Confronting "White pride" in Swansea

On Saturday 9th March an extreme right wing National Front (NF) held a 'White pride Worldwide' demonstration in Swansea. This won't be "what's wrong with White pride worldwide" that's another article which its intended audience wouldn't bother reading.

Members of the NF consider it an achievement to be born with white skin, which says more about them and what they have achieved than it does about political theory. Unlike the English Defence League (EDL) or British National Party (BNP) they have no qualms about being seen as overtly fascist and directly racist.

On the day of the counter demo I arrived in Swansea early; I went to meet with others and walked around town. 400 Unite Against Fascism (UAF) protesters were in a steel pen opposite another empty police pen reserved for the fascists a few hundred yards away. The Antifa group I met had very different tactics to those of the UAF, as a movement Antifa believe inconfronting fascists directly. This was quite a task as Swansea was absolutely crawling with police that day. There were tens of riot vans, police on horses, hundreds of police patrolling the city and a few plainclothes police were spotted too.

Ummah of Muhammad: putting the mental in fundamental

Ummah of Muhammad (UoM) are a Wales-based Islamic organisation who claim to 'protect the symbols of Islam'. They called a demo on the 10th of July outside Cardiff City Hall, where under forty people demonstrated to 'protect the symbols of Islam'. After half an hour, the man leading the demonstration ran out of script and the crowd proceeded to shout various chants such as “UK, watch your back, Islam is coming back!' and 'Shariah law in the UK!' amongst others.

In recent months Islam itself has been a hotly debated topic, along with its various symbols of identity. Switzerland banned the minaret after a xenophobic campaign in which there were more minarets (which were shaped as missiles) on the poster than there would be in the whole of Switzerland. The French parliament are debating banning the burqa, President Nicholas Sarkozy even said the burqa 'was not welcome'. In Marseille, a new seven-thousand capacity Mosque is causing controversy as its minaret will be taller than the cathedral. Unlike the "British Asian", a corresponding "French African" identity does not exist: you're either French or not, leading to widespread xenophobia, alienation, the rise of the far right and inner city riots.

Do you believe in the Welsh Defence League?

Like all previous mobilisations in Wales, the recent protests by the English Defence League (EDL) in Cardiff and Swansea on 5th June were called under the name of the "Welsh Defence League" (WDL). Judging by the combined turnout at both demos and taking into consideration the large number of attendees from England, the WDL numbers less than 50 people.

There is little to suggest that the WDL is anything more than a handful of people who travel to EDL demonstrations, rather than an organisation in their own right. Previous demonstrations in Wales were derisory: a shambles in Swansea, a no-show in Newport and a wash out in Wrexham. A recent partial renaming as the "Cymru Defence League" is due to "C-C-CDL!" being more chant-friendly than "W-W-WDL!" and not any kind of half-hearted sop to the Welsh language.