This afternoon Ashley and I walked down to Queens Road to show our support for the counter-protest against the EDL‘s “March for England”, a horrible little rally organised ostensibly as a St. George’s Day event, but in reality it was little more than a platform for the EDL’s Islamophobia and general bigotry.
We saw an impromtu EDL protest outside Churchill Square a few weeks ago which consisted of five overweight blokes, two of whom had their faces covered, and was shut down by the police almost as quickly as it began. This was a slightly more high-profile affair though, with around 200 EDL members facing off against a few thousand counter-protestors, separated by around 500 police.
As the march made it’s way down Queens Road there were small scuffles here and there as EDL members lashed out against those opposing them, and anarchists tried to break through police lines to attack the EDL.
When the EDL reached the main contingent of anarchists and Socialist Worker signs the real trouble began. We were disappointed many of those present for the counter-protest seemed more interested in starting fights with the police than focusing their energy on the EDL.
About one hundred people seemed determined to stop the march altogether and attempted to push back the line of police horses, which somewhat inevitably led to them being rushed and truncheons being unsheathed.
The vast majority of the anti-EDL crowd were well behaved, and employed my preferred method of counter-protest; derision and humour. This lady told us the first draft of her sign read “Nazis are not nice”, but she changed it to “Nasty” to make it that much more forceful -
The EDL were as charming as you might expect. I noticed they’d called this a family event, which apparently means plenty of swearing, throwing things, and constant threats of violence. Even my fairly benign chants of “Boooooo!” were consistently met with invitations to fight. But if you don’t have a shred of logic or reason to pin your arguments on, I suppose punching is all that remains.
As I write this the remnants of the protest has been kettled by police in Victoria Gardens, and apparently have begun to give speeches, which are being expertly drowned out by the opposition.
UPDATE
In the aftermath of the march, there are lots of accusations being thrown around about police brutality, mainly based on this video. It’s difficult to condone police attacking protesters of any kind, but in this instance it’s definitely not a cut-and-dry case of police violence. We were stood about two metres to the left of where the video was filmed, and this is what we saw:
- The anti-fascist protesters jumped into the road to form a barrier to stop the police (and the EDL behind them) advancing
- The line of police horses stopped, and the anti-fascist protesters began trying to physically push them back.
- Various protesters made grabs for police horse reins, in the process hitting and jostling the horses, all the time being shouted at by the police to move back
- Everyone on the raised pavement (where we were) was by this point shouting at the protesters to leave the horses alone
- The line of protesters eventually fell back when they realised the horses were difficult to move
- After several minutes of telling the protesters to move back, the police charge (this is where the video starts)
As I was saying on Twitter all last night, I don’t agree with what the police did, but the protesters were guilty of bad behaviour here too.
The biggest disappointment was that some people clearly showed up just to have a fight with police. Why all that energy couldn’t have been directed at the bunch of marauding racists a few feet behind the police I do not know.
And speaking of the EDL…
In a couple of news stories I’ve seen the following quote from Matt Silva, a spokesman for March for England:
“From my side, we did all we could to facilitate a peaceful and lawful gathering. There was no provocation, no racial chants, no homophobic chants which we have been accused of doing in the past. This was a family event but I was completely appalled at what we saw. There was no excuse for the violence.”
He also said women and children had missiles thrown at them, and there was “no provocation from any of the marchers who sang the national anthem because it was the Queen’s birthday on Saturday”.
I don’t know which march Mr Silva was attending, but the vast majority of the attendees seemed there exclusively to provoke violence. A bald, overweight man challenged me to a fight, and when I politely declined he challenged Ashley. Take a look at any of the pictures from yesterday and tell me the EDL aren’t provoking violence. It’s ridiculous.
Also, I saw the entire march go past twice and I didn’t see a single child. What responsible parent would take their child to such an event, anyway?
very well written my u.k. son.as i posted to your lovely wife, this brightonist thing is very informative. keep up the good work! lyb,d.
