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Angry White People

Coming Face-To-Face with the British Far Right

Zed Books Ltd

BORN AND BRED HERE

If you want to tackle extremism, you need to put hope back into their lives. If you take away their identity, they'll be the next generation of extremists. You really need to change that. I'd like to concentrate on politicizing the next generation. They need to vote. People just don't feel like they have a say. When you have that massive disengagement, that is quite dangerous ... Labour and other parties, your fuck-ups and your experiments have created millions like me.

I had never expected these words to come from Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Lennon), former leader of the English Defence League (EDL), ten months after we met for the first time in the summer of 2013. Back then, the EDL was in the news a lot. As a street movement, it had been receiving more publicity and public attention than any other far-right group in Britain. Since the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich on 22 May 2013, the EDL had been growing like wildfire. The 'membership', or the number of activists calculated online, stood at 36,000. Robinson said to me in that summer: 'We don't even need to recruit people ... There are millions who think the way we think and agree with what we stand for. The amount of people who're stepping forward despite the risk of losing their jobs, I'd say there're hundreds and thousands. We've got double the online support that the Lib Dems ever got.'

The EDL exploited the nationalist and racial sentiment deepened by the Woolwich murder, intensifying its mobilization of activists and supporters in towns and cities across the country, culminating in the nationwide demonstrations on 1 June. And then, on 29 June, the group organized a 'Walk of Honour' march on Armed Forces Day, in an attempt to parade past the East London Mosque in Tower Hamlets and then Newham, areas both with a significant British Asian population. The EDL had also intended to invite two notorious racists in the USA's 'anti-Islamization campaign', Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, to join the march (although under pressure from Britain's anti-racist groups, the two were eventually banned from entering the UK).

Cynically, the EDL used Rigby's death to further its war against Islam. Contrary to the portrayal in some of the popular media, the street movement isn't only against what it calls 'Islamic extremism', but against Islam as a religion and Muslims as a people. It works to racialize Islam and its believers as a homogeneous group of people, in direct contradiction of the leadership's claim that it isn't a racist movement or a movement that has been promoting racial hatred.

The EDL said on its website on 30 May 2013:

We have reached a stage where even simply acknowled-ging the link between Islam and terrorism makes you an 'Islamophobe' or even a racist. No wonder David Cameron refers to 'Islamist extremism', as if Islamic extremism can only come in one form and is easily distinguished from more mainstream forms of Islam ... The problem is that Islamic extremism has deep roots and cannot simply be brushed aside as if it were 'nothing to do with Islam' ... Unless the streets of our cities are to be littered with the bodies of those butchered in the name of Allah, the Islamic community must accept and acknowledge its share of the blame and its responsibility to confront and defeat extremist attitudes ... Our leaders must start addressing the consequences of their policy of unrestricted immigration or there is a very real danger that they will face the 'backlash' we all fear ... As long as we're willing to entertain the idea that Islamic extremism has nothing to do with Islam we have little chance of defeating it.

This statement is a clear manifestation of how the group attempts to link terrorism with Islam, 'immigrants' and immigration in general, without even understanding the basic fact that most terrorist acts were conducted by people born and bred in Britain. As I came to realize through my conversations with the EDL, this is a consistent current in the ideologies of far-right groups. Terrorism is directly linked to Islam and immigration in an attempt to mark British Muslims as 'outsiders', therefore attempting to racialize the religion and its believers.

This racialization had been at the heart of the work of the EDL since its formation. The anti-Islamophobia monitor Tell Mama reported, based on 2012/13 data collected before the Woolwich murder, a troubling picture of anti-Muslim harassment. There are 'incidents in the workplaces, in the street, between neighbours and particularly online, which may not always hit the headlines but can have an emotionally distressing, and in some cases devastating, effect on people's lives and their communities'. In this report, the EDL is held most responsible for disseminating anti-Muslim hatred online. It is the EDL, rather than the BNP, which is named in 49 per cent of the cases. Of 434 incidents of online abuse, 147 were directly linked to the EDL, amounting to one third of all web-based anti-Muslim incidents.

After the far-right exploitation of the death of Lee Rigby, particularly by the EDL, hate crimes such as racist abuse and violence in Britain soared within a matter of days. One hundred and thirty-six complaints of anti-Muslim incidents, including violence and online racist abuse, were reported to the police in the week following Rigby's murder. This was five times higher than the number of hate crimes recorded before his death. This torrent of hatred led directly to the murder of eighty-two-year-old Mohammed, stabbed to death in April as he walked home from a mosque in Birmingham. It was followed by an arson attack on the Somali community centre in Muswell Hill, north London, and three bomb attacks on mosques in the West Midlands.

