A new documentary investigates this historic event and reflects on lessons for today, including the context of the 2011 riots. In this clip, Siobhan and Emeka speak to Binnie Yeates, who witnessed the battle when she was five and was left deeply affected.

At the Tower Hamlets archive, oral historian Roger Mills begins to unlock the untold story of the build up to the clash and the violent attacks on the Jewish, including footage from the battle itself.

Watch more clips from the film here.

This Saturday 7 September the EDL intend to march through Tower Hamlets and the London Antifascist Network are call for as many people as possible to join the counter-demonstration to stop them.

We’re a campaign of disabled people not for disabled people. We came to life outside the 2010 Tory party conference, and since then we’ve been the primary group gathering snapshots of what disabled people are facing and getting together those ready to resist and take direct action.

On a daily basis hundreds of people contact us about getting involved or to tell us what they’re going through. Usually people associate disability with welfare but actually we’re talking to people about social care, transport, healthcare and more. The broad scope of the cuts means that people are really at a loss of what to do.

What do you mean by ‘disabled’?

The government says you’re disabled if you have a physical, sensory or mental impairment that affects your ability to do certain things. We say that if you self-recognise as a disabled person, or as a person with an impairment, then actually it’s society’s barriers that disable you. The more support systems that you have in place then the less disabling society becomes. Support services remove barriers and allow us to contribute and exist on the same level as everybody else.

As these services are whittled the barriers become evident and have a central place in people’s lives. It’s not enough to say that people should try harder to be ‘less disabled’, we need to change people’s mindsets on that. The government’s focus is completely wrong at the moment, it’s focussing on people instead of the barriers. We still can’t find our place and we’re being moved further and further to the margins.

Why direct action?

We moved into taking direct action, mostly because we believe the traditional forms of resistance such as lobbying, petitioning and research are more common, but there had been no direct action for a long time until we came along. Traditionally disabled people have been at the centre of direct action movements, as far back as the late 19th century.

We want to continue that tradition, so we’ve occupied government buildings, shut down city centres, and we went to the deputy prime minister’s home to hold a street party with UK Uncut. So we’re very much about taking the argument into the places and spaces where the government are. We need to join up across our networks to say ‘we resist and the line in the sand is here’.

DPAC recently supported the anti-fracking campaign in Balcombe (pictured above) and you often work with UK Uncut, for instance on the campaign to save legal aid, is that part of a deliberate tactic to cover different issues?

Absolutely. Last year we received a lot of support from UK Uncut and this year we’ve branched out to work with the big disabled activist networks, such as the War On Welfare petition; the Mental Health Resistance Network, who recently won a court case against the workplace capability assessments that were discriminating against people with mental health conditions; and Black Triangle in Scotland. For our week of action this week we’ve reached out to these groups to make sure it’s not just about DPAC but about all disabled people.

One of the biggest philosophies for the disabled movement this time around has been the willingness of environmentalists and anti-cuts activists to embrace the idea that if they do recognise the barriers and try to address them, then actually disabled people can make a powerful contribution to campaigns. It’s not just a nod to accessibility or a nod to inclusion, it’s about taking real steps to make sure that all those barriers are removed so disabled people can contribute on the same level as everyone else.

It feels really different, because the last time the disabled movement reared its head in the 80s and early 90s it was very isolationist. Despite being politically active at the time against Thatcher and capitalism, disabled people were not really connecting with the broader movement. This time around the grass roots activist movements on the streets are so willing to embrace and support our actions that it’s made a huge difference in terms of what we can achieve together.

Do you have any hope for the next election?

This week we’re launching a manifesto which is directed at the Labour Party’s election campaign because we want them to repeal some decisions that have already been made. However, if we believe that reformist parliamentary opposition is the ‘be all and end all’ then we’re in for a very quick and hard landing. We need to create alternative spaces that are confrontational and about asserting our power.

Direct action is not about being hidden away, believing that other people can speak on our behalf, or that it’s their role to change things. It’s our role to come out and be seen and heard and to say to everyone that, despite what you’ve been told, this is the reality on the ground for disabled people. We don’t get enough space in the media for that counter narrative.

