Vol. 76/No. 11      March 19, 2012

The EDL and BNP are trying to foment racist divisions following a Feb. 4 incident in this town of Greater Manchester in which two Caucasian teenagers were allegedly beaten and robbed by eight South Asian youth.

One of the victims, Daniel Stringer-Prince, suffered a fractured skull and two fractured eye sockets. His mother, Cheryl Stringer, opposed the planned EDL rally. “It’s got nothing to do with us whatsoever,” she told the Manchester Evening News Feb. 20. “We don’t want this march to go ahead. … I certainly don’t want Daniel’s name dragged into something we don’t agree with.”

One 21-year-old South Asian man has been charged with assault. The police are treating the incident as a so-called hate crime.

Some 50 people attended the BNP action against “anti-English race attacks.”

The EDL march in the afternoon drew about 600 people, many from out of town, according to the BBC. The rightist EDL, which campaigns against so-called Muslim extremism, had originally planned to march past the mosque.

The two rightist demonstrations were preceded by a racist attack in nearby Rochdale on Feb. 23. The BBC reports that as many as 200 people smashed the windows of Tasty Bites, an Indian-owned fast-food restaurant, and harassed others, some shouting support for the EDL. According to the media, the restaurant was a meeting location for young girls and one of 11 defendants on trial for child sex offenses that allegedly took place in the area in 2008-2009.

In the streets around the Hyde mosque, counterprotesters maintained a presence for five hours to keep away small groups of EDL members.

“I’m disappointed with the police and media, they allowed this to become a racial issue,” Abdul Ahad, a council (municipal) worker, told the Militant.

“We wanted to show strength and unity,” said Saeed Miah, a leader of the Bangladesh Welfare Association. His organization plans to hold a march in the coming weeks.

Bangla TV News covered the counterdemonstration, which got less media publicity than the rightists’ actions. “What working people need is unity and resistance to the employers and their government, not this divide and rule scapegoating,” Andrés Mendoza, Communist League candidate for Gorton North in the May 4 Manchester Council elections, told Bangla TV.

Dag Tirsén contributed to this article.
 
 
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