Category Archives: UK

Exeter group formed to counter EDL march

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Exeter TogetherA group has been set up to counter the planned national protest being organised by the English Defence League in Exeter.

The EDL have announced their intention to stage a demo in the city on Saturday, November 16 and – despite the resignation of leaders Tommy Robinson and Kev Carroll – said it was still going ahead as planned.

City councillors have now joined with several local organisations in supporting a statement that condemns the proposed demonstration.

Exeter Together is an umbrella group that was formed two weeks ago after a meeting of 30 people. It is launching a statement that has already been backed by both Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors, as well as by many local faith groups, trade unionists and community organisations.

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West Yorkshire PCC in call for greater EDL powers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

West Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner is calling for forces to have more power to ban demonstrations such as those held by the English Defence League (EDL).

It follows an EDL rally in Bradford on Saturday that cost the force about £1m to police. Mark Burns-Williamson wants the government to allow chief constables to have the power to ban such demos. One EDL supporter at the rally told the BBC it was “the only way” to be heard.

About 1,000 police officers from several forces were involved in policing Saturday’s protest between the EDL and We are Bradford. Police said it involved about 700 EDL supporters and 120 counter protesters. Eleven people were arrested for public order offences.

At present, static protests such as those held by the EDL cannot be banned. Mr Burns-Williamson said he would be writing to the government “clearly setting out” that it “needs to review the legal framework”. He said he wanted more powers given to the chief constables, who in consultation with police and crime commissioners and other organisations, could make “informed decisions” about such protests.

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Mail on Sunday publishes apology to Joel Hayward, has paid ‘substantial’ damages for libelling him

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In August 2011, under the headline “Ayatollah of the RAF: Academic ‘university’ head is Muslim convert who claims Nazi gas chambers were British propaganda and criticises Libya air strikes”, the Mail on Sunday published a disgraceful attack on Joel Hayward, at that time dean of the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell.

Finally, over two years later, the Mail on Sunday has admitted that it libelled Hayward and has published the following apology in today’s paper:

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The EDL after Bradford

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bradford October 2013

After yesterday’s English Defence League protest in Bradford, the first since the resignation of its leaders Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll, some anti-fascists have been keen to write the organisation off. EDL News, for example, reported the demonstration under the title “EDL drags its twitching corpse to Bradford”, while Hope Not Hate reported that a mere 300 EDL supporters joined a march that was only 11 metres long.

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Sunday Times interviews Stephen Lennon

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tommy Robinson: For you, Tommy, the war isn’t over

By Rosie Kinchen

Sunday Times, 13 October 2013

Tommy Robinson likes getting something for nothing. He walks into the lobby of the hotel and asks if he can have a full English on The Sunday Times. And one, too, for the cameraman who is filming him for a documentary. Having informed me it will cost £20 a head, he unselfconsciously ploughs through his baked beans and bacon until the hotel staff become so agitated by his presence they ask us to leave. Robinson wipes his thin mouth with a napkin, turns to me and brimming with pride says, “Welcome to my world.”

Robinson is a short, frantic man who smells of Lynx, hair gel and bravado. A former tanning salon owner, he seems to have spent the past four years transforming himself into the poster boy for British racism. He founded the English Defence League in 2009 in response to protests by extremist Muslim groups in his home town of Luton, Bedfordshire, and has helped build a base of 25,000-35,000 followers, although the only people who openly associate with the group are skinheads, yobs and opportunistic football hooligans looking for a fight. They march through city centres with large Muslim populations, wearing pig masks, chanting racist anthems and being offensive to Muslims and non-Muslims.

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EDL supporter daubed graffiti outside Leicestershire mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims at a mosque feared an attack after a teenager daubed graffiti outside the building following the killing of soldier Lee Rigby, a court heard.

Worshippers at Oadby Central Mosque believed they could be assaulted after “EDL” – a reference to the English Defence League – was scrawled on a charity clothing bin outside the building.

Prosecutor Safina Desai told Leicester Youth Court yesterday how the 17-year-old graffiti vandal wrote “EDL” on the bin in Sandhurst Street days after the attack on Mr Rigby in London on May 22.

In a victim statement read out in court, Muhammed Katib, chairman of Oadby Central Mosque, which is also a community centre, told how Muslims were in fear of being attacked. He said: “This really rang alarm bells.” After the killing of Mr Rigby, mosques had been set on fire.

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Why the English Defence League is not ‘an irrelevance’: A response to Mehdi Hasan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Al-Rahma Islamic Centre fire (3)
Muswell Hill’s al-Rahma Islamic Centre ablaze – with the letters “EDL” visible on the wall of the burning building

“Who needs Tommy Robinson and the EDL, when Islamophobia has gone mainstream?” The question is posed by Mehdi Hasan at the New Statesman and Huffington Post.

He provides some good illustrations of how the bigoted rhetoric of former English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) is barely distinguishable from the anti-Muslim propaganda of the mainstream media. Mehdi of course has a point here. Indeed, it has long been obvious that, in addition to the inspiration provided by the international “counterjihad” movement, a large part of the EDL’s ideology derives from right-wing newspapers like the Mail, the Express and the Daily Star. However, Mehdi concludes from this that Lennon “is an irrelevance. So, for that matter, is the EDL. The hate-filled antics of these balaclava-clad thugs have distracted us from a much bigger issue: Islamophobia went mainstream long ago, with the shameless complicity of sections of the press.”

This seems to me to be a false argument. That the existence of mainstream Islamophobia is often either underestimated or denied outright is undoubtedly true. And Mehdi is correct to stress that “the denialism about rampant Islamophobia, on the left and the right, has to stop”. But this shouldn’t lead us to ignore the fact that the EDL, and Lennon personally, have played a distinct role in inflaming the Islamophobic sentiments of a thuggish minority among the population and encouraging them to translate their anti-Muslim hatred into violent action.

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Quilliam’s real role – witch-hunting and blacklisting Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hasan Lennon Nawaz and Carroll
The Quilliam press conference at which Lennon announced his break with the EDL

An excellent article by Yvonne Ridley exposing the McCarthyite methods of Quilliam, the organisation that got itself into the news last week over its role in promoting former English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon’s fraudulent claim that he has broken with far-right extremism.

Ceasefire, 11 October 2013

School relents over boys’ beards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two Muslim boys barred from classes because they would not shave off their beards will be allowed to return to school unshaven.

Both 14-year-olds had been placed in “isolation” from the start of the new term at Mount Carmel Roman Catholic high school in Accrington, Lancashire, and this week were sent home as the school maintained they had to be clean shaven.

But the school has now performed a U-turn to comply with the European Convention of Human Rights, it explained.

Governors have taken the decision to only allow Muslim boys permission to grow a beard as a sign of their faith as long as they have started the Hafiz programme at their local mosques, which entails daily prayers and learning the Koran in Arabic.

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