We don’t invite talking heads to our events, we turn the mic to people who show up and invite them to speak about their experience and what they want to happen. There are loads of places people can go to sign petitions etc. There are very few places disabled people can go to say ‘I challenge the government and I take this space’, then suddenly there’s no denying you and you have to be heard.

Find out more about the national protest.
On Twitter: #reclaimingourfutures
Earlier this week DPAC blockaded the BBC

Campaign group No Dash for Gas established a camp called Reclaim the Power, with workshops and direct action training.

‘We are facing a climate crisis, economic crisis and social crisis. We want a clean and fair future where people come before profit. Come to share your ideas. create, imagine, resist’, read the open invitation.

The camp demonstrated ways of sustainable living, such as compost toilets and solar power.

Plus workshops and exhibitions on interlinking issues such as fuel poverty in the UK and international struggles against energy companies.

As well as direct action training; in this case, ‘police’ versus protesters.

Journalists from the world’s media broadcast live updates from the gates and campers spread the word on social media.

For the last few weeks tents have lined the roadside next to the drilling site managed by energy company Cuadrilla.

On Sunday thousands marched through the beautiful area, including local residents and people from other regions of the UK threatened by fracking.

Tributes to those arrested earlier.

The crowd broke away from the police-designated protest area to form a human chain around the rig.

Since then there have been a series of actions; at the home of ex-Tory Minister Lord Howell, who said fracking should go ahead in the ‘desolate’ North of England; at the head office of Cuadrilla; at the home of local Tory MP Francis Maude; and at the entrance to Cuadrilla’s PR firm Bell Pottinger.

Send us your pictures and find out more on the Reclaim the Power website.

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The company claims to be concerned about the environmental and climate change challenges that have been highlighted through recent ‘disruptive protest’. They seek to ‘address these issues and develop protocols which will guide its response to such demonstrations in the future’.

No Dash for Gas, however, see this as an attempt to prevent protest and allow the company to operate business as usual, with no real regard for their social and environmental impact.

The invitation, described by No Dash for Gas as absurd, was dispatched by Will Hutton, former adviser to David Cameron and an Editor of the Observer Newspaper. Hutton is now Chair of EDF’s Energy Stakeholder Advisory Panel.

No Dash for Gas insist that stakeholder panels serve to maintain ‘protest groups’ on the periphery, intermittently including them to appease voices that become too obvious to ignore. They agree to meet Hutton on their own terms at the upcoming ‘Reclaim the Power’ action camp, taking place between 17-21 August at EDF’s West Burton power station.

Their written response:

Dear Mr Hutton and EDF,

Thanks for your invitation to input into the discussions of the EDF Stakeholder Panel. Let’s get this straight: EDF is trying to figure out how to deal with future protests, and you want our thoughts on how the company should proceed.

This seems a bit odd, really. I mean, just a few months ago your colleagues at EDF were suing us for £5 million, and now they’re asking for our opinion on dealing with protest? It feels a bit like being punched in the face and then offered a nice cup of tea.

All the same, seeing as you ask so politely we’ll be happy to share our thoughts on how EDF can avoid problems with protest in the future.

First things first – and this should be obvious by now – DON’T sue people who protest at your power stations. A giant utility company that makes £5million of profit every two hours launching a lawsuit designed to financially cripple 21 members of the public was never going to go down well. It was a crude attempt to silence legitimate criticism of your company’s practices and once the public backlash against the lawsuit got going, you very sensibly backed down. So piece of advice number one: don’t do that again.

Now let’s look at your specific questions:

1)  What protocols should guide EDF Energy’s response to such situations in the future?

OK, this one’s pretty easy. There’s a reason why people are protesting against new gas power stations – it’s because building a new wave of the things would make it impossible for the UK to meet its (already inadequate) carbon reduction targets, and would thus make a future of unstoppable climate change much more likely.

In addition, a greater reliance on gas power – a fuel source that every serious energy analyst tells us is going to become much more expensive – would plunge thousands more UK families into fuel poverty.

