National Front lays wreaths at Cenotaph

The National Front has laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in a move which the Royal British Legion said "desecrated" the monument to Britain's war dead.



Hundreds of members of the far Right party marched through the streets of Westminster to the London memorial on Remembrance Sunday. It emerged last night that they placed four poppy wreaths following the official ceremony attended by the Queen.

The Royal British Legion last night condemned the act saying that they had not been given permission to place the tributes, which were laid alongside those presented by Gordon Brown, the prime minister, and David Cameron, the Tory leader.

Robert Lee, the legion's spokesman said: "This is a terrible and unfortunate desecration of one of the nation's most important and treasured monuments.

"There was no official formation representing the National Front at the ceremony in any shape or form.

"Someone must have come there afterwards and placed these wreaths on the official pile."

A news item on the party's website reported that more than 200 members had marched from Victoria in London to the historic site on Sunday.

It said that the event "passed off with dignity and peacefully" despite threats of disruption.

It said the group observed a two minute silence at the Cenotaph before members laid the wreaths on behalf of the main, ex-servicemen's, youth, and Yorkshire branches of the party.

It concludes saying the march was a "sure sign of a revitalised and resurgent NF".

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which organises the official ceremony at the Cenotaph, said the National Front had not been allocated an official place for wreaths but had not broken any rules by leaving them later. continues here

The Sunic Journal: Speech at British National Front meeting

Dr. Tomislav Sunic delivered a speech at the British National Front meeting in West Bradford, UK on Sunday, September 13, 2009. The theme was nationalism within the context of contemporary Western societies, cultural hegemony, and political activism.

Topics of the speech include:

Tom’s experience with leftism as a youth, leftist discipline, and flaws among rightists

“Nationalism” and the different perceptions/usage between America and Europe

Reactive vs. proactive nationalism

Pride in one’s racial/national heritage and the psychology of leftist fears

The importance of working toward “cultural hegemony” and good presentation for political advancement

Disengaging from the mainstream through home schooling and grassroots social activity

How we identify ourselves (race/nation/tribe) the destructive nature of exclusive nationalism

Dealing with religious affiliation among the various groups of white nations and tribes

Egalitarianism, economism, and defining ourselves and the enemy

The broadcast can be listened to here

Police play down threat from far right

The significance of the far right should not be “overplayed” after clashes between anti-Islamic groups and Asian youths, the head of Scotland Yard warned on Thursday.

Far-right protests in Birmingham, Luton and Harrow had caused distress to Muslim communities, said Sir Paul Stephenson, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, “and I anticipate further problems”.

But he said: “We’ve got to be very careful to keep the problem in context and not to overplay [the far right’s] significance and give them an oxygen that serves their purpose.” Sir Paul’s comments echo the assessment of senior intelligence officials, who believe the extremists pose less of a terrorist threat than dissident Irish republicans, in spite of increasing disquiet among Muslims.

Police expect more trouble in Manchester city centre on October 10, when the English Defence League plans the latest in a series of anti-Islamic protests. Running battles broke out in Birmingham in August between EDL supporters, including football hooligans, and Asian counter-protesters organised by Unite Against Fascism.

Sir Paul told the Metropolitan Police Authority the EDL and Stop the Islamisation of Europe were not viewed as extreme rightwing groups and could not be barred from protesting under the law that bans incitement to racial hatred. Nevertheless, “the concern to me is how groups like that either willingly or unwillingly allow themselves to be exploited by very extreme rightwing groups like the National Front and the British Freedom Fighters”.

John Denham, communities secretary, has likened extreme rightwing groups to Oswald Mosley’s fascist blackshirts of the 1930s, although levels of support are small by comparison. Mr Denham plans to adapt a Home Office strategy to prevent Muslim radicalisation to white working- class communities to halt the rise of the far right.

The government wants to ensure that young Muslim men do not feel “singled out” as it seeks to engage with them to stop a repeat of the July 7 2005 bomb attacks in London and the foiled plot to blow up airliners using liquid explosives.

A senior Whitehall official said the far right did not present as great a terrorist threat as al-Qaeda or Irish dissidents.

“It is a real concern within communities and we have to do something more about it but proportionately that is where we are,” said the official. “Police already devote quite a large part of their counterterror work to non-Islamist groups. I don’t think we need to beef that up.”

Lucy James, a research fellow at the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank set up to counter extremism, said it was “not the time to panic”. But she said even small numbers of far-right activists could provoke disorder by targeting sensitive locations, such as mosques. continues here

Devolved identity politics

Salma Yaqoob: A strengthening sense of English identity in the face of recession cannot be left to those who want to exclude outsiders

For most black and Asian people, English nationalism conjures up uncomfortable associations. Many, like my parents, remember living through the rise of the National Front in the 1970s and associate it with reaction, racism, and worse. With Britain heading deeper into recession, and the far right again re-emerging as a growing political force, there is an understandable nervousness about any political discourse centred on notions of English identity. This is particularly the case when the discourse is so often framed as a reaction against those of us who see our identity as more complex than one all-embracing category, whether it is nation, gender, class, faith or race.

The appeal of this brand of Englishness is understandable, if simplistic. Two decades of new Labour's embrace of casino capitalism has seen a dramatic growth of inequality. Swathes of the white working-class feel abandoned - used as cannon fodder at election times, and left stranded thereafter. Poverty and disadvantage have fuelled resentments and tensions as people feel in competition over scarce resources. While the recent announcement in the budget of £1bn to be spent on council housing is to be welcomed, it is wholly inadequate to address the already huge needs, as housing waiting lists and the scale of home repossessions grow.

A dangerous mixture of myths have been fostered in which too many people too easily ascribe their difficulties in securing housing or jobs to newly arrived immigrants. The simplistic answers of the far right have found fertile ground. Non-British and non-Christian identities have been situated as problems or threats, whether through attacks on asylum seekers and refugees, demonisation of Muslims and Islam post-9/11, or the more sophisticated critiques of Britain's multicultural model.

But grievances underpinned by economic injustice, and the tensions they give rise to, are not just confined to disadvantaged white working-class communities. As someone who runs an advice surgery in inner city Birmingham, the sense that another ethnic grouping or nationality is always doing better is quite common, whether it is Pakistanis expressing such concerns about Somalis or African-Caribbean people about Pakistanis. Such tensions were an important underlying cause of disturbances in the Lozells area of the city between members of the African-Caribbean and Asian communities that left two people dead.

Rob Berkley, director of the Runnymede Trust, has summed up the challenge ahead:

There is an urgent need to ensure that a re-emergence of class onto the political agenda will not feed divisions, but promote equality for everyone … it's possible to have a progressive debate on race and class in 21st-century Britain that can lead to better outcomes for all.

The challenge for progressive politics is to build coalitions among the most dispossessed and excluded, anchored in a commitment to multiculturalism, social justice for all, and tackling exclusion from economic and political power.

Only a political culture that acknowledges the realities and specificities of disadvantage associated with race and class can marginalise the appeal of those with the worst kind of identity politics: whether of a white, Asian or black communalist nature or religious sectarianism. Such a politics must seek to shape a political discourse within the mosaic of communities and between them. continues here