A group of English Defence League (EDL) members demonstrated at the halal meat counter in Asda, Rochdale, on Saturday (14 January).
Rochdale Online understands that between 15 and 20 men arrived at the store, on Dane Street, at around 3.30pm but were swiftly moved on by the police and no arrests were made.
Police have arrested 15 people after violence between far-right activists and local youths outside a mosque in east London.
Witnesses said the clash near the East London Mosque in Whitechapel erupted after supporters of the English Defence League chanted anti-Muslim slogans. Scotland Yard said one man was injured and taken to hospital with “non life-threatening injuries”.
“The incident involved several hundred people,” a police spokesman said. “Bottles and other items were thrown.” He said all those arrested were later released. “The bulk of them were local kids,” he added.
The English Defence League was forced to drag in supporters from as far away as Coventry, Norwich and Weymouth to shore up a miserable turnout in the east London borough of Barking and Dagenham on Saturday 14 January.
Only around 100 EDL supporters turned up for what was billed as a regional mobilisation in Barking – although the racists and fascists had obviously mobilised from much further afield.
In contrast, around 80 people, overwhelmingly from the local area, came to an emergency counter-protest called by UAF at just two days’ notice. The antiracist and antifascist protestors included black, white and Asian people.
The English Defence League has applied for permission to march through Leicester city centre. The group, which staged a major rally in the city in October 2010, wants to return on Saturday, February 4.
Its previous protest degenerated into violence as people within a cordoned-off area reserved for the EDL pelted police officers with bricks, bottles and coins. A number of fireworks and smoke bombs were also thrown from the 1,000-strong EDL section, while some of its followers broke through police lines to engage in running battles with local youths and officers.
The operation cost police – who put 2,000 officers on to the streets – and Leicester City Council an estimated £850,000. Shops, particularly those in Humberstone Gate East, lost trade because they closed and boarded up their properties for the day.
The EDL formally notified city authorities on Wednesday of its wish to stage a march and rally. Police and officials at Leicester City Council held an urgent meeting yesterday to consider their response. They can apply to the Home Office for a ban on the march – as they did on the previous occasion – but cannot prevent a static protest.
UAF is organising an emergency protest against the English Defence League in Barking and Dagenham, east London, on Saturday 14 January.
The EDL is an organisation of racist and fascist thugs, who particularly target Muslims.
They plan to march through Barking as part of its attempts to stir up racism and division in the area. EDL supporters have aready staged a series of demonstrations in Dagenham against a proposed mosque.
The editor of the Daily Star endured a bruising encounter at the Leveson inquiry today, facing sustained questioning over her newspaper’s coverage of Muslims.
Counsel Robert Jay repeatedly showed Dawn Neesom front pages of her newspaper and asked if she considered them “ethical”. “A journalist might feel the headlines we’ve been looking at stray way over the line of what’s ethical,” he said.
Mr Jay showed one front page featuring the headline: “Muslim thugs aged just 12 in knife attack on Brit school boy.” He branded the language “tendentious”, pointing out that the victim was described as “British”, but the perpetrators, who were also British, were described as “Muslim”. He also pointed out that the ‘attack’ actually referred to a comment on Facebook.
“It’s not good,” Ms Neesom admitted. She promised to pursue the issue “back in the office”.
Gobby Jeremy Clarkson stormed into another race row last night after making fun of drowned Chinese cockle pickers. And his latest outburst came after the Daily Star Sunday discovered he had posed for a snap with the leader of the racist English Defence League.
The 51-year-old was slammed after joking about dead Chinese immigrants in his regular newspaper column. He tastelessly compared synchronised swimmers to the 21 cockle pickers who were killed in rising tides in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, in 2004. The Top Gear presenter was last night branded “out of touch” by anti-racism groups.
The latest outrage came as a picture of Clarkson and far-right English Defence League head Stephen Lennon emerged. Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, claims he talked about Islam with Clarkson.
The 28-year-old convicted thug, who also founded the anti-Islamic movement, said: “He knew who I was. We talked about Islam. I don’t want to say anything else because he will just get stitched up. But I’m a big fan of him.”
The English Defence League have posted an article on their website urging support for their fight against “Islamic extremism”. It begins with the usual whinge about how they are falsely accused of being far-right racists: “The eagerness of some in the media to paint a group of patriotic people as some kind of extremists (when they’d never make such an offensive and blatantly untrue generalisations about more ‘sensitive’ groups of people) illustrates the application of a double standard reflective of what we’ve regularly referred to as a growing two tier system.”
However, not all the news is bad: “Luckily there are a few members of the middle and establishment classes who believe that the EDL at least deserve a fair hearing. One of these is the British writer and former director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, Douglas Murray.” This is followed by a video of Murray speaking at the One Law For All seminar last year where he welcomed the EDL as “a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism”. The EDL applauds the fact that Murray “identifies ‘decent ordinary people’ with the EDL. Whilst he’s cautious of the need to ensure that the EDL is not hijacked by undesirable elements (so are we!), he recognises that most EDL supporters simply care about their communities and their countries”.
A judge has hit out at sentencing powers that prevented him from handing out a tougher punishment to a self-confessed racist who threatened to blow up a mosque. Judge Niclas Parry said he found it “quite staggering” a religiously aggravated public order offence could only attract a fine as a punishment for former soldier John Parkin.
Parkin, who was jailed for 10 months for being in breach of an earlier suspended sentence, escaped separate punishment on two charges of religiously aggravated public order offences following two separate outbursts against Muslims in Rhyl.
On one occasion, Parkin, 26, of River Street, Rhyl, was seen near Ellis’ public house in Water Street in Rhyl, where there was also a mosque, in a drunken condition and he was warned about his behaviour.
The licensee heard him say: “I have got guns. I want to shoot Muslims in the head.” He spoke about blowing up the mosque and the licensee found his remarks extremely racist and offensive, the court heard.
English Defence League leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) has appeared on Michael Coren’s Canadian TV show, discussing the recent attack on him in Luton by what he claims was a gang of local Muslims. Richard Bartholomew examines some of the contradictions in Lennon’s account of events.