Wheear 'ast ta bin sin' ah saw thee?

I've been in Kent, actually. Nice of you to ask. Mother has broken a small bone in her wrist (dominant hand); I had to perform some domestic tasks for her. And on Saturday I went up to Bradford to the counter-protest against the English Defence League. I do get about.

A policeman killed Blair Peach

The Metropolitan Police have released documents admitting that one of their members killed New Zealand teacher Blair Peach at a demonstration in 1979 (Guardian report here). Will anyone notice or care, especially with most media attention on the election? Certainly Peach's family and friends will be relieved; the release of this material does not close the story.

The Met Police says it has changed but, if that's so, it hasn't changed enough. Their behaviour around the death of Ian Tomlinson last year shows they still have a culture of covering up wrongdoing by their own members.

It's ironic that Peach was killed on a demonstration against the National Front in the run-up to the 1979 general election. Anti-fascist demonstrators are still being pushed around by the police when we protest against the far-right. We will be pushed around by the police this Saturday 1 May in Aylesbury, no doubt, where the English Defence League are due to demonstrate and we would like to hold a counter-demonstration.

Back in 1979 my mum was a teacher; she was active in the National Union of Teachers. She wore a badge that said "Who killed Blair Peach?" Now we know the answer to that question, but we still have to conclude that "the police protect the fascists".

A week of action for Barnet trades council

An astonishing range of activities this week (commencing Saturday). Barnet trades council's diary is pasted below to give a sense of what we have done already and will be doing for the rest of this week. Please join us if you can!

20-22 March. BA cabin crew strikes. Picket line visits.

Saturday 20 March. Demonstration against the far-right English Defence League in Bolton.

Saturday 20 March. Demonstration against college cuts organised by the lecturers' union UCU. (Picture below courtesy of Barnet Unison.)

Monday 22 March. Demonstration to support sheltered housing wardens, central London, assemble: noon, Parliament Square; at 1pm we will deliver letters to the main party leaders. Barnet residents of sheltered housing schemes are central to organising this event.

Tuesday 23 March. Staff and public meeting against planned cuts at Barnet College. 5.30pm, Building 3, North London Business Park. More information: 020 8200 8300. This meeting has been cancelled, alas.

Wednesday 24 March. Budget day strike by civil servants in the PCS union, as part of their campaign to defend their redundancy scheme. Information about picket lines and strike support will be posted on the Barnet TUC website.

Thursday 25 March. Barnet TUC AGM, 7-9pm, Council Chamber, Hendon Town Hall, the Burroughs, London NW4 4BG. All welcome, including trade unionists and local campigning groups.

27-30 March. BA cabin crew strikes. Picket line visits.

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!