Ten years ago tomorrow ….
Reflections on the EDL protest on 5th February 2011
Ten years ago tomorrow the EDL (English Defence League) held a demonstration in Luton. It was their biggest ever turnout for a protest, somewhere in excess of 3,000 people. At the end of the day, Luton remained safe.
Behind those simple words lie a host of memories of an event, and the months of preparation that I and many others in the town, put into ensuring the people of our town remained safe, and hate did not win the day.
(For the simple facts of the 2011 demonstration , check the BBC, or the Guardian reports, with more Guardian pictures here. To get more of a feel for it there are a large collection of pictures on the Alamy stock page, or take a look at this video or this one.)
“Back where it all began” Our first warning.
I remember the moment I first learnt the EDL were planning to return to Luton for a demonstration “back where it all began”. I’d been overseas for two weeks working, had just arrived home, was jet lagged, and awake at 2am. It was late October 2010 and the post came up on Facebook that they would be holding a demonstration on 5th February 2011. Much as we’d been expecting it, I was plunged into despair.
It had all begun just 18 months before on 10th March 2009 when a small group belonging to the extremist group al-Muhajiroun had demonstrated as the Royal Anglian regiment returning from Iraq held a homecoming parade through Luton town centre. An angry response by some of the crowd led to some 200 people surrounding the Muslims, and it took the police most of two hours to disperse the protests. After an intense spring and summer of protest and occasional disorder in Luton, a group initially calling themselves the United People of Luton, became the English Defence League (EDL), and held their first demonstration in Birmingham in July. Threatened protests in Luton in late summer 2009 were banned, and for the next 18 months we lived with the spectre of EDL demonstrations around the nation which grew larger and more violent.
Most of that time they were gone from Luton. But we knew they were based here, and an anonymous, hooded young man who lived here and went by the name Tommy Robinson was their leader. An early spokesperson, Kevin Carrol, who had been arrested at the March protest and convicted of public disorder offences, featured in a BBC3 Documentary Young British and Angry (BBC blog ) in June 2010. A month later his appeal at Luton Crown Court drew over 100 EDL supporters to gather outside the court and in local pubs. When he emerged having lost they made their way to St Georges Square, rapidly inflamed disorder and a stand off with a large group of Muslim young people. Three months later in October 2010 the mask came off Tommy Robinson on front page of the Times and it revealed Carroll’s nephew Yaxley Lennon as EDL leader.
With the summer events fresh in our mind, the memories of 2009, and the impact of EDL in cities around the UK, especially Bradford and Leicester where they protested in September and October 2010 respectively), the police, local authority and the community were quickly mobilised. Early EDL talk of up to 12,000 attendees concentrated the mind further. A commitment of Unite Against Fascism to a counter protest added to the challenge.
Since the events of March 2009 I had been involved in seeking to prevent our community polarising around the narrative of a Conflict of Civilisations that was being used by both the EDL and their fellow travellers on the far right and Muslim extremism. The flags and the symbolism of the crusades quickly marked the emerging EDL, and they tried to position themselves, as the British National Party had done, as defending our Christian heritage. Based at St Marys, Luton’s town centre historic parish Church, I sought to bring church leaders on board with a commitment to oppose that narrative. In May 2009 after a serious arson attempt on a mosque, I worked closely with Muslim community leaders to commit to standing together in opposing extremism in any form in our community, and to work for peace and unity. (2009 Statement from Churches and Mosques against extremism.)
At the same time it was important that we sought to understand the causes of the far right extremism at the heart of the EDL and to engage with those involved. That led to an early involvement in all aspects of working together for peace in the town. It was clear that while we totally opposed the EDL the traditional approach to the far right of “smash the fash” and other such idioms was not one that would help us build peace. We found strong support from the emerging approach being taken by Hope not Hate, essentially community organising in building up resilience in local communities. They gave us much help over these months and I have gone on to work closely with them.
From the moment the EDL’s plans were out in early November preparation swung began. Our activity went up a gear in mid-December when we heard that American Christian fundamentalist Pastor Terry Jones intended to come and perform his trademark stunt and burn a Quran. (He was eventually banned from entering the UK.) The day after that news was public a Muslim man who had studied at Bedfordshire University attempted a suicide bombing of a mall in Stockholm, Sweden. With the world’s press camped in Luton that week the upcoming EDL demo was brought into focus. The fracturing of the Luton community the EDL claimed was happening seemed to become the talk of the world’s media.
