Category Archives: English Defence League

Police fear EDL plan to attack Leicester mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL No More MosquesPolice fear protesters plan to attack a city mosque before marching into the heart of Leicester’s Muslim community.

Concerns were voiced by Chief Constable Simon Cole in a report to Leicester City Council about the planned march by the English Defence League on October 9. The Chief Constable said that an intelligence and threat assessment indicated a “major threat” to public order.

His report said: “Intelligence dated September 8, 2010, indicated that the EDL intend to come to Leicester and attack a mosque before marching into the Highfields area, which represents the highest resident population of the Muslim community.

“This reflects previous intentions of EDL processions, such as that within Leicester, where actions were targeted to cause disruption to the Muslim community by provoking serious public disorder.”

Leicester City Cabinet yesterday agreed to apply to the Home Office to ban the planned procession under the Public Order Act 1986.

However, the EDL, in a statement, rejected the police claims. EDL event organiser Guramit Singh said: “We are coming to Leicester to peacefully demonstrate and we denounce attacks on any mosques. We are here to fight militant Islam, not moderate Islam. The intelligence provided by the police is incorrect.”

The EDL submitted an application to march through the city to police this week. If the Home Office agrees to ban the EDL march, the group could still hold a static protest, which the authorities would be powerless to prevent taking place.

Leicester Mercury, 25 September 2010

See also “Vote to ban EDL march in Leicester ‘unanimous'”, BBC News, 25 September 2010

EDL mosque placards

Police release CCTV images of EDL hooligans in Dudley

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Dudley July 2010 2

Detectives investigating disorder which broke out during an English Defence League protest in Dudley have released CCTV images of men they want to identify.

West Midlands Police said officers were continuing to investigate criminal damage and other offences committed during disturbances in the town centre on July 17.

The CCTV stills, taken on the day of the EDL protest and a counter-demonstration, show 22 individuals whom detectives wish to trace.

Homes in the Alexandra Street area of Dudley were attacked during the violence, which also saw damage caused to parked cars, restaurants and a Hindu temple.

Detective Inspector Carl Southwick, who is leading the investigation, said: “We are appealing to members of the public to look closely at these images.

“We are committed to identifying those responsible for the pockets of disorder and criminal damage that took place in Dudley town centre.”

Press Association, 23 September 2010

EDL supporter charged over racist threats to Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man was held in custody yesterday afternoon on a charge of racially aggravated public order. The court appearance followed an incident at the new Wrexham Muslim Association mosque.

Father-of-four David Jared Evans, 36, was arrested over alleged racist comments and threats made to two people who were leaving the mosque at the former Miners’ Institute in Grosvenor Road, Wrexham, on Monday evening.

Evans, of High Street, Rhos, is charged with using threatening, abusive and insulting language and behaviour towards Abdulla Anwar which were racially aggravated.

Robert Blakemore, prosecuting, outlined the allegations at Flintshire Magistrates’ Court and said the case should be dealt with in the crown court. Magistrates agreed and Evans said in any event he wished to elect crown court trial.

The court heard that social networking sites were advertising a demonstration on Saturday against the use of the former Miners’ Institute as a mosque.

Mr Blakemore said after reading texts on Evans’ mobile phone between himself and the English Defence League he would apply for a remand in custody.

The Mold-based magistrates remanded Evans in custody for a week pending committal proceedings to the crown court.

The Leader, 17 September 2010

Soccer hooligans at Ground Zero

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL in New York2

Over at his New York Times blog, Robert Mackey has posted an analysis of the English Defence League, who sent a delegation to New York last weekend to support the anti-Park51 rally. Hopefully this will be taken up more widely by the US media because, on the “by their friends ye shall know them” principle, it does shed some revealing light on the political character of Geller and Spencer’s campaign.

So farewell then, Stephen Gash

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen GashAnders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe brings us the news that Stephen Gash, SIOE’s organiser in England, will be retiring from that post.

I think it’s unlikely that anyone will notice. While Gash would no doubt like to look back on the successes registered by SIOE England during his period of leadership, his actual record in the struggle against the Muslim hordes has amounted to a series of embarrassing flops.

Gash first came to prominence in what is now called the counter-jihad movement in October 2007 when he organised an SIOE “Stop Kuffarphobia” protest in central London. Gash told the police he was expecting a thousand demonstrators, but in the event only thirty turned up. Unwilling to stop the traffic for such small numbers the police wouldn’t let them march along the road and insisted that they use the pavement instead.

