Happy May Day to workers everywhere

I almost forgot, and I'm not sure I'm all that happy, but Happy May Day! It is by tradition a day that workers and trade unions celebrate around the globe.

I was going to Aylesbury to face down the EDL but the arrangements for that are a bit skewiff and I'm taking myself to Clerkenwell Green instead, for the demonstration organised by Greater London Association of TUCs. This occasion is always somewhat marred by the enormous Stalin posters carried by some of the communist organisations that pitch up. Really, where do you start with this?

Anyway, undaunted, I'm sharing a poem with you called "Workers' Anthem". The intro is written by my friend. I have only a vague idea of what the poem says (I do have "house Persian" - so long as people are asking what is for lunch or whether I've washed their blue towel yet, I'm fine). But I wanted to remember the trade unionists in Iran on this day, facing a very hard slog against their government and against their employers.

Posting a Persian script poem into a Blogger post is a challenge - the exclamation marks have ended up at the wrong ends of the line. Oh, where do you start with this?

Dedicated to workers on the occasion of "May Day"

The poet is not after supporting any particular political ideology or system. He has tried to portray a small part of the abilities, agonies, deprivations and creativity of workers worldwide. He has also made extensive and tangible use of industrial, technical and work related terms in its poetic images and concepts in a surprisingly poetic way. This has gone some way to demonstrate the high potential of Persian language in poetry. The poem was written around 1981.

The poet is Hadi Momeni, former Iranian chess champion and the coach of many of the junior chess champions from Iran (boys and, especially, girls).
 

"سرود همبستگي"

با چه توان كوه كند

ارتش جوشان كار

باچه توان پل كشيد

برقلل كوهسار؟

اتحاد ، اتحاد، كارگران اتحاد!

تيشهء دستان ما

بر لب شط سدكشيد

تيشهء دستان ما

در همه جا سد شكست

بهر چه برخاك ريخت

حلقهء زنجيرها

اتحاد، اتحاد، كارگران اتحاد!

 ازتپش صبح دم

تادل شب كار وكار

يك نفس وبي امان

پاي دَكَل هاي تار...

همدم ما دود وباد

همدم ما خشت وخاك

همدم ما زوزه ها....

اتحاد، اتحاد، كارگران اتحاد!

منگنهء چرخ ها

تيغهء دندانه ها

نيشتر شعله ها

تسمهء پروانه ها

ازتن ماساختند

اسكلتي سيم پيچ؛

بركف ما دوختند

اسلحه اي آتشين:

اتحاد، اتحاد، كارگران اتحاد!

پرشده در جام ها

شيروعسل، شهد وگل

خم شده بردوش ما

دودكش كوره ها....

قسمت ما بوي روي

قسمت ما زنگ مس

قسمت ما سرب داغ!

اتحاد، اتحاد، كارگران اتحاد!

يخ زده در قوس برق

گم شده در خاك پوك

دوخته بر مته ها

غلطك هرانقلاب!

ما همه يك پيكريم

قامت ما شير كوه

جوشش ما زنده رود

برلب ما يك سرود:

اتحاد،اتحاد، كارگران اتحاد!

خون رگِ سرخ ما

غنچهء قاليچه ها

جنگل فولاد ونور

گلشن بازوي ما؛

مرمر يك معدنيم

خالق گنجينه ها

شمش نَََوَرديده ايم

مالك زنجيرها

عزم خدا در زمين

باچَكُشي آهنين!

اتحاد، اتحاد، كارگران اتحاد!

همدل وهمسوشديم

ازشرر نقطه جوش

درگذراز بوته ها

جوشن رويينه پوش

مژده رسان آمديم

باگل ورنگين كمان

در كف ما پينه و

نيشكر وارغوان

زيرقدم هاي ما....

بيرق سوداگران!

اتحاد،اتحاد، كار گران اتحاد!

 با چه توان كوه كند

ارتش زحمتكشان

با چه توا ن ره كشيد

يكسره تا كهكشان؟

اتحاد، اتحاد، كارگران اتحاد!

 "هادي مومني" "1360"

Enter the dragon

As a proletarian internationalist the only flag I'll own to, naturally, is the red one. But I don't have a problem with other people waving theirs.

Obviously, today is St George's Day. The St George's flag has been hijacked of recent years by types who think loving their country means hating many of the people who live in it, and most of the people outside it. I'm talking far-right groups such as the English Defence League (EDL), BNP (though they still favour the Union Jack), etc.

Reclaiming St George and his cross from such people is a tricky task. My friends in Brighton seem to have the right approach. A St George's Day "March for England" has been organised for Sunday by groups unknown, but the EDL are urging their supporters to turn up to it.

My friend, with fellow liberal-minded Brightonians, plans on attending as well. She says:

It promises to be a great celebration of diversity... am suggesting cross dressing as a fitting theme for this Brighton based celebration of St George, a young Turk with a Palestinian mother and so loved by English patriots.

Hurrah for foreigners! We can march for that.

Please note it's a family event and children are taking part.

I hope it all goes off well, and that the "patriots" enter into the spirit of the thing.

It's like a jungle sometimes - a day in Westminster

I've had a heavy day covering the English Defence League (EDL) demonstration in Westminster. I got down there at 12.30 by which time anti-fascist demonstrators had set up a small roadblock. This was quite quickly removed by the police using a variety of tactics - though, mercifully, they never resorted to using riot police.

