TheTelegraph gets it partially right, which is a part more than usual, when they expose the UAF as a violent thuggish and fascist group. They can’t back up their classic “far right wing” claims about their opponents as usual however.
Anti-fascists fuel the fire of hateThe self-appointed opponents of bigotry can be as ugly as the racist groups they oppose.
In 2010 UAF’s then national officer, Martin Smith, was given a 12-month community order after being convicted of assaulting a police officer on a demonstration. He remained in his post, insisting his conviction was an “outrageous attack on the right to protest against fascists”.
A senior UAF official has recently been accused of rape and sexual assault by two women from the Socialist Workers’ Party, in which he was also an official. The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has given up both posts but continues to take part in UAF protests and activities, including as recently as last week.
Prominent campaigners such as the gay rights activist Peter Tatchell accuse UAF of a selective approach to bigotry. “UAF commendably opposes the BNP and EDL but it is silent about Islamist fascists who promote anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism and sectarian attacks on non-extremist Muslims,” said Mr Tatchell. “It is time the UAF campaigned against the Islamist far Right as well as against the EDL and BNP far Right.”
One reason why UAF will not campaign against Islamist extremists is that one of its own vice-chairmen, Azad Ali, is one. As well as his UAF role, which he took up last year, Mr Ali is community affairs coordinator of the Islamic Forum of Europe, a Muslim supremacist group dedicated to changing “the very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed from ignorance to Islam”
Mr Ali has written on his blog of his “love” for Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda cleric closely linked to many terrorist plots, including the September 11 attacks, and used to attend talks by Abu Qatada, the extremist cleric whom Britain is seeking to deport.
He has described al-Qaeda as a “myth” and denied that the Mumbai attacks were terrorism. On his blog, he also advocated the killing of British troops in Iraq. He sued a newspaper for reporting that he had said this, and lost.
Filmed by an undercover reporter for The Sunday Telegraph and Channel 4’s Dispatches, he said: “Democracy, if it means at the expense of not implementing the sharia, of course no one agrees with that.” Mr Bennett defended Mr Ali, saying: “He’s done valuable work for us. I’ve heard him speak on many occasions and he’s never said any of the things he’s been accused of.”
One of the alleged killers of Drummer Rigby, Michael Adebolajo, also spoke on the margins of a UAF rally in Harrow in 2009. Video footage shows him addressing a crowd at the event. Mr Bennett said that he was not on the platform, nor was he an official speaker.
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