Exposed as the thugs they are

The only thing big for the EDL about Saturday was the scale of its defeat.

Bradford's various communities united to demand a ban on the EDL racists and Islamophobes jackbooting their way through the city to incite a response from local youth.

The EDL follows the example of the National Front in the 1970s when its leaders proclaimed the need to kick their way into the headlines.

It thrives on violence, whether against the police, ethnic and religious minorities or anti-racist campaigners. But its efforts to spark mayhem on the streets of Bradford were thwarted by the self-discipline of local people and successful co-ordinated demands to ban the planned EDL march.

Local Asian people and anti-racists did not want to see a repeat of the 2001 events associated with a provocative National Front march which galvanised mass opposition.

The ongoing problem of institutionalised racism in Britain's police and courts conspired to produce a situation in which predominantly Asian youths were arrested and subjected to savage jail sentences.

There is little to suggest that any repeat of such a confrontation would have been markedly different nine years on.

As it is, despite directing the bussed-in EDL hooligans to the city's Urban Gardens and hemming them in with an 8ft perimeter fence, the police reacted tamely to the breakout of dozens of them to neighbouring waste ground from where they pelted bottles and stones, before leaving to roam threateningly round the city.

But that was indeed the strength of the anti-racist behaviour. Neither local campaigners nor national mobilising bodies were prepared to provide a pretext to permit the forces of the state to view anti-racists as a mirror image of the invaders of multiracial and multicultural Bradford.

And what an opportunity this presented for the EDL to expose themselves as the hate-filled morons they are.

They deny that they are racist, sympathetic to the BNP fascists or indeed opposed to Islam as such - just its extremist expression.

But the slogans chanted by EDL supporters included: "We love the floods" and "Allah is a paedo," which rival each other in their moronic and provocative nature.

They belie EDL protestations that it is neither racist nor Islamophobic and expose its true nature.

While those active in left-wing, anti-racist and anti-fascist activities have never been in any doubt as to the essence of the EDL, many less informed people may have swallowed media propaganda equating the EDL and its opponents as addicted to mindless violence. Anti-racist self-discipline prevailed against fascist provocation.

This does not mean that physical confrontation in opposition to racist aggression is always to be avoided. There have always been and certainly will be instances in which mass mobilisation to repel attacks on communities is demanded.

But there must be no kneejerk reaction that assumes that there is only one way to defeat racism and fascism and it is vital that local communities' views are respected.