The Royal Mile was closed yesterday by a huge police operation to prevent a violent confrontation between the far-right Scottish Defence League and anti-fascist protestors.

Hundreds of police took to the streets of Edinburgh amid concerns that large numbers of SDL supporters would converge on the city at the same time as a rally by Scotland United, a loose coalition of politicians, Christian and Islamic faith groups, and trade unionists.

But only about 40 supporters of the SDL turned up, and they found themselves corralled into a pub at the bottom of the Royal Mile for several hours. There were five arrests for public order offences but the Scotland United rally, attended by about 2,000 people, passed off peacefully in Princes Street Gardens, about half a mile away.

The SDL members congregated in Jenny Ha’s opposite the Scottish Parliament at about 11am yesterday, forcing police to erect two cordons on the Royal Mile, separating them from members of the Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance.

While the majority of those in attendance – among them teenagers and women – said they refused to speak to the press for fear of being misquoted, others said they expected a considerable turnout from SDL supporters. “There’s people up from Leeds, Stockport, Wolverhampton, London, all over. We’re getting 3,000 bodies here,” said a member of the English Defence League. We’re coming in from everywhere – Spain, Gilbraltar, Bulgaria.”

The group unfurled banners with slogans such as “Say no to fundamentalist Muslims” and sporadically raised chants, including “We want our country back” and “Muslim bombers off our streets”. Despite attempts to break through the police cordon, they were contained in the pub, until two double-decker buses took them out of the city centre at about 4pm.

At the formal Scotland United rally, which included a march from Princes Street Gardens to the Meadows, speakers said the SDL had failed to gain support, but warned against complacency. Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said: “Today is about making a stand against those who would seek to divide and saying to them that their views are not welcome.”

Osama Saeed, of the Scottish Islamic Foundation and an SNP candidate for Glasgow Central, said it was a “further humiliation” for the SDL. “They only got ten minutes in the rain last November in Glasgow. They didn’t even get that today.”

Scotland on Sunday, 21 February 2010

Update:  The EDL reports that its “leadership team” were arrested on their way to the Edinburgh demonstration and their homes have been raided by the police. As a result, the planned EDL demonstration in Bradford on 30 May has been cancelled.

Further update:  See Richard Bartholomew’s coverage of the EDL arrests at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 22 February 2010

Links between the BNP and the right-wing Scottish Defence League can today be exposed by the Sunday Herald.

Both groups have publicly tried to distance themselves from each other, with the BNP claiming it would expel members found to be active in the Scottish Defence League (SDL) and its English counterpart, the EDL.

But one long-standing BNP member in Scotland told the Sunday Herald the party and the SDL shared many members and supporters, adding that the threat of expulsion was merely “a publicity thing” designed to placate the media. He said: “I am a member of the BNP and a supporter of the Scottish Defence League. A lot of the supporters are the same.”

On the threat of expulsion, he added: “That is a publicity thing. We both have the same views on radical Islam and we both don’t want Sharia law in Britain. We created our group [the SDL] to support what was happening down south with the English Defence League. I couldn’t say that the SDL was set up by BNP activists, but I was one of the early ones to support it.”

The claim that the expulsion threat was a publicity stunt was dismissed as “preposterous” by the party’s national press spokesman, who questioned the authenticity of the member who made the allegation.

However, information gathered by David Miller, a professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde and a co-founder of the campaigning website Spinwatch, alleges that at least three BNP members are also Defence League supporters.

One is BNP Scotland member John Wilkinson. He leafleted on behalf of the party in the run-up to the European Elections, and is involved with running the SDL website. SDL supporter Iain Brooks, from Glasgow, is also listed on a leaked BNP membership list. And Adam Lloyd, the BNP organiser for Bridgend in Wales, is another listed as an SDL supporter, according to Prof Miller.

Sunday Herald, 13 December 2009

Standing precariously on a bin as thousands of people swarmed into George Square banging drums and chanting, anti-racist campaigner Aamer Anwar yesterday proclaimed a victory for the people of Glasgow over “racism, fascism and the Scottish Defence League (SDL)”.

His celebration followed a day in which the far-right group’s threat to march on Glasgow Central Mosque came to nothing, as police penned its members into a pub before bussing them to various spots on the periphery of the city, extinguishing the chances of a conflict before it had the chance to ignite. There were a few minor skirmishes in and around the city centre between the tiny SDL contingent and rival demonstrators, who were out in their thousands. Five people were arrested.

Although both sides claimed to have achieved their aims, the sheer numbers that mustered under the banner of Scotland United, a broad-spectrum alliance of political parties, trade unions and civil society groups, demonstrated that most of Glasgow has little truck with the ‘anti-Islamic’ policies of the SDL and its English counterpart.

Mr Anwar, speaking at the head of a thousand protesters as they marched into George Square, said: “Just over 100 members of the Scottish and English Defence Leagues came to Glasgow today, skulked in a pub and were then bussed off away from the city centre. We proved that the only group that the people of Glasgow would tolerate on their streets were Scotland United. I would call this a victory.”

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