EDL raise funds inside the European Parliament

Far right members from organisations in Germany, Sweden and the UK attended a meeting in the European Parliament on 9 July at which literature was sold to attendees.

While one keynote speaker described how “The pansy left are auditioning to be the Muslim’s prison b*tch” and said the mainstream media represented “a threat to life and liberty.”

The same speaker stated: “A society which becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else.”

There was a surprise for Members of the European Parliament this morning when a secret meeting of Europe’s far right was held in the parliament. The meeting, listed as Non Inscrit Meeting, and not appearing on the usual schedules, was a gathering of Islamaphobes and included as guest speaker, Tommy Robinson, leader of the English Defence League (EDL), and used the name of International Civil Liberties Alliance as a cover.

Robinson, looking sweaty and nervous, claimed that Luton was the centre of a plot by the Islamic world to bring Britain under their authority.

The EDL has been in decline recently, with smaller crowds at their more infrequent demonstrations and a series of splits. Robinson was speaking as Deputy Leader of the British Freedom Party, whose leader couldn’t make the gathering. The party is believed to have less than 200 paying members.

Richard Howitt MEP who has criticised attempts to form different European ‘defence leagues’ by the EDL using their Facebook page said about today’s meeting:

“This is yet one more failed attempt by the EDL to find European partners as they just cannot spread their roots in the UK.

“In the same way Nick Griffin and the BNP tried to use the European Parliament as a spring board and failed abysmally, the EDL will find they are badly out-of-their-depth.

“I have written to the President of the European Parliament to complain about the use of our facilities to raise funds for such hate organisations and to investigate whether other meetings are planned.”

New Europe, 9 July 2012

The unnamed speaker who attacked the “pansy left” and stated that “a society which becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else” was presumably Mark Steyn.

Update:  See Richard Howitt’s comment piece at LabourList, 10 July 2012

Update 2:  See “EDL at ‘free speech and human rights’ conference at European Parliament”, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 11 July 2012

Update 3:  One of the participants, Ned May, has posted a full list of speakers on the Gates of Vienna website.