The mobilisation against the English Defence League was attacked and kettled by a well planned police operation. Sinead Rylance and Chris Strafford report

After postponing its demonstration from the original date of March 6 due to Hindu celebrations in the town centre, the English Defence League marched in Bolton on March 20. In the run-up, the march and counter-demonstration were widely publicised by the EDL and Unite against Fascism, although I understand that a good part of the UAF leadership was against the action and that UAF refused offers to help with stewarding from other organisations. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, UAF leaders were publicly claiming this would be the Lewisham or Cable Street of our time. It wasn’t.

In the days before the demo rumours were flying around Bolton. That the EDL had attacked a mosque. The EDL were marching up Daubhill. They had attacked a Muslim woman. There was a strong suspicion that these rumours were part of a concerted attempt to discourage people from attending the counter-demonstration. As happened before previous EDL demonstrations, mosque leaders did precisely that, warning Muslim youth they would be arrested if they were to attend.

On the Monday before the event Bolton police organised a community meeting to inform residents of their plans for the Saturday. There were calls for a local socialist activist to be allowed to speak, but the police said they would leave the meeting if this were to occur. But people stayed on afterwards to listen to the speaker. The meeting resulted in taxi drivers calling for strike action against the EDL and for their own safety.

Demonstrators travelling on the bus from Manchester for the counter-demo were told by the SWP that the plan was to occupy the square to stop the EDL assembling. But the centre of Bolton was barricaded by huge portable steel fences with hundreds of police operating out of the Town Hall. Town-centre shops were closed and in the evening most pubs were too.

So we were corralled into our “assembly site”, which consisted of half the square, fenced off and closely guarded by police. By late morning there were over 1,000 of us. There was a peaceful attempt to occupy the other half of the square organised by ‘unofficial’ stewards from other left groups. The attempt was short-lived and police in riot gear, with horses and dogs, attacked the demonstration, arresting and injuring several comrades. A member of Permanent Revolution was badly bitten on the arm and was later arrested when he tried to get medical attention! The police were up for a fight and were goading and provoking the crowd. They repeatedly attacked with the kind of brutality we saw at the G20 last year. In response to this onslaught people fought back and defended the demonstration, shouting “We are Ian Tomlinson” and “This is not a riot”.

The police kept wading into the crowd throwing punches and using their batons. A comrade from Manchester had her shoulder dislocated after repeated strikes on her left arm by one out-of-control copper, who then went on to punch an elderly women in the face several times – demonstrators and other police officers pulled him off. Eventually they pushed us back into a smaller area, crushing several people against the fence. They then began sending in snatch squads of heavily armoured police to take SWP leaders and identifiable ‘troublemakers’. They arrested SWP national secretary Martin Smith after breaking through our lines – the stewards, clad in red vests, were not numerous or trained enough to be of much use.

Police then attempted to arrest SWP central committee member Weyman Bennett, who is the best known UAF leader and had just addressed the crowd. But some of the smarter and more experienced SWP/UAF stewards managed to organise lines four to five deep to defend the demonstration. Comrades pushed back the police four or five times, but eventually they got through, dragging comrade Bennett the width of the square and carrying him off to a police van.

By early afternoon our numbers had swollen to around 2,000. They never let us all actually come together until after the EDL had left the square. Police and mainstream media estimates of the day’s numbers were extremely biased towards the EDL. Not even taking into account our comrades separated from us, we equalled them and may have still outnumbered them, looking at the video footage of the day. Some people carrying a banner claiming that “Allah is the greatest” were eventually allowed to join our ranks, and this sent the EDL, who had been shepherded into the other side of the square, into a frenzy.

Whilst most of the left spent their time trying to fend off police attacks, others were taking on the EDL with chants and placards. Some local protestors seemed to be becoming disillusioned, saying, “We didn’t come here to fight the police.” The UAF speakers failed to explain the situation, instead repeating, “Hold the lines” and “Comrades, we need more people on this side.” The mood picked up when a couple of hundred Asian youth joined our ranks.

EDL members had met in a pub in Deane and made their way to the centre for 1pm, at which point there seemed to be about 300 of them. By the time their coaches had arrived, their numbers were around 2,000. They were holding up British, American, Israeli, William of Orange, Ulster, Polish, Dutch and anti-Nazi flags and banners. The crowd showed their total support for American imperialism and the ‘war on terror’. There were a lot of coins, bottles and other items thrown at us by the EDL. A UAF speaker, who had just finished speaking about Cable Street, told us not to throw things back at the EDL.

Some EDLers attempted to get at the UAF demo, but the police pushed them back. This went on until about 3.20pm, when the EDL had begun to leave their assembly point, as agreed with the police. A large group did not move off with the stewards and attempted to get round via the town hall steps to the UAF demo. At this point riot police were deployed with shields at they attacked the EDL demo until they moved off from the square.

We finished our own rally at around 4pm and after being let out by the police we were escorted around Bolton city centre to our coaches. There was fighting between, on the one side, Asian and anti-fascist youth and, on the other, EDL and small neo-Nazi groups in parts of the city centre.

Greater Manchester police condemned the UAF protest as violent (on their Twitter account!), whilst praising the EDL stewards. The reality was the EDL protestors were drinking, throwing missiles at the anti-fascist protestors and attempting to tear down police barricades to attack the protest. The ‘violence’ of the UAF is apparently confirmed by the 54 arrests made on our side out of a total of 78. These arrests, however, were mostly conducted by snatch squads, who entered the peaceful area specifically set aside for children and those who did not wish to engage in confrontation. Police made no mention of injuries on our side. EDL organisers also praised the police on their handling of the rally, saying this event had been the best they had attended in terms of policing. From our side it seemed to be the worst, in terms of the number of unprovoked police attacks.

As far as Bolton’s demographics go, as is the case in most towns, the poorer parts of the population are more integrated. These integrated sections were those that turned out in support of the counter-demonstration. But they were not presented with any political answers.

Following the protest, many people travelling back deemed it a failure. Some SWP members shared this opinion, with one commenting that the day had been a disaster and predicting Socialist Worker would claim a great victory. True to form, the paper led with the headline, “EDL racists are forced to back off in Bolton”. When we were released from the kettle, this was because “we decided to march on a victory lap through the streets of Bolton” (March 27). There seems to be a general feeling that UAF’s tactics will not cut it any more.

The police violence on the day underlined that the number one enemy of the workers’ movement is the capitalist state. Carrying on with the UAF’s strategy is a one-way trip to failure. What we need to aim for is a working class party that can be built in the communities – not just at election times, but permanently – so that we can provide a genuine alternative to the mainstream parties. In short, we need a Communist Party.

UAF co-secretary Weyman Bennett was arrested on “suspicion” of “conspiracy to organise violent public disorder”. Our movement must rally to the defence of comrade Bennett who, for all our differences with him, is a committed anti-racist activist and socialist militant who is being targeted by the state to discredit the left and the anti-fascist movement. We demand that all charges be dropped immediately against Bennett and other anti-fascists who were arrested on Saturday.