BFP alliance shows EDL's true colours

According to press reports, the English Defence League (EDL) has formed an alliance with the British Freedom Party (BFP), a breakaway group of the British National Party (BNP) which has an openly fascist agenda.

It was only eighteen months ago that the EDL was making the headlines as an ‘all inclusive’ organisation claiming to have members from various faiths, races and sexual orientation and claiming to be only against ‘militant Islam’.

They even paraded a few characters from various faiths that stood out – a convicted football hooligan called Abdul Hussein, from the Muslim background, Roberta Moore who represented the ‘Jewish Division’ and a bald-headed man called Guramit Singh from the Sikh background. The EDL used to carry the Sikh flag on their marches and also used various Sikh emblems in their propaganda.

Some parts of the media seemed to have jumped on this providing the EDL with massive coverage, and some academics rushed to publish reports claiming that this group was not fascist or racist and was legitimate in its goals.

However, the mask of the EDL has slowly started to slip away as they threatened the students who were protesting against the rise in tuition fees, attacked mosques and even a Hindu temple as well as some left-wing meetings and more recently threatened to attack the protesters outside St Paul’s, Occupy LSX.

But their claim to be against only ‘Islamic extremists’ was truly shattered when, after their failure to march through Tower Hamlets, east London, in early September, EDL leader Stephen Lennon (aka “Tommy Robinson”) threatened all Muslims in his speech that he delivered in Aldgate, just outside the borough of Tower Hamlets.

Some leaders of the EDL, including Lennon, are known to have links with the BNP. So, it was clear to most people that their claims that they were not racist was only going to last so long. Now they are in alliance with a party that has the following in its constitution:

• Abolish the Equality and Human Rights Commission & scrap the Equality Acts
• Ban all manifestations of religious, legal, political, social and cultural separatism within the UK
• Ban the burkha and other outward manifestations of multiculturalism which we regard as manifestations of political and social separatism
• Enact laws to prohibit the building of any more mosques or other religious buildings

Balwinder Singh Rana, spokesperson for ‘Sikhs Against the EDL’, said,

“Their policy to ‘ban all manifestations of religious, legal, political, social and cultural separatism within the UK’ will apply not only to Muslims but equally to Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and people from other religions. This could mean that Sikhs are not allowed to wear turbans or keep long beards which the orthodox Sikhs are required to do. Also, the ban on building ‘any more mosques or other religious buildings’ would equally apply to the Gurdwaras and Mandirs."

He added,

“We have been warning of this for more than a year now. We had always known that by attacking the Muslims now while trying to recruit some miss-guided Sikh youth to their ranks, the EDL were only trying to use the well known ‘divide & rule’ policy. If anyone is still in doubt about their true intensions then they need to wake up fast and help us to expose these racists and fascists so that they can no longer try to divide our communities.”