
As far as protecting murderers, two words “Stephen Lawrence”, and I’m out.
The only good fascist is a fuckin dead one, plain n fuckin simple, now get on with it. CLASS WAR
Long time reader / 1st time poster. Really enjoying reading the blog, keep up the good work. Will definitely start posting more in the future.