The English Defence League have announced their plans for a demonstration in Tower Hamlets next Saturday, 7 September. They propose to end the march with a rally at Altab Ali Park. Quite how they’re going to manage that is unclear, given that the Borough of Tower Hamlets has banned the EDL from using the park, as Mayor Lutfur Rahman made clear in a press release over a week ago.

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Trouble flared as an English Defence League (EDL) march was led through South Shields.

About 250 members of the right-group were protesting in the town today. A heavy police presence led the march from Mile End Road through Fowler Street to Beach Road and down Sea Road before being marshalled into an area outside South Marine Park.

When the march reached Pier parade it was met by a rally of about 100 anti-fascist protesters who had gathered at the junction of Ocean Road and Lawe Road. At least one person was arrested after emerging from the trees in North Marine Park and running towards the anti-fascist rally. The rest remained behind a police cordon at the Wouldhave Memorial.

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MPs are demanding a ban on a march through one of London’s most multicultural areas by the far-right English Defence League.

In a letter to the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police, seen by Channel 4 News, both of the MPs representing the Tower Hamlets borough of east London called the anti-Muslim group’s march, which is planned for Saturday 7 September, a “deplorable hate preaching tactic which we have seen result in serious violence multiple times before”.

Writing to Police Minister Damian Green on 23 August, Rushanara Ali and Jim Fitzpatrick, Labour MPs for Bethnal Green and Bow and Poplar and Limehouse, added: “It is our firm belief that this march…[poses] a serious threat to both individuals and wider Tower Hamlets community cohesion.”

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“Not in our backyard!” That was the overwhelming view of the people the Gazette questioned over today’s march through South Shields by right-wing extremists.

Members of North East Infidels (NEI) and the English Defence League (EDL) were parading from the town’s Fowler Street to Pier Parade, where a rally was being staged. They were to be met by representatives of the newly-formed South Tyneside Unites Against Fascism (STUAF), a group set up specifically in response to the rally.

Concerns have been raised that the rival demonstrations are a “recipe for trouble”. Last night Northumbria’s crime commissioner Vera Baird and town MP Emma Lewell-Buck were meeting members of the local community to allay fears.

Meanwhile, Chief Superintendent Ian Dawes, of South Shields police, has pledged that “public safety is our absolute priority”, adding: “Our aim at all times is to facilitate these events and ensure they pass off peacefully with the minimum of disruption.” The exact cost of policing the rally and counter-demo is not known – but it won’t come cheap.

Some believe that in a democracy everyone should have a right to express their views – no matter how disagreeable those opinions may be. But on the streets of King Street, South Shields, we found little support for that stance.

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Legal action has been threatened in a bid to challenge the Metropolitan Police’s failure to ban far right group the English Defence League (EDL) from marching through east London next weekend. Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s office tonight confirmed the last ditch attempt to stop the march from going ahead as planned next Saturday (September 7).

Mayor Lutfur Rahman said: “I’m deeply disappointed that the police and the home secretary have failed to act, despite my formally requesting them to do so. Clearly they are not on the same page as the scores of prominent national and local figures who joined me in calling for a ban. I call upon them to see sense, but in the absence of an adequate response I intend to take this matter to the High Court.”

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