So next time someone protests at one of your gas power stations, all EDF needs to do is look at the basic climate science, do a few sums, realise that new gas power stations are a terrible idea and start decommissioning the plant immediately.

2)  Are there practical steps that can be taken that would help to minimise the risk of protest, or protest that is disruptive or dangerous?

Yes. The best thing to do is to leave the protesters well alone and let them get on with it. The 21 who entered West Burton in October 2012 were all trained in the necessary safety skills and took great care to ensure that no protesters, staff or onlookers were put in any danger. The only source of risk was the fact that a new gas power station was being built, thus putting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the planet at risk from dangerous climate change. The protesters were doing their best to minimise this risk too.

3)  How can EDF Energy better develop an open dialogue with objectors? Are there actions or forms of communication that could ameliorate concerns or the likelihood of disruptive and dangerous protest?

Absolutely. The first rule of dialogue is to listen to and understand the other side’s position. EDF clearly hasn’t done this. Objectors like ourselves have gone to great lengths to point out some crucial facts to EDF: for example, that the CO2 from EDF’s UK coal and gas plants cause £5 million of climate change damage every day; that EDF’s attempts to get a guaranteed price for its nuclear electricity represents a massive multi-billion rip-off public subsidy that could be better spent on energy efficiency and renewables or that EDF’s decision to use its huge wealth and power to lobby against Government renewables targets and in favour of more nuclear power and fossil fuels is anti-democratic and completely disgraceful.

The best way for EDF to “ameliorate concerns” and reduce the likelihood of future protest is to take all the above points into account, reduce its prices to a level that people can afford, set a timetable for the closure of all its fossil and nuclear power stations, and release its lobbying stranglehold on Government so that energy efficiency and renewables can be expanded to take their place.

4)  Even if conflict and protest are inevitable, are there rules that should inform or change EDF Energy’s responses? What actions would you recommend the company take?

On the contrary, conflict and protest are completely avoidable. All EDF Energy needs to do is dissolve itself as a company, liquidate its assets and hand the money over as seed funds for community renewable energy projects across the UK. Sadly, we’ve got the impression that EDF isn’t very keen to do this for some reason.

Let’s get real here. There is a growing body of research that shows that a 100% renewably-powered UK is perfectly possible and potentially very popular, especially if local communities are given greater control over their (renewable, affordable) energy sources, and workers in polluting industries are able to retrain for the clean energy sector. Unfortunately the Big Six – including EDF – are making so much money out of the status quo that they’re determined to stand in the way of these real solutions and keep the country locked into using fossil fuels. We won’t get that cleaner, fairer energy future unless we, the public, stand up and demand it – and that means that we need more protest, not less.

EDF’s latest consultation process is an attempt to try to deter that vitally-needed protest by presenting itself as a caring, listening company. But a consultation of this kind cannot come to a fair conclusion, because the wrong people are sitting on the panel and writing up the results. If EDF are willing to convene a panel consisting exclusively of communities suffering from the effects of climate change around the world, plus victims of fuel poverty in the UK, and were to give them free rein to speak their minds on the issues of EDF and protest, then we might be interested in what that panel had to say. Until then, EDF can best avoid future protest by following our other suggestions, above.

Yours sincerely,

No Dash For Gas

‘A generation ago we wrote Beyond the Fragments. Inspired by the activism of the 1970s, and facing the imminent triumph of the right under Margaret Thatcher, we sought to apply our experiences as feminists to creating stronger bonds of solidarity in a new kind of movement.

Since then the obstacles facing us have grown formidably; deepening recession, environmental pollution, falling real wages and savage welfare cuts.

New forms of resistance have appeared, but how are they to coalesce? In our three new essays to this new edition we return to the fraught question of how to consolidate diverse upsurges of rebellion into effective, open democratic left coalitions.’