This is the best and fairest account of yesterday’s events we have seen (contrast the laughable New English Review!). One quibble: perhaps, we should take the marchers at their word – that they are The March for England not the EDL, even if many of them are also members of that league. Later events were even hairier in Church Street outside the NCP, where bottles were thrown at police horses and broken glass strewn in their path, and I thought that the police showed considerable restraint. Perhaps we should consider best tactics for next year? We favour mass derision and ridicule – any violent opposition or attempt to stop the march merely panders to the marchers’ deluded vision of themselves as foot soldiers of English liberty. Also, chants of ‘Our streets!’ and ‘Go home, you’re not welcome here’ are fairly meaningless when some marchers are Brighton-bred. This is about ideology and the future of freedom surely, not a territorial dispute.
You’re probably right from a purely factual point of view, although I’m of the opinion that if it looks, smells and sounds like the EDL, it’s probably the EDL.
Derision and ridicule is definitely the way forward.
You seem to have completely misunderstood what was happening yesterday.
I felt that the whole atmosphere in Brighton was different yesterday. Normally Brighton is a really safe place to walk around but yesterday I didn’t feel safe as i knew there were racist thugs about. Not necessarily in the march but outside of it (look at what happened to @ScapperDuncan). I want to make sure that it is not acceptable for racists thugs to be in Brighton.
The MFE/EDL come to Brighton for a nice day out and to have a drink. It was important that we stop them doing that so that they don’t come back. Just shouting at them doesn’t work (they actually seem to like that). We wanted to physcially block them from parading their racist message. The best result would be if the police decided it was to much effort to get them to Victoria Gardens and just put them all back on the train!
But we were successful in stopping them. The police changed the march route so it was much shorter. They were due to go all the way down to the sea front! The MFE/EDL were pretty quiet all day and at the end were taken back to the train station by the police without their trip to the pub. Hopefully that had such a shit day they won’t come back.
As for the specifics of the video:
The first thing that happened before the video was that a man in a wheelchair went into the road to stop the march!
Then a load of antifa got into the road (for the reasons above) behind a banner. They were in between the police horses and the march so the police horses then came back through the antifa. The mounted police were pushing into people so they were putting their hands up to push back (as can be seen in this photo: http://s.coop/jko4). I didn’t see anyone hitting a horse or grabbing reigns and i can’t imagine anyone doing it but people on twitter say it happened.
But what sort of idiot would try and hit a horse! I knew most of the people who were in the road there and i can’t imagine them doing that. The antifa weren’t trying to push the horses back so they didn’t fall back voluntarily the police pushed and beat people back.
You imply that people should move when the police tell them to but this assumes that the police are right. The police were letting a bunch of people who, if given the chance, would attack anyone who they deemed wasn’t “english” enough parade their message of hate through our beautiful diverse and accepting town. We had a moral duty to try and stop them.
The horses were lovely by the way. At one point i had my arms linked with other people so the police couldn’t push me back and they were trying to push a horse into me. The horse kept just resting his nose on my head! Really beautiful, calm, and soft creatures.
I thought all the antifa protesters were amazing yesterday!
I didn’t misunderstand what happened, I just have a different view to you and the other anti-fascist protesters.
I hate the MfE / EDL’s message as much as anyone, but they have a right to it just as much as you have a right to oppose them.
And you’re right – the horses WERE lovely.
I think it was wholly unnecessary for any protesters to jump into the street, in front of a row of police horses and violent EDL parade members. To act as if they police should just have let them start an actual fight in the street is ridiculous. We were standing RIGHT NEXT TO where the protesters jumped out to block. They were, in fact, hitting horses and plainly acting ignorant. What did they expect to happen? The MFE march was terrible, but they had the right to be there, and jumping in the street to encourage violence was stupid, as far as I’m concerned. The police were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and frankly the people who jumped in the street should have put their energy elsewhere. I have been to sooo many protests over the years, and I have never seen a display of idiocy like that.
[...] (aka racist thugs parading through town under the guise of loving England). Jon wrote about it here. It was a pretty amazing showing of protesters-about 1500 or more?-yelling at the ~200 or so [...]