Two women who have denied a religiously-motivated assault on a Kurdish woman at a city centre takeaway will face trial later this year.
Hayley Wells, aged 27, and Kelly Watterson, aged 29, both appeared at Plymouth Crown Court on the joint charge of religiously aggravated common assault on Sawda Kurdo at the Istanbul Kebab shop in Exeter Street on August 31 last year.
As its contribution to the end-of-the-year lists genre, Spiked has published a piece by Patrick Hayes entitled “The worst 10 assaults on freedom”, which has now been reproduced in its entirety by the EDL-linked British Freedom Party.
The BFP’s support is hardly surprising, given that Number 7 on Hayes’ list of “assaults on freedom” is the use of Crasbos against far-right thugs:
“In March, English Defence League (EDL) member Shane Overton received a Criminal ASBO banning him from attending or helping to organise any demonstration, meeting or gathering held by the EDL, and even from visiting its website for 10 years. Later in 2011, police tried to slap an ASBO on EDL leader Stephen Lennon that would have prevented him from having any involvement with his own organisation.”
It’s worth recalling that Overton, while passing through Doncaster railway station on his way back from an EDL demonstration, racially abused a Muslim family as they were waiting for a train, terrifying their children.
A 28-year-old man caught on camera hurling lumps of concrete at the police during an English Defence League demonstration in Bradford city centre was ordered to appear at Court today or be arrested.
Michael Currie failed to attend Bradford Crown Court yesterday to be sentenced for an affray on Saturday, August 28, last year. Currie sent a doctor’s note saying he was unwell because of anxiety and unfit for work for a fortnight. His barrister, Thomas Gilbart, said he was encouraged by his solicitor to attend but said he was unable to.
The controversial sale of the Drill Hall site in High Town to a Muslim group has been axed, with Luton Borough Council announcing yesterday (Dec 21) that homes will be built there instead.
At a secret meeting last week, members of the council’s executive decided that the site should be used for housing, rather than be sold to the Shia Muslim Masjid-e-Ali group for £1.5 million.
A spokesman for the group said its members were “extremely disappointed” by the decision.
The Home Office has written to an umbrella group representing a range of Jewish communal and religious groups in response to statements distancing themselves from the methods and aims of the English Defence League.
Earlier this year the leaders of the United Synagogue, Reform, Liberal and Masorti communities, as well as the Board of Deputies and the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ congregation, highlighted their opposition to the EDL’s tactics and called on the far right organisation to refrain from using Jewish and Israeli symbols in its campaigns.
Paul Weston with Geert Wilders and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff
There’s an interview with the British Freedom Party’s chairman Paul Weston at the European Son blog. It doesn’t tell us much we didn’t already know but it’s of interest all the same.
A former member of UKIP, Weston states that he joined that party “because of Lord Pearson, who was the only person to speak about Islam”. He resigned after Nigel Farage replaced Pearson as leader of UKIP: “Mr. Farage has actually come out and said that he will not say anything about Islam because he will no longer be invited on to BBC television programs such Have I Got News for You. I think it’s terrible, so that’s really why I left UKIP.”
This is hardly an accurate summary of Farage’s position – he’s been quite happy to play the anti-Islam card on behalf of his party – but it’s probably true that the current UKIP leader doesn’t entirely share the raving anti-Muslim bigotry of his predecessor, at least as far as his public utterances are concerned. So you can see why Weston became disillusioned and saw the need for a more hardline party that placed Islamophobia at the centre of its programme.
A local paper reports that the British Freedom Party has appointed a long-time EDL activist named Mark Dunbar as its organiser in the Essex town of Witham, which is of course currently under serious threat from the Muslim hordes.
It’s easy to laugh, but people living in places like this can be susceptible to the EDL/BFP’s Islamophobic propaganda precisely because they very rarely come into contact with an actual Muslim.
Postscript: I’ve failed to find figures for the number of Muslims living in Witham, but according to the last available census there were only 409 Muslims in the whole of Braintree, compared with 98,116 Christians. Clearly, if Muslims are intent on imposing Islam on Witham they have a long way to go.
Tash Shifrin examines the English Defence League’s international links, and in particular the role of the Center for Vigilant Freedom/International Civil Liberties Alliance.
Over the past week we have seen a wave of right-wing hysteria over the case of Rhea Page, a white woman from Leicester who was assaulted by four women of Somali heritage – or a “Muslim gang”, as they are invariably described.
The version of events that has gained currency on the racist right is that the women subjected Page to a “savage beating” while screaming “kill the white slag” but escaped a prison sentence because the judge accepted the defence’s argument in mitigation that the accused were Muslims who weren’t used to drinking alcohol. The case has been presented as an example of double standards in the British legal system, which supposedly discriminates against the white majority population and in favour of Muslims and other minorities.
The Sunday Times has the details. See also the reports by Unite Against Fascism and the Morning Star.