Read more:

Beyond the Fragments is more than a history, writes Alice Robson
Back to the Fragments, Lynne Segal reflects on its lessons for today

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Flag over the convergence centre

At Bernardos charity shop to protest against their involvement with immigration dention centres for children

Greater London Pensioners’ Association at Canary Wharf

Capitalism equals crisis banner at Canary Wharf

Banner at Canary Wharf

Tripods erected at Canary Wharf

Crowd outside Canary Wharf tube station

Workshop on debt

With special thanks to photographer Anna Forgione

As Cape Town, the country’s second most populous city, hosted the World Economic Forum on Africa, hundreds of shack dwellers pledged their determination to occupy land needed for their homes. These homes have been repeatedly destroyed by government agents at a settlement named Marikana, in a growing township between Nyanga, Mitchell’s Plain, Khayelitsha and Philippi.

The settlement in Philippi East is called Marikana in tribute to the 44 people shot dead by police – most of them miners working for the UK-registered multinational Lonmin, during a strike for a living wage last summer. It was given the name because the residents are also ‘organising ourselves peacefully and are willing to die for our struggle’.

‘They pull these people out like dogs’

Since the shacks were built and occupied on vacant land, the authorities must observe South African law which requires a court order to evict them. Yet, despite lacking such documents, day after day police and law enforcement officers arrived and demolished their houses, shot at residents with rubber bullets, dispersed them with pepper spray and arrested four people.

Abahlali (also known as AbM or the red shirts) is a shack-dwellers’ movement and campaigner Cindy Ketani says ‘When they come to destroy these shacks, they show us no court orders or papers. They just pull these people out like dogs’.

Activists complain the authorities are abusing their power, knowing residents have no access to legal support. So much for progress, with South Africa becoming the world’s second most unequal nation since apartheid ended. Its constitution proclaims that every citizen has a right to a house. But millions continue to live in settlements, often denied proper sanitation, water supply or aqueduct, electricity or telephone services.

Testimony to the risks involved without electricity came when three recent shack fires left 83 people homeless in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township. Abahlali has campaigned on this issue, demanding, among other things, the electrification of shacks, and connected thousands of people to electricity. Nonetheless, in South Africa, there is a daily average of ten shack fires, with someone dying in a shack blaze every other day. Meantime, the accommodation backlog in Cape Town alone is estimated at between 360,000 and 400,000 homes. Even so, the city’s rulers spent half a millon pounds (8 million rand) setting up its Anti-Land Invasion unit to pull down shacks.

White people take home six times more pay than their black compatriots

Forty per cent of South Africa’s 50 million population live below the poverty line on less than one pound (13 rand) a day, while more than one in three of the mega-rich earn over £14,000 (200,000 rand) a month. In addition, the TopEnd survey into the country’s most affluent individuals found that one in ten boast a household income of at least £35,000 (500,000 rand) a month. The average value of their property with continuing worth is above £443,000 (6.5 million rand). And amid the starkest and most poignant contrast, four in ten own more than one home, and three per cent six or more.

Almost 20 years on from South Africa’s first democratic elections, the first census in a decade exposed the disturbing fact that white people still take home six times more pay than their black compatriots. Another report, by Statistics South Africa, warned that two-thirds of the country’s youth live in poor households, with a per capita income below £47 (650 rand) a month. More than one in seven South Africans are unemployed, and the young are worst affected, with half of 18-to-25-year-olds jobless. The labour federation, cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions), says no other middle income country around the globe suffers from such high unemployment.

Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu’s general secretary, says: ‘We call it a ticking bomb. We think that one day there may be an explosion. Seventy-three percent of people who are unemployed in South Africa are below the age of 35, and a lot of them have been to universities’.

Lack of work, money and secure homes threaten to exact a corrosive effect on South Africa. But the spirit of people that resisted separate development based on colour now confronts the rich-poor divide. One of those forced out of their Marikana housing was Zoe Zulu, a mother of a one-month-old son and a five-year-old daughter. Like the other residents of the 126 destroyed homes, Zoe had nowhere to go, insisting she would rebuild her shack and not leave Marikana until she has been given a home.

Caroline Elliot is international programmes officer at War on Want