Energetic preparations to block the fascists forced the police to ban Ukip from Tower Hamlets, argues Chris Nineham

East Londoners were celebrating on Tuesday at the news that the Metropolitan police have banned a fascist hate march from Tower Hamlets.

Ukip leader Nick Tenconi, recently filmed Sieg Heiling at an anti-migrant demo, was planning to lead the march to Whitechapel this Saturday. Not one for obfuscation, the fascist Tenconi billed the march as ‘a crusade against Islamism’, part of ‘a mass deportations tour’ that has already stopped off in a number of unlucky cities.

As even the Met police has had to admit, ‘Tower Hamlets has the largest percentage of Muslim residents anywhere in the UK and the prospect of this protest taking place in the heart of the borough has been the cause of concern locally.’

That is something of an understatement. For the last couple of weeks, local community and religious leaders, socialists, anti-racists, anti-war and pro-Palestine activists in Tower Hamlets have been mobilising for a massive show of opposition to Tenconi’s thugs under the United East End banner.

The plan was to occupy the whole area of Whitechapel that the fascists said they were going to ‘reclaim’.  Announcements were made about the counter-demo at all the mosques last Friday. Leafletting was taking place at tubes across the borough. Posters were put up across the area. Two to three hundred people packed into to a Stand up to Racism public meeting at the Rich Mix in Shoreditch last week, other organising meetings had been held by local Palestine networks and other anti-fascist groups. Another, united indoor organising rally is planned for Wednesday. Tower Hamlets Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, had backed the call-out, as had five local unions and a host of other community and campaign groups.

The danger of a police ban is that it can and almost certainly will be used to justify moves against left mobilisations. We should however be clear this police action was a result of what happened on the ground. By early this week, activists were confidently able to inform the police they expected a counter-protest of around 15,000 people. As well as grudgingly recognising that the Ukip march would be provocative, the police had to admit ‘a significant counter protest was also expected’, and to accept ‘that there is a realistic prospect of serious disorder’ if the march was allowed to proceed.

Tower Hamlets has a wonderful tradition of mobilising against fascists that goes back to 1936 when a hundred thousand Eastenders stopped Oswald Mosely’s Nazis at Cable Street. It includes driving the fascist National Front out of the area in the 1970s and flushing out the British National Party in a two-year campaign in the early 1990s. More recently, Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League was forcibly evicted from the area by thousands of locals in 2011 and 2013.

This Saturday should go down as another victory, this time caused by the threat of a massive popular mobilisation. Organisers are calling for a celebration rally in Whitechapel at 12 midday on Saturday to mark it and to ensure that no groups or individuals try to defy the police ban.

Meanwhile, Nick Tenconi’s boot boys have been allowed to hold their mass deportation march from Knightsbridge to Speakers’ Corner, through one of London’s richest areas. Stand up to Racism have called a protest at Hyde Park Corner at 11.30am on Saturday.