This is a press release from Hope not Hate
On Saturday 3 September the English Defence League plan to march through the streets of Tower Hamlets. They want peddle their racism and hatred through the heart of one of Britain’s biggest Muslim communities. I am asking for your help to stop them.
The EDL want to whip up racism and terrorise the local Muslim community. There can be no other explanation for their provocative march. They are coming to East London looking for a confrontation and they are trying to provoke a violent reaction. This is the last thing the people of Tower Hamlets want or need.
But with your help we can stop them. Will you join us in calling for the EDL march to be banned?
There can be no excuse for this march of hate. It is not right for one or two thousand racists to bring fear and trouble into somebody else’s community. We have to stop the EDL from marching.
We are calling on the police and council to ask the Home Secretary to ban the march. In doing so we are standing up for all the people of Tower Hamlets, whatever their religious or racial background.
We have shown before that we can force the authorities to act. We stopped the EDL from marching through a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood of Bradford last year. And more recently our pressure forced the Home Secretary to ban the controversial anti-Muslim preacher Pastor Jones from entering Britain.
Now we need to stop the EDL from marching in Tower Hamlets in September. Will you add your name to the call to ban the march?
Tower Hamlets has a long and proud history of immigration and resistance to racism and fascism, so we must stand up against the EDL now. We’ve made a difference before and I know we can be successful again. Please sign our petition:
“We, the undersigned, call on the authorities to ban the proposed march by the English Defence League (EDL) in Tower Hamlets on Saturday 3 September. The EDL is a violent racist organisation that seeks to vilify Muslim communities and damage community relations. Its planned march is designed to whip up fear and incite violence.
We reject entirely the EDL and its anti-Muslim racism and we don’t see why the people of Tower Hamlets should pay for its march of hate.
We are proud of Tower Hamlets, a vibrant multiracial area, which has a long and proud history of immigration and resistance to racism. From Cable Street in the 1930s, to Brick Lane in the 1970s and to Millwall in the 1990s, the people of Tower Hamlets have come together to see off racism and fascism before. We will now stand united against the racist and anti-Muslim EDL.
We believe that everyone has the right to live in peace and without the fear of abuse or violence. We stand against all prejudice, whether it’s racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, sexism or homophobia.
We oppose all extremism – from whatever quarter – and we recognise that extremism breeds extremism. We condemn the extremist EDL just as we condemn Islamist extremism. We say a plague on both their houses.
We believe that the people of Tower Hamlets should be allowed to live without the threat of violence and fear. This is why we are standing together with the Muslim community against the hatred of the EDL and Islamophobia more generally. We believe in HOPE not hate. That is why we are calling on the authorities to ban the EDL march of hate.”
