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Interview with Prof. Kehinde Andrews about recent (and not so recent) events in the UK:

I really would have been surprised if [right-wing thugs] had come through London or Birmingham. I got a WhatsApp message saying they were coming through Handsworth in Birmingham, where it’s 80% ethnic minority, and I just knew that was never going to happen.

Look, maybe they planned it and then they were cowards, but I just think they were never going to follow through. Realistically you can’t do an English Defence League march through someone else’s neighbourhood! They’d just get a kicking. Cowardice is a huge part of these British KKK types, pick people off when they feel strong, they’re not going to take on a whole community like that.

Let me add as well, and I think this is something that’s been hugely underplayed in mainstream discussions, that it’s actually because there was so much racial violence in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s – when I was at school, we’d see National Front signs in people’s windows – precisely because of this racial violence and history, Black and Brown communities rallied together to defend themselves.

And so because there’s a history of us defending ourselves, that’s why these far-right racists aren’t going to be coming back to these predominantly Black and Brown areas, where they know they can’t win. It’s not just coincidental, it’s part of our resistance to racism in this country, and it’s a story that’s underplayed. It’s community self-defence which has stopped National Front, English Defence League and all these other incursions.

#UK #racism #antifascism #fascism #CommunitySelfDefense #CommunitySelfDefence #EDL #NationalFront

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/far-right-riots-black-history-kehinde-andrews/