Anti-Fascist Network

So what did we see on Saturday from the far-right? On this high-stakes day in the national spotlight? In a nutshell, they fucked it. Yaxley-Lennon had plugged the demo with old EDL videos enticing the faithful with memories of their glory days smashing up kebab shops the length and breadth of the land. His promise was getting the gang back together for one final job. And on that count at least, they did not disappoint: it was like an EDL re-enactment society. They got the beers in early, did a few lines in the pub bogs and were all steaming, ready to remembrance the shit out of stuff by 10am.

They were not policed initially and quickly got rowdy. The minutes leading up to the solemn ceremony at the Cenotaph they were meant to be there ‘defending’ from disrespect saw them chanting, waving cans of Stella and fighting with the police. All that was missing was one of the ‘patriots’ pissing on the Cenotaph. There were estimated to be 1500-2000 far-right hooligans in Whitehall. But as soon as 11am was past, they split up and scattered so they could get down to the real business of the day – baiting and attacking Muslims. Two hundred fanboys followed Tommy up to Chinatown for no clear reason. Momentarily it must have felt like the glory days were back again as they charged around behind their leader – E… E… E.D.L! But then harsh reality intervened and they ran into a load of riot cops and people started getting nicked. The Glorious Leader promptly jumped in a taxi and fucked off, leaving his minions to cop the flak for that little adventure. Classic Tommy.

Last Snort for Pimlico!

For the rest of the day there were groups of them ranging from 200 down to handfuls scattered along the route of the march, drinking in pubs and periodically trying to have a go at marchers. The most ambitious of these attacks seems to have been an attempt to block or interrupt the march at the north end of Vauxhall Bridge. The cops were not having it however and this escapade resulted in kettling in Pimlico and Millbank, over eighty nickings and not much else. The vast majority of Palestine marchers wouldn’t have noticed anything at all. Those marchers we saw and talked to passing some EDL shut inside a pub behind a line of cops thought it was pretty funny. There were 145 arrests at last count – almost all of them far-right. They were found with knives, knuckledusters, batons and of course little baggies of white powder.

Despite this shit-show, the right-wing media have been desperately back-pedalling from the mess that they created with their lurid tales of how Muslamics were coming to attack Remembrance Day. Sunday’s papers immediately pivoted to spinning the day as a tale of ‘both sides’ extremism. This however, doesn’t appear to have been enough to save Braverman, and the whole farrago resulted in enough splits and recriminations amongst the Tories to lead to her (thankfully!) getting the boot. Although some of the Cenotaph-defenders may have thought they had a top day out, we can hope that the generally shambolic nature of the proceedings may also result in some accusations and fallings-out among the ‘patriots’ too. Tommy Robinson may have lost a little more of his waning street cred and the chances of any EDL rebirth may be thankfully a little further away. Unfortunately however, these events may work to the benefit of those elements of the far-right that kept their distance from Saturday’s shambles, notably Patriotic Alternative, who like to present a more ‘disciplined’ image.

On Saturday the far-right fully showed their hand. They had all the tabloids and even senior government ministers pressing all the most emotive Gammon buttons – the Cenotaph! Statues! Muslims coming for our poppies! They even had Tommy Robinson conveniently reinstated to Twitter mere days before the demo, calling out all the old EDL crew. So they threw everything they had at it and it was a shambles. Quite what all the media right, united with one ‘defend the Cenotaph’ voice thought was going to happen is a mystery. Did Matt Goodwin, GB News, Nigel Farage et al think that their hysterical misinformation was going to result in a poppy emblazoned middle England trooping en masse to Whitehall to take a stand, a sort of militant version of The Queue?

Although the efforts of the far-right seemed in some ways laughable on Saturday, this was only in the context of hundreds of thousands of Palestine marchers. They managed to gather 2000 drunk violent EDL in central London at about a week’s notice. On any other day, this would be something we would be greeting with serious alarm. And even on Saturday, there were numerous incidents of Palestine marchers being abused by the far-right going to or from the demo. It is also worth noting – the far-right are not scared. They are happy to take on numbers much larger than themselves. And again, on another occasion, this could have presented a much greater problem.

However, overall this was a good day for Palestinian solidarity and a shit-show for the right. Saturday gave the lie to the exaggerated rhetoric in the run-up to the day, where Braverman was trying to portray the Palestine march as a “hate march” and football fans as unfairly treated by the notoriously woke Met Police. The huge Palestine demo was almost completely peaceful, whereas Braverman’s much-maligned football fans were shown for what they are – a mob of drunken racist hooligans.