As I arrived on Saturday morning, Bradford was holding its breath in anticipation of the invasion of thousands of proud defenders of the nation, for ‘The Big One’. Despite claims on the day that they are now over 27, 000 strong, they hardly managed to muster 1000 supporters to ‘take back’ Bradford. Perhaps many of the local supporters that they expected were sulking after Bradford’s home defeat to Southend on Friday night. Or maybe there just weren’t very many of them.
While speaking to some of the EDL as the coaches arrived, it became evident that despite their chants of ‘Who the fuck is Allah?/Allah is a paedo’ they want you all to know that they’re not racist, how can they be? They have a Sikh leader and a Muslim follower called Abdul, who is definitely sure that he’s never seen any racism on demo’s and can’t call anyone who shakes his hand racist.
As you would imagine for ‘The Big One’ however, the EDL upgraded their equipment, substituting their coins and bottles of bodily fluid for real stones and a smoke grenade which they used to absolutely pummel the road in between them and those who turned up to oppose them.
After successfully managing to drunkenly sing songs and hear some inspirational talks from their leaders over the course of the afternoon some of these guys decided that ‘The Big One’ just wasn’t big enough and climbed over the wall to have a wander around. This prompted a spectacular spontaneous reaction as hundreds of people who were there to oppose them set off to catch up with the toe-rags and see them off. Which they did.
There’s no doubt that the EDL must be very disappointed with their day, their Big One didn’t get anywhere near as big as they wanted and they were very limited in the bigness of the trouble they could cause. Despite the official UAF and Hope Not Hate events being far away and out of sight, hundreds of local people and anti-fascists did make it to the streets to oppose the EDL and stopped them from doing any damage when some of them did manage to break out.
It remains to be seen where the EDL will go from here.
there seems to be lack of the concept or clarity with the racist attitude in the EDL. using a quote ” never seen any racism on demo’s and can’t call anyone who shakes his hand racist.”this surely shows the differentiation of in group and out group thesis. basically from what im understanding is that the individual that has been involved in the EDL “Abdul” clearly has been a part of the group and in order to get his so called security needs which are outlined by Maslows hierarchy of needs, he has been accepted by the group and in exchange he has shaped and constructed his values and beliefs accordingly. to illustrate this point the language that is used by the individual who is in the interview before “Abdul”, shows a “them” and “us” focus all through the interview.
this groups dynamics are very interesting, considering that the EDL are not racist yet “Who the fuck is Allah?/Allah is a paedo.”
on the other hand i was working with John, who has a wife and two kids. whilst working, john told me about him moving from Bradford to live in Hunslet with his family. John had moved because he didnt want his sons to be associated with his neighbours who were muslim. i asked john about his beliefs just to understand what he was arguing. He argued that when his parents split up his mom married to a “black guy” so there is no way he is racist. to add on, i asked #John what he thought about the word “nigga” and he said that was racist. of course i had to ask about the word “paki” and he exclaimed it wasnt racist. i was caught in a dance of expression till i remembered Jane Elliott…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6189991712636113875#
[...] Sep Following the video we put out about the EDL in Bradford we wanted to put out some more footage of one of the most interesting aspects of the EDL, their one [...]