Spot the fascist thug: Alan Spence and Dipu Ahad

Sky Tyne and Wear has helpfully provided a platform for the English Defence League’s North East regional organiser Alan Spence to promote the EDL’s forthcoming protest against plans to convert Benwell Towers, the former setting for TV series Byker Grove, into a faith school for Muslims.

Sky doesn’t bother to inform its viewers that Spence is a notorious fascist thug, a former British National Party parliamentary candidate who a year ago was given a 7-month prison sentence for his part in an EDL attack on a left-wing meeting at Tyneside Irish Centre.

Still, even though Spence’s record of political violence is covered up, he is such an ignorant bigot that his TV appearance is unlikely to win any wider public support for the EDL’s message of anti-Muslim hatred. By contrast, local Labour councillor Dipu Ahad comes across as an articulate defender of the area’s growing diversity.