The English Defence League, the racist street movement now two years old, will rally in Cambridge on 9 July. Its stated aim is to counter Islamic extremism: wearing a veil, opening a mosque, shunning lager and so on. On a named day, supporters gather in a town with a big ethnic minority population and do their best to frighten it. They march, they chant division and hatred, and sometimes they riot—as in Luton on 24 May 2009 (the movement before it was named and organised), and Stoke on 23 January 2010.
Many EDL supporters are recruited from football firms, and must come out for some of the same things they find there: a feeling of collective identity and power, the excitement of street violence. They don't sign up to a political programme. However, members of the fascist BNP were quick to take organising roles in the movement, and seem to be shaping it to their purposes. Since 2010, the EDL and its sister Welsh Defence League have targeted a May Day trade union demonstration and a socialist party meeting: a move towards classic fascist tactics.
Last night I went to the first meeting to organise a counterdemonstration in support of our city's diversity: twenty or more people crowded around tables in Jaffa Net Cafe, Mill Road. I won't be in Cambridge on the day (Margot is reading at a poetry festival) but I think the event will be great. Librarians should support it. Our profession's values—I'm thinking of intellectual freedom, rationalism, common property—place us in total opposition to fascism.
From eleven o'clock this Saturday, 25 June, I'll be on a Unite Against Fascism stall outside the Guildhall in case any one would like to say hello.
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