Saturday’s demonstration against the English Defence League (EDL) in Luton was a missed opportunity for the anti-fascist movement. The kettling of the Unite Against Fascism protest by the police prevented anti-fascists linking up with the local community when it came to stopping the fascists marching.

The morning

The day started off with news of David Cameron’s tirade against multiculturalism bolstering tension in the Luton community, that could not have come at a better time if he was trying to boost the EDL’s turnout.

But protesters arriving from London managed to blockade Luton train station for an hour, before being violently dispersed by police. We managed to delay the EDL for a while, but they were still escorted via another exit in large numbers by police. Under the circumstances, it was a good call from UAF to bring in some numbers by rail. A little more coordination between groups travelling by rail and road – covering all exits of the train station – could have significantly dented the EDL turnout on the day.

Following their dispersal, 300 or so protestors from London and Glasgow marched to the UAF rally in the town centre. The streets of Luton were deserted and most buildings had their windows boarded up.

The UAF rally in the town centre was extremely heavily policed, with lines of riot cops two officers deep at most points. Into this pre-prepared kettle we were marched. After milling around for a short while, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), who comprised the largest body of protesters on the day, led a march of around 400 protestors away from the rally down a lightly policed side street, in an attempt to reach Bury Park. This is the predominantly Asian district of Luton where the local community and Asian youth were rallying to defend their community, as well as the Mosque which EDL members had claimed they wanted to burn down.

As we marched away, UAF officials on the stage called for people to stay at the rally, and not to march into Luton. The contradictions within UAF were laid bare for all to see.  The SWP as the militant wing, was determined to confront the EDL, and join in attempts by the Asian community to protect their town while the right-wing -  trade union bureaucrats, Labour councillors and community leaders – attempted to avoid a confrontation at all costs, even if it meant leaving town undefended.

The march got within sight of the Bury Park area and the thousand or so local youth who were gathered there in its defence, before we were once again kettled with hundreds of riot police, vans and horses. Only a small minority had succeeded in breaking away to Bury Park. We stayed on the road for half an hour, before the leaders of the march decided it would be better to head back to the UAF rally, and attempt to reach Bury Park another way.

The kettle

Back at the rally, more protesters from across the country had arrived, and numbers had risen to around 800. Most protesters didn’t want to be there, as they had come to stop the EDL from marching.

A second breakout attempt was made through police lines down the high street, but this was largely contained, with only 10-20 protestors getting through. Again, speakers from the UAF called on protesters to stop trying to push through police lines, and just return to the rally. Shamefully, some of the UAF stewards (including one wearing a Lenin badge on his cap!) even assisted the police in pushing back the militant anti-fascists towards the state-sponsored playpen.

Students and young people began to gather in the corner of the square for a third attempt to break out, when suddenly we began to receive reports that the mosque had been attacked by the EDL. No announcement was being made from the stage about this, and the crowd was getting agitated, wanting to defend it. REVOLUTION members walked onto the stage and demanded to make an announcement. Under pressure from demonstrators the MC gave Kady from Leeds Revo the mic. Kady announced that the mosque was under attack. Once again the crowd surged towards police lines, demanding the right to march to Bury Park.

Again we were met with lines of riot police, who we forced back down the street. Around 150 protestors broke through police lines, but we were then surrounded by riot police and horses who violently shoved us around, pushing people into cars and choking demonstrators. After kettling us, we were marched back to the UAF kettle for the final time.

Bury Park

Some protestors did make it through police lines throughout the day, either by leaving in small groups, or during the breakouts, making their way down to the much larger and more militant assembly in Bury Park. Many who got through were students recently radicalised by the anti-fees movement, and it was good for them to be able to see the real strength of anti-fascist public opinion in Luton – a thousand Asian youth ready to defend their community and families, many hundreds wearing balaclavas for fear of police reprisals.

For the first time also we saw the EDL-style hoodies of the Muslim Defence League (MDL) out in force, each one subtitled ‘Defending all races and religions from the EDL’.  The wll to organise self-defence that young asian and black people have shown when faced with EDL attacks is positive and inspiring, but also demonstrates another problem. The most militant sections of the anti-fascist movement, the black and asian youth who face racist and police attacks daily, are organising outside UAF as it is incapable of giving a voice to their demands to organise self-defence of their communities.

