Leaders of the English Defence league have issued a pledge today that they won’t be marching into London’s East End on Sunday.

Plans were dropped after talks with Scotland Yard advising them that a Muslim meeting they were objecting to was not going ahead at Stepney’s Troxy venue after all. “It would be a suicide mission if we walked into East London,” their leader Tommy Robinson told the East London Advertiser.

“The Met Police told us there would be a hostile scene with thousands of protesters coming from all over if we turned up. We’ve won our victory just getting the Islamic meeting with its extremist speakers cancelled.”

But even cancelling Sunday’s EDA march won’t stop a counter demo by anti-fascist campaigners who plan to march at 2.30pm from Stepney Green Park to Whitechapel’s Altab Ali Park for a rally to show ‘East End solidarity’ against the Far Right.

East London Advertiser, 15 June 2010

The top councillor in Brent has said a protest against a Muslim peace conference in Wembley is “not welcome”.

Councillor Ann John, Labour’s leader of Brent Council, hit out at the English Defence League (EDL), which is targeting the Al-Khair Peace Conference due to be held on Saturday, June 26, at Wembley Arena.

She said in a letter: “Brent is Britain’s most diverse multi-cultural and multi-faith borough and our diversity is our strength. The planned demonstration is a deliberate provocation aimed at creating fear amongst the Muslim community and undermining community relations. The EDL is not welcome here.”

Cllr John was writing on behalf of the 40 Labour councillors in the borough, and backed the move by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) to hold a counter-demonstration on the same day in opposition to EDL.

Harrow Times, 15 June 2010

A protest group that tours the country staging “anti-jihad” demonstrations is planning a rally in Wembley against a Muslim peace conference.

The English Defence League (EDL) is recruiting members for the demonstration outside Wembley Arena on Saturday, June 26. The protest is aimed at the Al-Khair Peace Convention 2010, being organised by Muslim charity the Al-Khair Foundation to “remove misconceptions, false fear and hate of Islam and Muslims globally”.

During the weekend, the internet has been flooded with EDL supporters spreading the word about the protest and recruiting people to come along.

EDL has picked out Dr Nakir Zair, president of the Islamic Research Foundation, an Indian-based charity set up in 1991 to try to raise awareness of the ideals behind Islam, for particular criticism. Dr Zair, a keynote speaker at the conference, is labelled by the EDL as an “Islamist apologist” who is responsible for organising “stealth jihad” under the pretense of talking about peace.

The EDL demonstration, planned between 2pm and 8.30pm, could face opposition from Unite Against Fascism (UAF), a protest group that regularly turns out to EDL events.

Brent Green Party member and UAF activist Martin Francis wrote on his blog: “The fact that the EDL wants to protest at an attempt at dialogue speaks for itself. Discussions on how to combat the EDL’s unwelcome presence in Wembley will be discussed over the next few days by Brent and Harrow Unite Against Fascism and other organisations.”

Harrow Times, 14 June 2010

The English Defence League plans to whip up racism against one of Britain’s largest Muslim communities. It has announced plans to gather in Tower Hamlets, east London, on Sunday 20 June.

Unite Against Fascism and East End United have organised a national counter-demonstration with backing from local activists, the council, campaigners and mosques. The momentum is on the side of the anti-fascists. The EDL were heavily outnumbered in Newcastle recently and were sent packing in South Wales last week. EDL demonstrations have been getting smaller.

But there must be no complacency. Local trade unionists, anti-racist activists and campaigners sent an open letter to the Guardian newspaper and local press within days of the EDL’s plans becoming known. It reads, “The English Defence League is a violent, bigoted organisation. They should be condemned everywhere, but will be particularly unwelcome if they come to Tower Hamlets.”

Glyn Robbins, the local activist who organised the letter, toldSocialist Worker, “We have seen how destructive the EDL presence has been in other towns and cities. Now they are coming to our city, to our borough. We have a strong tradition of standing up to racism and fascism in east London – a tradition that goes back to the 1930s when people fought off Mosley’s fascist blackshirts. If the EDL comes here without being opposed, then they can go anywhere. We have to do every­thing we can, in every way, to oppose them.”

Musaddiq Ahmed, secretary general of the Tower Hamlets Council of Mosques, told Socialist Worker it is vital to defend Tower Hamlets multiracial and multifaith tradition.

He said, “We are black, white and Asian – Muslim, Sikh, Jew and Christian – people of all faiths living together. We live in an area where the east London mosque sits side by side with a synagogue – we are proud of the diversity in Tower Hamlets. It would be a disaster if the EDL come here. The EDL wants to use the recent rise in Islamophobic attitudes to paint a distorted picture of Islam in order to divide our communities.”

Socialist Worker, 12 June 2010

See also “Joint statement says: Keep the racist EDL out of east London!”, Unite Against Fascism, 7 June 2010

In a brilliant exposé the Guardian reported how a lone man held up a pink triangle at a demonstration of the English Defence League – one of the most openly anti-immigrant and Islamophobic organisations in the country. When the reporter asked him what it was for he replied nervously: “This is the symbol gay people were made to wear under Hitler. Islam poses the same threat and we are here to express our opposition to that.”

Given fascism’s history of violent and outspoken homophobia, the news that the EDL would have a 115-strong lesbian, gay and transgender wing would appear, at the very least, incongruous.

But in fact it just the most glaring example of the misguided and ill-informed shift in our nationalist discourse that has moved the emphasis from creed to culture and race to religion in a bid to erect a moral rampart between the a mythological modern, enlightened, progressive west and the demonised medieval, backward, bigoted south. Far from being a contradiction confined to the far right, these issues have taken on totemic significance in the mainstream in the broadside against both multiculturalism in general and non-European immigration in particular as though they were inimicable with the principles of social equality.

Gary Younge in the Guardian, 7 June 2010