Banning the EDL is right heart, wrong head politics

By Darrell Goodliffe

A very widespread, and important, tactical debate exists within both the Labour Party and the wider movement over what strategy we should pursue to deal with the likes of the English Defence League. Of course, we all agree they are an organisation whose politics are vile beyond words. So, what then do we do? Is it, for example, the right move to support the Metropolitan Police and its bid to halt the EDL march in Tower Hamlets? I would argue that it is not and furthermore the incorrectness of this has been reinforced today with the news that having previously banned all marches in East London, Theresa May has banned demonstrations in other parts of the capital. This shows exactly where the logic of calling on the state to ban things leads you – you move quickly beyond a targeted suppression of democratic rights to a blanket one which effects us all.

It should be axiomatic for us to support and empower communities and people, not the state. Sadly, we are not still weaned off, as a party, seeing the state as our comfort blanket, our ultimate solution in times of crisis. This shows in the support for May’s ban which is the product of ‘right heart, wrong head’ political reasoning. We now have a situation where nobody, not even the Woodcraft Folk, can march in London without coming into direct conflict with the law. This will only widen social conflict between the state and the people and the EDL, meanwhile, gain a sympathetic ear as a fellow group of ‘victims’ of this state aggression. Labour must come clearly out of the traps and condemn May’s ban and it might well also point out the irony of the Liberal Democrats, allegedly the “party of civil liberities’ now being the party of banning demonstrations in government.

So what should we do about the EDL? We should certainly agitate among the communities they target – Hope not Hate does especially excellent work here – and say to those communities that if they do not want the EDL to march then they should mobilise themselves to physically prevent them doing so, rather than make appeals to the police and the state to do the same. This kind of spontaneous, democratic, ‘no-platforming’ from below is of a entirely different order to that which the likes of May are enforcing from above. It is empowering as opposed to atomising. Furthermore, it sends a clear signal to the rest of the country that the EDL are what they are, a fringe group with marginal appeal. This, rather than the other approach which boosts their credibility, undermines it.

All the signs are that Labour has yet to achieve a properly balanced view of what the role of the state should be. Its leadership at least has moved away from supporting widespread economic state activism and now over-compensates by calling for the state to get very busy in the social sector. This however has universally negative consequences, economically, people are left to rot, and its social activism means that we still tend to out and out authoritarianism when it comes to civil liberty issues. I understand the instinct of comrades with regards to the EDL but passion-enslaved policy (no matter how noble that passion is) usually ends up in nothing but bad policy outcomes.

So it is here today when we have been carried to this authoritarian, almost Orwellian, place by the cynical manipulation of honest and decent disgust at the politics of the EDL. We need to start to see a change, Labour should speak out against May’s ban and it should also speak out against the banning of the EDL while, of course, never flinching in the fight against them and their poisonous politics.