Confidence among EDL activists seemed to be growing. This was most clearly demonstrated by their activities online, the internet being the major form of communication and mobilization for the movement. When you open the EDL Facebook page, the first line you see is 'No racism, no violence'. But you don't need to browse for long before you find the crudest form of racist abuse. A popular post on EDL London Division's Facebook page said in June 2013: 'We asked 100 people what you associated with Islam. The highest score goes to "terrorism" (28); followed by paedophilia (25), then "hate preaching" (20), "unwelcome invaders" (10), "excessive breeders" (7) and goat/camel fuckers (5).' Racism was confidently expressed here: 136 people ticked 'like' on this post. One said: 'Our country will turn into Englandstan soon and I don't want that at all.'

I was a first-generation migrant with no family relations or cultural roots in Britain. As someone born outside Britain and still a student of its society and culture, I've always been amazed by the total lack of self-awareness that racists like the above seem to display. Britain's media seem to portray them as merely a 'bunch of thugs', beyond which there seems no reason. Their faces on the TV screens and the front pages of newspapers show such deep anger, hatred and, above all, alienation, yet no explanation is ever given. I don't believe in inherent human nature or unchangeable ideologies. Surely, I thought to myself, no one's born a bigot; racial/ethnic hatred is a learned behaviour. So what are the circumstances that have driven them to adopt such ways of thinking?

In order to get a glimpse into how some of their base participants form their politics, I joined the EDL's London Division, under a false Chinese name. There, I was able to read members' communications. One wrote: 'I want Great Britain back. I'm ashamed of what Britain has become, the murder of that poor soldier lad a month ago shocked me as I never thought possible ... I am also so angry, so very very angry at the way this Islam stuff has us pinned down. There is nothing wrong with anger, Jesus displayed his anger once and it's written in the bible ...'

Then he spoke of his own circumstances and how he channelled his anger:

I've had a long and glorious professional career at the highest level and then, as life does, a bitter blow was served in my personal life and everything came crashing down with it. I feel ashamed because I'm not working at the moment and the other day had a letter came from the DWP [Department of Work & Pensions]. A Big pack came through the letter box and there were pages and pages of the same letter all in different languages – I was so angry. I get 10p a week benefit after 30 years of senior manangement creating jobs and these letters in foreign languages told me that people who can't read a word of the Queen's English can get benefits, I was furious.

He then drew some conclusions as to what should be done:

a) ALL known Islam Radicals are shipped out now and their families – no court cases or human rights, out; b) They accept our customs not the other way round – Friday is a work day for example; c) Anyone (Islam or not) who can't read and write an acceptable standard of English is out, and now; d) These rules or acceptance to British culture is imposed on all not just Islam – not just creed driven; e) Our dress code is accepted as we do when we go outside the UK, no more Cousin IT outfits; f) No more immigration (to all), we're full up. We can't care for, feed and find jobs for our own ... For me, it's about starting today and going back to good old British values. Everyone has a choice, it's our way or the highway.

But despite activists' growing confidence in the movement's morale, the EDL seemed to operate cautiously and treated new online followers as potential infiltrators. In my case, they're not wrong. So far, no one in the Division has responded to my messages. Or could it be that I had given myself the wrong name?

I was obviously aware that, as a non-white person, it would be difficult to reach the group's (albeit loose) online membership and support base. But it isn't an impossible task. I wanted to start with the group's origin.

Luton, the Bedfordshire town, won its name as the EDL 'hotbed' in May 2009 when its organization of origin, United People of Luton, organized a 500-strong anti-Muslim demonstration in the town in response to a group of local Muslim men who protested against the Iraq war (an invasion led by the USA and the UK that started in 2003) during the homecoming parade of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment. According to the Iraq Body Count report (published in the Independent in 2011), during the first two years of the Iraq war at least 24,865 civilians were killed, 20 per cent of them women and children. The atrocities committed during the war were never properly reported or documented in the UK media. During the Luton protest, the anti-war Muslim men held up placards saying, 'Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra' and 'Anglian soldiers: Cowards, killers, extremists' (referring to the killings of civilians), as the soldiers passed through.

This provoked anger from friends and families of the soldiers.

The anti-Iraq war protest was organized by Anjem Choudary, a forty-six-year-old former solicitor referred to in the British media as a 'radical Islamist preacher', 'extremist preacher' or 'hate preacher'. Choudary is a strong critic of the UK's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and had organized demonstrations against the interventions and the British armed forces in general. He helped form an Islamic organization, al-Muhajiroun, which organized several anti-West demonstrations, which went on to be banned by the British government. Choudary later helped form Al-Ghurabaa, which was again banned. He later formed Islam4UK, and the group was deemed illegal under Britain's counter-terrorism law in 2010. (Interestingly, the majority of the British media supported the banning of these groups, though they have never argued for the same for far-right extremist organizations in the UK.)