Revolution believes we need to organise these people into an Anti-Fascist Defence League, open to all who want to physically confront the fascists and drive them off the streets.

One way or another though, the antifascists in Luton remained divided on the day, with a predominantly white and nationally-mobilised demo out of harm’s way in the town centre kettle, and a predominantly Asian and local demo defending the mosque in Bury Park.

Somewhere in the middle of the mile or two that separated us buzzed the steel, prison-like compound erected by police to contain the EDL’s biggest national mobilisation to date. At least 3000 far right thugs were permitted to give voice to their hatred in the town of their organisation’s inglorious birth, some twenty months and a national spate of race crimes ago, despite numerous opportunities for the antifascist movement to nip them in the bud with determined, mass action.

Time to actually unite against fascism

The reasons for the general reoccurrence of this unfortunate fracas are clear and simple, but point to serious problems with UAF, and the SWP’s approach to anti-fascist work.

If the aim of the protest was to unite with the Asian community and people of Luton, and defend them from the EDL, then the rally point and drop off point for coaches should have been set in Bury Park. The police were understandably less keen on creating a kettle in a part of town where the mood was far more militant, far more urgent, as a whole community anticipated the worst. Even if kettled there, we would have been more or less where we wanted to be, and would not have had to push our way through lines of police en route.

Instead, militant anti-fascists had to “break away” from the anti-fascist rally to actually defend local communities. Many of the protesters who arrived on Unite Against Fascism coaches had been initially told by the SWP that they would be dropped off around the Bury Park area, and yet were only told the night before, or even on the day itself, that they would be driven directly into a kettle. This was justified to militants by the SWP who claimed that a pincer movement to surround the EDL was now possible. People who complained further were told that they would be abandoning ‘the movement’ and were accused of just looking for violence.

The SWP members on the day claimed that this was all part of a ‘grand strategy’, it may have been a ‘grand strategy’, but in practice it left the majority of antifascists shackled once again to another tiresome ‘unity carnival’.

‘The movement’ was not at the UAF demo. What few locals that were there looked dejected by the situation: self-congratulatory speeches about how this music-festival was ‘smashing’ the EDL, police lines several officers thick, and a set of stewards and speakers who condemned people who dared to try to stand up to the EDL or their defenders in the police. Instead the revolutionaries and Luton locals were effectively divided into different demos by UAF organisers, with no chance for socialists to talk to people about how the struggle against fascism is also a struggle against capitalism, or the tactics we can use to advance the anti-fascist movement.

The SWP must break with the right-wing in UAF – those who oppose direct action against fascism – and start advocating this openly as the necessary tactic to beat the fascists. It is the short and brutal truth that only a movement openly politicised and organised on this basis will be able to stop the EDL from continuing to march and organise.

The limitations of the UAF tactic could be seen more clearly on this demonstration, than ever before. In fact, UAF’s most famous signatory is none other than David Cameron himself, who seemed to go out of his way to make a divisive, bigoted speech just before events took place.

UAF acts as an impediment to the antifascist work which more militant sections of the movement try to carry out. The attempt to create a half-way house between a pacifist anti-racist carnival, and a militant direct action antifascist demonstration with the aim of physically confronting the fascists only weakens attempts at direct action. The alliance in UAF between the SWP who are in favour of direct action against the fascists, and labour councillors, trade union bureaucrats and community leaders who are not, means UAF can never advance the politics necessary to prepare and direct the movement into the action necessary.

The aftermath

As pubs shut in the evening, some local EDL hooligans attacked the Asian area of town, in what has become an almost inevitable occurrence following these national mobilisations. Two houses were smashed up and defaced with EDL slogans. It gives the lie to the claim by UAF that our presence in town deterred the fascists. They simply waited for the UAF mobilisation and accompanying police escort to leave before attacking their targets.

It is time for a united front based on the tactics of no platform for fascism and organised self-defence against racist and fascist attacks. No one part of the anti-fascist movement is strong enough to defeat the EDL on its own, and so all forces need to unite around a common action plan. What’s more, with the police better organised and equipped than ever before, we need to protect ourselves, our towns, our demonstrations against illegal violence from the veteran hooligans of the EDL, and the police.