Over the years we came to learn that preparation for a demonstration for the EDL meant rabble rousing in the community around contentious issues. So we had rumours of assaults by Muslim boys on white girls in a local school. We had the “attempted assassination” of Kevin Carroll at his front door – which was soon rumoured to have been a young person throwing a potato. The planning by Luton Town Centre Chaplaincy, a Christian group, to start a prayer room in the Mall became a plan for a mosque in the Mall. And plans for a mosque on a site previously designated for houses caused a storm min the community.
Public order policing for the EDL as they march
Working with the support of Churches Together in Luton and individual church leaders I worked extensively together with Muslim colleagues, and with local government and police to provide effective community engagement. In the weeks leading up to demonstration day we sat on community-cohesion groups, spent a considerable time in the community, spoke at community meetings, and talked to both EDL members and the UAF counter demo leaders. The policing strategy deployed on each occasion was significantly influenced by myself and a Muslim colleague working to support and constructively challenge police plans in the operation Gold Commander’s community-reference group. Over the ten weeks of preparation thousands of hours of volunteer time must have been invested, not to speak of the time at cost to the public purse.
On the day the EDL demonstration area was marked by police with riot shields and helmets; a cavalry of mounted police; police dogs; and 3 metre steel barriers. Some 2000 police from every police force around the nation rolled into town that morning. Public order policing kept things under control.
Stewards calm a crowd of anxious Muslim young men
But around the protest and elsewhere in town, low key community policing was the aim. To make that possible, at the heart of our work was community mediation. It was similar and even more developed at the next large EDL demonstration in May 2012. On that day some 50 Christian leaders (Street Pastors, town-centre chaplains and recognised lay leaders were involved) worked closely with a similar number of Muslim leaders. That approach was . a result of the close working relationship we developed with Bedfordshire Police
The day went comparatively smoothly. The sheer scale of the preparation and the resources on the day was alarming, but designed to ensure that order was kept whatever happened. The police could and would deal with and prevent serious disorder and violence in the EDL ranks. It meant elsewhere we could gently and appropriately steward frustrated and fearful young Muslim men as they gathered for hours on end in Bury Park. It could allow counter protest yet restrain them when they threatened to provoke EDL violence.
Yet for all that, hundreds of police and 3 metre steel fences do not prevent the caustic environment of hate poisoning the atmosphere of our community. When the demonstrators went home that poison lurked. It showed itself in weeks to come with a sharp rise in hate crimes. And it shows for years after in young minds who have grown up immersed in it and are scarred by its impact. There were days in the weeks leading up to the event, having experienced the shee fear and anger and pain in our community, that I would sit in my car as I got home and weep at the hate that was being released in our community. Yet I was not the one at the sharp end of that hate.
The EDL came again to Luton again, several times, in 2012, 2013,h and 2014. We have had many visits since from Britain First. We have had other challenges. For me working in a community threatened by extremism has now occupied 14 years of my life. Yet the three months we spent preparing for the EDL protest on 5th February has to be the most challenging, the hardest, and yet the most rewarding I have spent, not least in the friendships forged in adversity.
More important is that while Luton still has a long way to go, the work we did paid dividends. The three months of intense community cohesion work we invested, work that otherwise might have taken three years, meant that it effectively contributed to effectively challenging extremism. Two years ago, on another anniversary, ten years after the Homecoming Parade that catalysed formation of the EDL, the PPC did a podcast. Titled “How can a Town Beat the Extremists” I wrote about it here.
Asked what Luton teaches us about how to deal with the far right, BBCs Home Affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani notes,
“Luton teaches more than that, that is how to deal with extremism. That can’t be done publicly, but very quietly behind the scenes, little dialogues.” He notes how if the media go away, and the politicians as well, and let the police and local experts get involved you find little opportunities for people to meet and have dialogue and start to understand each other, that things become less black and white, less them and us, and you find ways of coming together. “That’s not sexy. Its boring hard work. But most extremism begins to be solved through those quiet dialogues.”
The success of the work done to keep Luton peaceful on 5th February 2011 was ultimately proven successful in the same terms as Casciani uses.