English Defense League Protestor
When the anti-Muslim, pseudo-intellectual bloggers and their fellow travelers from America go to Europe they hob nob with groups such as this.
From the BBC,
Under the Skin of the English Defence League
One night in September I was invited along to a large disused warehouse in Luton for an English Defence League (EDL) “press conference”.
The windows of the warehouse had been boarded up. Fifteen men in balaclavas unfurled a swastika flag and proceeded to try to set it alight for the cameras.
The message - look we are not Nazis.
On Saturday members of EDL were on the streets of ManchesterThe flag proved stubbornly, and embarrassingly, incombustible. While we waited for it to catch fire I spoke to the leader of the Luton division, a man calling himself Tommy Robinson - though that is not his real name.
The real Tommy Robinson was an infamous football hooligan with the MIGs, the Men In Gear firm associated with Luton Town Football Club.
According to this Tommy, EDL’s raison d’être is to take a stand against the rise of radical Islam on Britain’s streets. When you ask the rank and file though they will tell you they are just anti- Muslim.
Over the last five weeks I have got to know some of EDL’s main players.
So, who are they? Part of the problem with answering that question is they do not quite know themselves.
Youth wing
The organisation is about seven months old and only started gathering any kind of momentum after 10 Muslim extremists staged an anti-war demo at a Royal Anglian Regiment parade in Luton in March this year.
The big divisions are in Luton, Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff. They are a rag tag group of about 400 self-styled English patriots, loosely affiliated with football hooligan firms.
They have a female division and a youth division. The leader of the youth division is Joel, an 18-year-old who lives with his grandparents.
His father is Irish, his mother Afro-Caribbean and Joel grew up in multi-cultural Harrow, North London.
Police say that EDL members are becoming much more organised
He did not worry about Muslim extremism until he happened upon EDL’s website in April. Now he organises the youth division and sells EDL merchandise - adapted hoodies with a mask you can pull down over your face for demonstrations.
Joel admitted to me that he finds the cut and thrust of street demonstrations “exciting”. He also acknowledged that when there is a face-off between EDL and Muslim youths on the street “it plays into our hands”.
Joel denies that there is any militant undertone behind the balaclavas and black shirts, but as he talks you get the feeling he enjoys the drama of it all.
There is, of course, a difference between looking scary and being dangerous and one of the key questions being asked in the wake of recent demonstrations is, are EDL dangerous?
Threat of hijack
About a fortnight ago I was invited along to a pub near the Barbican in London. The leadership of EDL were meeting some potential sponsors.
One of them was an IT consultant working in the City. They were offering technical expertise to EDL.
During the conversation it was also let slip that someone purporting to be from the Ulster Defence Association had been in contact, interested in starting a branch in Northern Ireland.
This could be just bluster, but it raises a serious question - are EDL becoming a sort of lightning rod for other groups of people that are altogether more clever, and altogether more sinister.
Prof Matthew Goodwin is an expert on far right groups and advises the Home Office. According to him the group is at a crossroads.
Four hundred people that can be quickly mobilised online and will travel to demonstrations is seen as very useful resource.
Within the organisation a debate is under way about whether it should stay as a street based protest movement or something more organised and political.
The direction EDL takes next largely depends on who decides to try to hijack it.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I predict that the EDL will fizzle out. This report says they are getting more organized, which may be the case, but they seem like something out of a monty python sketch.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:00 am
It feels like the 1970s again. Things are going to change in Britain - the pressure of climate change, the weariness of consumerism - a nation increasingly unhappy with itself. We had the NF boot boys back then, we’ve got the EDL now. But history doesn’t so much repeat itself as rhyme. In the UK, Thatcher’s politics stole the far-right’s wind while the old left impaled itself on its own stupidity, burying itself finally under the rubble of the falling Berlin Wall. Where things go from here, today, is far less clear. One thing seems likely - this time, it won’t be the politicians and city boys who define the new cultural ethos. Let’s just make sure it’s not the EDL and chums who get to shape Britain’s future.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:33 am
A looney blog for the looney left)))
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 am
What are values worth working for?
-freedom of speech
-freedom of religion
-equality between men and women
-equality among people of different sexual orientation
-equality of people of different races
-equality of people of different religions and atheism
It doesn’t matter who the opponent is - white, non-white, christian or muslim. People of all races and all religions have prejudices. Who ever suppresses equality and freedom should be (non-violently) engaged. Not addressing all groups prejudices is a bit patronizing. And, no I am not white.
I think this site does good work, but I wish you also would confront Muslim loons who misunderstand Islam that the non-Muslim loons talk about. That could take some steam out of the non-Muslim loons’ engines.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Dear Yakoub
to identify the EDL with any former movement is self deceptive. To write it off as ’something that will fizzle out’ is foolhardy.
You have one meagerly worthy point in your statement about Thatcher stealing the far rights wind. In saying this, you at least recognize the legitimate political struggle which the EDL represents. It CAN be made to fizzle out (to a degree) by the Police simply doing the right thing and enforcing the Public Order Act in a number of instances.
1/ Westminster Muslim protest (Arrest all who displayed insulting signs)
2/ Luton (the same) I understand 5 from the Luton protest have been arrested now.. plenty more to go though.
3/ Arrest of Anjem Choudery and ALL of his cohorts for sedition, infringement of the POA and various other incitement offenses.
4/ CHANGE British law such that the scum like Choudery can be stripped of citizenship and deported to a country like Pakistan or Bangladesh (never to return)
5/ REMOVE Britain from the ‘UN Convention on Human Rights’ OR.. add exceptions which protect Britain from left wing manipulation on the issue of immigration and/or assylum seekers.
6/ Stop granting permits for new mosques
Do all that and the EDL will dissappear.
It’s easy.