The Home Secretary has announced that the upcoming English Defence League (EDL) march through Tower Hamlets is to be prohibited - indeed, all marches in Tower Hamlets and 4 neighboring boroughs for the next 30 days are to be banned. This measure is as odious as the organisation it seeks to inhibit through its draconian measures. Rather than addressing the problem, the government has chosen a quick-fire approach, to address a symptom; in a way that will impact on the rights of people in these 5 boroughs for 30 days, regardless of why they may wish to protest.

It should be no surprise to those who follow my blog regularly, or know me personally, that I have no time for the EDL or their mixture of racism, thuggishness and conspiracy theories. Those who threaten the very fabric of our society with threats of violence deserve no more than bitter contempt - for they lack the understanding of our common history to appreciate that this country’s relative liberalism and tolerance has been an ongoing theme, one of which I am extremely proud. I struggle to comprehend how people who reject our history so firmly can claim to embrace national pride, but that is a debate for another day.

Groups such as the EDL feed on deep-seated anger and dislocation in large sections of society - particularly, the white working class. Finding an economy that can seem to be designed to keep them poor, a political system that does not share their values and a culture that is moving rapidly away from their world view, one should not be surprised that many feel unable to input into the society and therefore drawn to more radical political solutions. What compounds all this is the feeling that they are not merely ignored by the establishment - but that the establishment actively prosecutes them, that it is different to them and that it will do everything to push them down.

In light of this, banning EDL marches will do everything to make the problem worse. The persecution complex is being fed, extremely well, by this illiberal measure from the Home Secretary. The feelings of economic, social and political dislocation are not being addressed by this attack on the liberty of the people of East London. No EDL march in Tower Hamlets today, tomorrow or next year may well have a short-term security benefit - but the problem will only deepen and fester. 

We have much work to do to help the people who feel so aggrieved that they reach for radical politics in order to feel that someone listens to them. Partly, this will come through opening up avenues of economic mobility, through reconnecting political centres of power with the communities they represent and govern and through careful management of policing and social welfare. But we need to reclaim the English identity from the street thugs and the racists - we need to wash the stains from jackboots out of the flag of St George and we need to recreate the historical space for liberalism, tolerance and democracy that has so long been a key feature of English political life. Blanket bans on marches, even on marches that fail to grasp and attack that heritage, does nothing towards this - indeed, we are simply delaying the violence a little while.

I want the people of Tower Hamlets to be safe. But I don’t just want them to be safe from one protest next week. I want them to be safe from immobility, from racism and from disenfranchisement for year after year. As with so much we are doing at the moment, this is a long process and quick fixes will no longer suffice for the problems we face. The EDL won’t go away if you ban them - they will fade away if you make the constituency they appeal to mobile, connected and empowered.