Six men have admitted causing disorder at a far-right demonstration at the site of a new mosque in Sunderland.
Around 200 people attended the pre-planned demonstration on St Mark’s Road in Millfield on Saturday, October 6 2012, where a former council transport depot is being converted into a mosque for up to 150 Pakistani Muslims.
The English Defence League, Scottish Defence League and Sunderland Anti-Fascist Coalition were among the protesters. A group of Muslims and locals also attended in a counter-demo.
Numerous arrests were made and 13 people in total charged with a range of public order offences.
At Sunderland Magistrates’ Court on March 18 2013 six of those charged pleaded guilty to the charges.
Peace campaigners are to unite against the English Defence League when they hold their biggest march of the year through Tyneside.
Hundreds of members of the right-wing organisation will walk from Newcastle’s Central Station to the Bigg Market in protest over plans for an Islamic School at the former Byker Grove building in the city’s West End.
Now faith leaders and councillors are gathering to organise a peaceful city centre festival on the same day to celebrate Newcastle’s ethnic diversity.
Claiming to debunk the assumptions usually made about the EDL attracting disproportionate support from the economically disadvantaged and the unemployed, Goodwin’s paper produced headlines such as “Managers and skilled workers make up bulk of far right supporters” (Daily Telegraph) and “English Defence League supporters are mostly full-time workers, survey finds” (Huffington Post).
A protester who made racist remarks to a police officer and spat at another during last month’s EDL and anti-fascist protests in Cambridge pleaded guilty yesterday.
Roy May, 56, of Elmfield Road, Cambridge, urinated outside a house in Emmanuel Street on February 23 when street closures for the protest were taking place. Pc Singh confronted May about what he was doing and received a torrent of racial abuse, city magistrates were told.
Delia Matthews, prosecuting, said: “He was swearing and his words were slurred because he was drunk.” May then spat at police officers, catching Pc Helen Greenfield on the cheek.
May will appear in court again on March 18 for sentencing.
EDL News and Hope Not Hate draw attention to a report in the Sunderland Echo that Paul Duffy, a former regional organiser for the English Defence League, has been jailed for five years after pleading guilty to possessing a prohibited firearm, live rounds of ammunition, a prohibited weapon and drugs.
Duffy was found in possession of a Webley 8mm pistol and two rounds of ammunition when police raided his house in December following a tip-off. He claimed he was looking after them as payment for a drug debt.
Duffy was the EDL’s North-East organiser before he left to join the even more extreme breakaway group, the Infidels (who the EDL once denounced as Nazis but now hail as “great patriots“). He was one of five members of that group who were arrested by the North-East Counter Terrorism Unit in April last year on suspicion of posting race-hate material online. However, after consultation with the CPS it was decided not to press charges.
A teenager spray-painted racist graffiti near a mosque and daubed the names Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden on flats during a booze-fuelled spree.
Laura Woodward, 19 of Byron Road, Addlestone, admitted four counts of racially and religious aggravated criminal damage and two of criminal damage.
Woodward, appearing before Guildford magistrates last Thursday, also admitted racially aggravated damage to the front door of an Asian man whom she knew.
The English Defence League (EDL) has made bizarre accusations that counter demonstrators used “violent language” and “terrified children”.
Leaders of the anti-Islamic group also claim 85 of its members turned up at a rally in Cambridge’s Christ’s Pieces and not the 30 estimated by Cambridgeshire police. They also turned on members of Cambridge Unite Against Fascism (CUAF) for holding a counter-demonstration on Saturday, February 23.
The group says it has now formed a Cambridgeshire Division after the rally claiming they had increased support from residents.
A spokesman said: “After speaking to residents on the day, we had many members of the public showing their support for us being there and have had many Cambridgeshire residents wishing to join in our campaign since visiting and have since set up a new EDL Cambridgeshire Facebook page for them to join. It was a local demo, of which, despite contrary reports we had 85 members who arrived and protested peacefully.”
He criticised the CUAF for its “long march around the city centre causing streets to be closed off with a huge police presence throughout”. The spokesman claimed he had received “many reports” of people being unhappy about the CUAF and of “children being terrified by them and the disruption they caused”.
It is of course likely that more EDL supporters turned up in Cambridge than actually joined the rally. Some of them reportedly stayed in the pub, embarrassed by the low turnout – and also no doubt by the antics of the few dozen drunken idiots who did participate in the protest.
The English Defence League is set to open a headquarters in Luton, says its leader, who has been released from jail.
Stephen Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, said the HQ would be at his tanning shop premises in Hastings Street.
“It will be like the Discover Islam centre but we will be telling the truth about Islam,” he said. “I will be in there every day. It’s going to be a nightmare for the police because it’s going to get attacked.”
Lennon said the headquarters would be run as a “charity”, as he was unable to run a business because the police had had his bank accounts frozen.
The EDL leader has a tag to ensure he obeys a curfew order after spending 18 weeks in jail for entering the US on a false passport.
A march by the far-right English Defence League in Manchester on Saturday closed much of the city centre to traffic, but passed off with only a handful of arrests after a smaller than expected turnout.
The Norwegian Defence League (NDL) has published a list of hundreds of Muslim companies and organizations on its website. The list had been compiled on the basis of listings in the Public Entity Registry. Lars Johnny Aardal, deputy leader of the NDL, said that it was published “to show the extent of Islam and Muslims in Norway”.