Other than that, however, we saw the whole lot of police kit on display today: dogs, horses, and, the first time I've ever seen it, two London buses - no.s 148 and 24 - to process and take away arrested anti-fascist demonstrators! I wonder whether they were just hired from the bus company for the day, and what the drivers made of it - I did try asking one of them through his cab window, but he just shrugged sheepishly.

Once the roadblock was cleared, the EDL, who had been assembling outside (and inside!) Tate Britain for several hours, and had a fair amount of booze inside them, were allowed up the road to Westminster. They demonstrated on College Green, about 500 of them, looking, for the most part, like a gang of football hooligans.

They were there, ostensibly, to defend Dutch politician Geert Wilders' right to show his anti-Islam film 'Fitna' in Parliament. (Wilders was the guest of Baroness Cox and UKIP's Lord Pearson.)

For myself, I think Wilders is paranoid about Islam and whips up hatred against Muslims, but I don't really hold with calling for the state to ban him. For that matter, I don't really hold with calling for the state to ban EDL marches. I just think that more of us who dislike what they stand for should hit the streets when they are in town.

If everyone who nominally dislikes them and could get a day off work (it's not that difficult) had turned up in Westminster today, the EDL would have been massively outnumbered and might have thought twice about exercising their 'freedom of speech'.

I got some mobile phone pics of the police breaking up the blockade, but none of the EDL because my phone had packed up by then! However, the press pack really only turned up on the scene in numbers once the EDL did, so you will have plenty of pictures of their angry, snarling faces (the EDL, not the press pack) in your newspapers tomorrow.

My pictures are of the bit that was less well covered. I've included a couple here. Plus a link to a Grandmaster Flash song from 1983! It's a good antidote to today's events!

SIOE in Harrow - there WERE many more of us than them

Back safe and sound, thankfully, from Harrow where Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) finally revealed themselves to be a tiny group of people with very much a minority interest, as they could only mobilise 20-odd people.

Still, they stood forlornly (valiantly, they will claim) in the car-park in front of Harrow Civic Centre for two hours in the cold, protected by several hundred police.

Harrow mosque had debated how to deal with this second provocative demonstration, and came down on the conservative side, calling for Muslims and anti-fascists not to counter-demonstrate.

Nonetheless, 200 or so of us counter-protestors were there, supplemented by stewards from the mosque coming to have a look, and knots of local young people. The mosque sent legal observers who were also at the disposal of the counter-protest. SIOE turned down the mosque's proposal to come and discuss their concerns about Islam (see report in Harrow Times). SIOE are revealed as an implacable and tiny group of worked-out Muslim haters.

So much for them. Thankfully, the larger, more disparate and harder to fathom English Defence League did not turn up to support SIOE. They have called a demonstration in Stoke for 23 January, where the BNP are strong. It's all getting nastier in the world of the far-right. Meantime, are we going to keep keeping our heads down?

I do believe that most people reject their views; why, then, are they being allowed to parade around the streets week in week out? I don't believe in banning them marching; I do believe in those who oppose them showing up to let them know how unwelcome they are.

I don't think SIOE will come back to Harrow. They have had their anti-mosque protest - and a very sorry affair it was. But they and other far-right groups can continue to flare up anywhere at any time, like a brushfire. Are we in a state to extinguish them?

There are many more of us than them - so get to Harrow on Sunday!

I have spent some time in the last fortnight building for a demonstration - or, rather, a counter-demonstration - to be held in Harrow this Sunday. In September, a small anti-Islamic group, Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE), called a demonstration outside the newly built Harrow mosque (the old, frankly tiny mosque is next door). On that occasion, they did not organise very well and two dozen of them were kept by the police in a pub while a crowd of about 2,000 anti-SIOE protesters milled around in front of the mosque. The police told the SIOE to go home in the end.

The main story of that day was that the SIOE, who had tried to organise a provocative demonstration in a quiet suburb that none of them would visit ordinarily, were completely outnumbered and thought better of it. Unfortunately, the press relayed only pictures of some Muslim youth clashing with the police - which did happen, but which was very much a byproduct of the main events.

In the last couple of months, the English Defence League, a separate group from SIOE, but just as anti-Islam and swimming in the same far-right swamp, held a number of demonstrations in English towns. To the bystander these marches looked much like a group of football hooligans threatening to go on the rampage. EDL marchers gave Nazi salutes and abused Asian people.

Taking heart from this, the SIOE has decided to come back to Harrow again to whip up more trouble; their second demonstration is this Sunday afternoon.

I have been persuading trade unionists to join the counter-demonstration. The mosque is divided in their response; they are under a lot of pressure to rein in 'their' young people and are also telling anti-fascists to keep away.

I think that's a mistake. It is no good looking down at the pavement as the EDL and other far-right groups goose-step around our city centres. We tell ourselves that they are only a minority element; if that is so, why are they allowed to dominate public space in this way, week after week, in town after town? The sooner that all the private anti-racists get out and demonstrate their feelings in public, the sooner the EDL will get the message and go home.

I'm not advocating fighting the far-right, I'm advocating turning out to show that we outnumber them. If anyone wants to come to Harrow on Sunday, there are some more details on the Barnet TUC website: http://www.barnettuc.org.uk/.