Following the anti-war protest in Luton, most of that evening's broadcasts and articles in the tabloid press the next day were calling the Muslim protesters 'extremists', 'fanatics' and 'hate mobs', 'Britons who hate Britain', 'the enemy within'. The Telegraph was particularly sensationalist on the morning of 14 March 2009: 'The Muslim extremists in Luton who jeered British troops returning from Iraq are continuing to defy public anger despite the simmering tension it has caused in a racially-mixed town.'

I knew that most media outlets didn't tell the whole truth as to what happened in Luton's anti-war, anti-army protest. So I wanted to get the other side of the story from the protest organizer, Anjem Choudary. With the negative press about him, I expected it to be difficult to set up a meeting. It proved remarkably easy, however, after a chance encounter with a teenage boy giving out copies of the Quran on a Saturday stall on Commercial Road. He put me in touch with Choudary, who immediately accepted my request for a meeting, although he was careful not to tell me the venue. Call at 9 a.m. on the day of our meeting, I was told. On the phone, Choudary was just as cautious. I was asked to come to New Road and then call him again when I reached the Costa café. I did as he instructed. Out came a woman from a café opposite. 'Are you here to meet Anjem Choudary?' she asked politely. She then led me into the café, where Choudary was sipping his coffee.

Choudary didn't shake my hand, but smiled and asked whether I'd like anything to drink. Then he introduced me to the woman who had come to meet me, his wife Umm Luqman. They had brought with them their young daughter, who sat with her mother at the table next to us. Choudary was different from the image I had formed from the press reports. He was relaxed and smiled. When asked what he thought of being called a hate preacher, his answer was calm:

When you call for fundamental change in society, there will always be resistance ... Fifteen years ago, the [racist] agenda in Europe wasn't so much about the Muslims but more about black people and Jews ... Today the people who define themselves on the far right define themselves in relation to Islam. That's the case in France, Germany, Austria and Britain ... As a Muslim, you're always going to be part of that equation. It depends on how public you are and how much you proclaim Islam ... That is how much you'll be under attack. But I would define myself just as a Muslim.

Choudary grew up in Woolwich and attended the primary school on the same street where Lee Rigby was killed thirty years later. During his youth in the 1970s and 1980s, he witnessed the growth of the National Front and other far-right forces. 'Now the far right has become more politically astute and acceptable to society, while Muslim communities have become more empowered as the second and third generations become entrenched in this country and they're not just going to go away in face of hostility ... It's a lot different from how we grew up as the first generation ...'

Choudary said he had been looking for the meaning of life for a long time, and in his mid-twenties, after studying medicine and law, he came to discover an alternative way of thinking that took him outside capitalism and liberal democracy. He began to follow Islam strictly. He has subsequently gone on to study sharia for over two decades. He talked to me about it as a set of theological principles that, as laid out in the Quran, can be practised globally. 'It is wherever we are, not specifically about the UK,' he said, referring to his group as 'an ideological movement'.

Contrary to the media portrayal, Choudary said the Luton protest in fact also involved non-Muslims from the local white British communities who, in his words, 'transcended nationalism and patriotism' to come out against the war. 'In fact, Luton's Muslims have always got on fine with the white communities. The vast majority of local white people were fine with the Muslims and there were big demonstrations against the war where white people took part in Luton.'

He explained the real feelings behind the contentious protest in 2009:

The protesters rejected the British involvement in the murder of Muslims and the atrocities it committed in Iraq and Afghanistan ... When the army came back, they were symbolic of all that ... The words on the protesters' placards were nothing compared to what actually happened. 'Baby killers,' it said on the placards. People found it distasteful to read these words. But baby-killing did actually happen in these wars. Those people who went out there to commit murders are not conscripted ... They went out there on their own will. And yet they were paraded as heroes. That definitely needed to be opposed. For the EDL, their history might have begun that day [of the anti-war, anti-army protest in Luton]. But ours is a continuous struggle.

To counter those who say we're a banned organization and we're engaged in inciting this and that, I'd say: Nobody was blowing themselves up until the British were in Iraq and Afghanistan ... What happened in Luton was a result of what Britain was engaged in abroad ... It's all about Britain's foreign policies. And that was why there was a huge anti-war movement in this country.

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Excerpted from Angry White People by Hsiao-Hung Pai. Copyright © 2016 Hsiao-Hung Pai. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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