The English Defence League held a demonstration in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham on Saturday, in opposition to plans to build a new Islamic centre there.

It drew an estimated 160 protestors, though the EDL itself, with predictable exaggeration, claimed that the turnout was between 200 and 250. Around 100 of the EDL’s opponents joined a counter-demonstration organised by Grantham Solidarity Network.

The Grantham Journal disgraced itself by publishing what was little more than EDL propaganda, with reports headed “Mixed race woman on EDL march in Grantham says group ‘are like family'” and “EDL say Grantham protest rally was ‘brilliant'”.

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Last month the English Defence League leadership – now a committee known as the Management Group, which is composed of the regional organisers – issued what was on the face of it a stern warning to EDL members against involvement with the various far-right splinter groups that have emerged from the movement over the past few years.

Accusing these rival groupuscules (quite accurately) of being “openly White Pride and racist”, the Management Group emphasised (albeit not very coherently) that “we will not stand with groups that do discriminate and are racist such as the Britain First/SEA/NWI/NEI/EVF/BNP/NF/C18 & White Pride or such like minded openly discriminating against any creed, race, colour other than white”.

EDL members were told: “If you wish to have unity with these groups then you have the option to leave the EDL as a supporter and join one or all of these groups. The splinter groups have minimal numbers and need unity with the EDL to make their numbers up not the other way. If you choose do so then we wish you good luck.”

However, for all their pious condemnation of racism and fascism, the Management Group was not actually proposing a general ban on EDL members participating in the protests organised by these splinter groups: “If any EDL supporter wishes to attend any of these other groups demos then all that we request is that you do not wear EDL colour’s or state you are in attendance as an EDL supporter.” In other words, the EDL leadership has no principled objection to its members’ active involvement with white supremacist, antisemitic and homophobic organisations – just as long as the EDL’s name is kept out of it.

Neverthless, as EDL News reported at the time, this provoked defections by a number of EDL divisions. One of them is in Bristol, where the leadership took badly to being given instructions by the national leadership. Leading local EDL activist Chelsea Anne White posted an indignant response to the new orders, complaining on the EDL Support Group’s Facebook page that “when i joined the EDL 3 years ago i was led to believe it was a street movement not a dictatorship”. According to White: “Good leadership dosen’t tell people what to do…..it is there to offer knowledge, assistance and support.”

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