By Kathryn White
With the English Defence League now targeting rural Britain, small towns must join the fight against extremism.
On Friday, hundreds of
English Defence League (EDL) supporters staged yet another rally to promote the organisation's anti-Islamist agenda and cause general intimidation, this time in the centre of London. The march by around 250 of its supporters was held in support of
Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician whose presence in the UK was labelled as a "threat to one of the fundamental interests of society" by the Home Office last year due to his
deliberately inflammatory anti-Muslim views. Wilders's choice phrases of late include a call for a "head rag tax" on all headscarf-wearing Muslim women, a suggestion that reveals much about the real scope of the EDL's own supposedly narrow "anti-extremist" agenda.
Now the EDL has announced that its next major target will be my hometown of Aylesbury, with a "protest" set to take place on 2 May. The targeting of Aylesbury (a small, relatively prosperous town in Buckinghamshire) marks an important departure for the EDL, which has made a name for itself over the past year by focusing on urban areas already known for community tensions it can exploit. Its intimidating presence in Luton provoked violent responses, as did the
EDL rally in Stoke-on-Trent, which reportedly cost the taxpayer nearly £200,000 to police.
So why target a home counties market town with no discernible profile for ethnic or racial tensions? Most likely, the EDL's new strategy aims to make the organisation appear far more pervasive than it actually is. While its tactics may be similar to those of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, so far the EDL has lacked anything like the same organisational and political clout. Spreading EDL activities to piggy-back off relatively strong bases of support nearby may prove an effective means to widen its membership and profile. In that context, the forthcoming Aylesbury "protest" is designed not only to intimidate local Muslim and minority ethnic communities but also to use the EDL's strong Luton base nearby in order to widen its perceived presence in the area.
The response in Aylesbury, and other small rural towns that will no doubt be targeted next, must be as unequivocal as it has been in the larger urban centres: racist extremism has no place here. Violent groups such as the EDL are dangerous at a local level not just because of the intimidation they engender. They are dangerous because, in largely harmonious communities such as Aylesbury, their actions serve to alienate large swaths of Muslim constituents who may well have concerns themselves about the rise of extremist Islam and media perceptions of their religion. That alienation stops engagement, and violent demonstrations with intimidation at their core leave no room for democratic debate nor a constructive exchange of views.
In Aylesbury, these facts have been borne out to date by the degree of community cohesion we have achieved through open debate and compromise. After initial controversy, Aylesbury's
first dedicated Muslim community centre is set to open in the next two months amid a generally supportive atmosphere. This has been made possible by hard work on all sides to ensure the whole community feels included in the plans. It is just such community cohesion that the EDL's presence may jeopardise. As such, its timing could not be more unwelcome.
The EDL's new aim, to establish itself as a feature of rural as well as urban life, may thrive unless action is taken now to oppose it. Its success is predicated on provoking divisions within our smaller communities in the hope that those who oppose the EDL's presence locally may fail to act. Their particular brand of racist extremism must be countered one "protest" at a time, one town at a time, through peaceful counter-demonstration. Only through peacefully, yet forcefully, making opposition known at the outset will small towns such as Aylesbury avoid the divisive effects that such groups hope to achieve.
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Kathryn White is a barrister specialising in employment, education and public law. She is Labour's Parliamentary Candidate for Aylesbury, an Executive Member of the Society of Labour Lawyers and a trustee of the Fawcett Society.