David Isaccson Reports:

On Thu, 2006-11-16 at 19:29 +0000, david isaacson wrote:

Comrades,

it seems the Unite Against Fascism national office has gone mad and is threatening it own activists with legal action for handing out leaflets. Of course it is not maddness – there is politics behind this. For the UAF leadership (most notably the SWP) the organisation must be kept ‘broad’. This means that activists are not allowed to take up issues that do not directly relate to fascism. This seems to being taken to absurd lengths as you will see from the attached press release. I will speak to those involved and try and find out some more about this a.s.a.p.

Comradely, Dave.

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Press Release – 14th November 2006

Leeds University Unite Against Fascism (UAF) activists threatened with legal action for leafleting for conference against Islamophobia

At its weekly stall outside the Student Union activists from the UAF society were threatened with legal action by UAF central office, if they handed out a leaflet from the society encouraging students to attend this Saturday’s “People’s Assembly Against Islamophobia”. In addition, Omar Khan, of the Student Executive, told the activists they were not permitted to hand out the leaflets.

Other activists on the stall from LUU, who supported this stance, said that they would not do the stall, if the activists maintained they wanted to hand out the said leaflets. This despite the importance of raising the anti-fascist issue on campus, in the context of recent attacks on UAF members by the BNP.

The background to this was a heated debate at the society organising meeting last week, where members of the society had voted, by a narrow majority, to support and build the Islamophobia conference.

Mark Boothroyd, one of the threatened activists and secretary of the society, said, “the issue at stake in the original discussion was whether UAF could support a conference called by the Stop the War Coalition”. He continued, “in light of the rise of racism against Muslim people, denying them the right to religious and cultural expression, and the political capital the BNP were making out of this, we thought it was vital anti-fascists support this conference”.

John Bowden, another of the threatened activists added, “there is a real problem of democracy here. Our society had voted to support this conference at our meeting, and we are then threatened with legal action (!) when we come to implement the decision.” He continued, “its just a complete over reaction, threatening fellow activists, fighting together against racism and the far right with legal action. It’s crazy.”

Boothroyd concluded, “we were also told that we would have to change UAF policy nationally, in order to distribute these leaflets. There are two problems with this. Firstly, it assumes UAF is a political party which all required to have precisely the same policies on every issue. Rather, than the united front it is, which brings together groups and individual with different views. Secondly, I’ve been to UAF national conference, and there is no opportunity to change its policy – its just a rally with speakers and no resolutions.”

The next organising meeting of Unite Against Fascism will be Wednesday 22nd November at 4pm in the ARC centre, Student Union.

Mark Boothroyd, Secretary of Leeds University Unite Against Fascism John Bowden, activist of LU UAF and Treasurer of the Revolution Society

To contact Dave Issacson further about this please see the contact page