I have always liked Tip O’Neill’s judgement that all politics is local. It rings true, and it comforts the weary councillor after another round of emails chasing a missed bin collection. It is why our local representatives hold more power over Labour’s national prospects than most councillors may even realise. Because, just as every sports team is only as good as its last game, every party is only as good as the last time a voter contacted them. That contact will often be with a Labour councillor. If we ignore the email about the missed bin, then all our ideas for a fairer society count for nothing for that voter.
Over the last few weeks, the O’Neill doctrine has rung more true than ever in Walthamstow. Our borough – with one of the largest Muslim populations in the country – is being targeted cynically by the English Defence League. They tried to march through the centre of Walthamstow at the end of Ramadan, in between the Olympics and Paralympics, but were refused permission. So, they returned in September. Hard-pressed businesses closed for the day; residents were forced out of their town centre; property was damaged and a violent reaction was provoked (just as the EDL wanted). Pleased with this response, they applied to march again on 26 October, the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Adha, when they planned to show the provocative nonsense ‘The Innocence of Muslims’.
This was too much. We successfully convinced the Met and the Home Office to ban all marches through the borough. We also persuaded the Met to require any static demonstration by the EDL to be outside Waltham Forest – in effect banning it. This meant that, for that weekend at least, Walthamstow could live normally, except for a counter-demonstration of around 500 people which closed off a road for a few hours.
This episode is not over – the EDL will apply to march through our streets again – but it raises a bucket-load of questions. I want to consider only what it means politically for those of us in Labour, because it shines a light on how we should go about our politics. Our successful call for a ban was met with a similar response by those on the far-right and by many on the far-left. The EDL and their fellow-travellers didn’t like it. But neither did many in the SWP and elsewhere on the far-left.
The EDL’s response is understandable: they wanted to march, to provoke a relatively harmonious community into a violent response. They were stopped, and they didn’t like that. The non-Labour left’s response is also understandable. They get their kicks from opposing, not proposing. We took away their muse, and they didn’t like that. Indeed, it forced them to turn their protest into a ragbag of opposition to academies, free schools and cuts. Who knew that the EDL were so supportive of Michael Gove?
Yet, the response of some on the mainstream left (in and out of Labour) was more nuanced. While the majority supported us, a significant minority did not. They disagreed with us on civil liberties grounds. Some felt it was not fair for the anti-EDL march to be banned; others felt that no march (anti- or pro-EDL) should be banned. A local vicar described the ban on all marches as ‘a disgraceful attack on local democracy’. This goes to the heart of the lessons the episode holds for Labour councils and a future Labour government.
Those who disagreed with us on the left did so (mostly) on idealistic grounds. Our position was rooted in pragmatism and a concern for our residents’ wishes and daily lives. This is what made the vicar’s criticism so strange – if this had been put to the vote, residents would have overwhelmingly backed our call for a ban. A petition calling for the ban gained ten times as many signatures as the left’s counter-demonstration attracted.
Our opponents spoke of the right to free speech. Of course we believe in the right to free speech. We just don’t believe that free speech trumps every other right – such as the right of our residents to go about their weekend without the fear of violence. And we don’t believe that free speech can be exercised in any way the speaker wishes, including inflaming a community and seeking to provoke a violent response.
I believe that we were right. We didn’t agree that the free speech of a violent fringe group with no roots in Walthamstow should be allowed to trump the freedom of the law-abiding residents of Walthamstow. And we didn’t allow ideology or idealism to blind us to the wishes of the vast majority of our residents. Through all of this, it was clear that it was the local Labour party which was standing up for our residents – not the EDL, and not the SWP. There is a lesson in all this for Labour nationally – ignore the angry noise of those who deny the reality of residents’ lives, and remember that all politics is local.
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Mark Rusling is a Labour and Cooperative councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest and writes the Changing to Survive column
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