Gash then announced an SIOE protest against Harrow Central Mosque in August 2009. On the day, faced with hundreds of anti-racist counter-protestors, the police refused to allow SIOE to hold its demonstration outside the mosque and Gash himself was arrested when he resisted instructions to turn back. A couple of dozen football hooligans from the English Defence League who came to support Gash were chased away by local youth and reduced to cowering behind police lines. All in all, a complete disaster for SIOE.

Not a man to be deterred by failure, Gash announced a further SIOE protest in Harrow in December 2009, which he confidently predicted would draw a crowd of 2,000. In the outcome, only about fifteen people responded to Gash’s call.

Perhaps disappointment and humiliation have finally proved too much for Gash. While SIOE England has got nowhere, the EDL have at least been able to mobilise hundreds of brain-dead Islamophobes behind their own anti-Muslim provocations. A would-be general of the counter-jihad movement, Gash’s ambition was fatally undermined by an unfortunate lack of troops. You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.

The lesson of 9/11: Don’t dare upset the Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hardly a day goes by without us witnessing appalling atrocities and provocations in the supposed name of Islam: suicide bombings, fatwas, stonings, burnings of effigies and flags, Holocaust denial, and other crude forms of anti-Semitism. Women in Gaza and Muslim countries daren’t even have an orgasm without first obtaining the permission of their Islamofascist rulers. And who in the West dares to utter a word in protest?

A loony pastor in Florida, however, with no more than fifty followers, threatens to burn a few Korans and the Western media descends into a state of frenzy, the story leading all the major networks for days.

Such disproportionate oversensitivity to and appeasement of Muslims constitutes a worrying sign that the West may already have given up the fight against the evil of Islamofascism….

I am under no illusion about individuals such as Pastor Jones or, for example, elements of the English Defence League. What I do admire, however, is their refusal to lie down while their world and way of life – and in their own countries – is being transformed in front of their very eyes.

Anyone who is more concerned about a few books being burned by some deranged pastor – and we are not talking state-sponsored, 1933-style destruction here – than about the creeping Islamization of our planet is no less irrational than the mook with the handlebar moustache.

Melchett Mike at the JC Blog, 11 September 2010

Note the appearance of Zionist Federation vice-chair Jonathan Hoffman in the comments to this post, expressing his support.

EDL burn Qur’an at London demonstration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I_kgw6fdGfY

The English Defence League proudly film themselves burning pages from the Qur’an during their demonstration in central London on Saturday.

They think the police officer who stopped them was a Muslim. I mean, why else would he intervene to prevent decent English patriots exercising their democratic right to incite hatred against Islam? The EDL have to content themselves with a tuneless chant of “Allah is a paedo”.

And the bizarre thing is, they post stuff like this on YouTube in the evident belief that it presents their cause in a favourable light.

Another EDL ‘flash mob’ – in Nuneaton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police officers swooped to quell a racist confrontation which flared up shortly after soldiers had paraded through Nuneaton yesterday afternoon.

Members of the English Defence League attended the ceremony, which granted the Borough Council’s Freedom of Entry to the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. As the march came to an end, the 60-strong EDL entourage headed towards the Edward Street area of the town, which is the heart of the local Muslim community.

“We were  expecting some people connected with the EDL to be at the parade and after it had finished they congregated at The Crew bar in Queen’s Road,” said Chief Inspector Chris Lewis. “They positioned themselves outside and raised tensions with the Muslim community, which caused a few minor skirmishes but nothing of any consequence. We moved in to keep people at a distance and to calm things down. The EDL members were then escorted away from the scene and back to Nuneaton train station.”

The Warwickshire force commander, who was in charge of policing the parade, added: “We are constantly scanning for intelligence and knew that the EDL were planning to be in attendance for this occasion. Many of them had travelled from other parts of the country but they also had some local supporters.”

Around 200 people gathered around the Edward Street-Queen’s Road junction during a four-hour stand-off, as police officers, including dog handlers, kept the situation under control. All roads leading to the area were blocked for traffic and police reinforcements were also called in from the West Midlands.

Yaseen Ahmedabadi, assistant secretary of the Nuneaton Muslim Society, said: “The local community staged a peaceful protest against the unexpected and unwarranted presence of visitors from the English Defence League, who have no place in our society. We are very pleased with the way the police handled the situation.”

Coventry Telegraph, 13 September 2010

Eight arrests at EDL ‘flash demo’ in Oldham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Eight people have been arrested during an English Defence League (EDL) gathering in Greater Manchester.

About 120 members met in Oldham on Saturday. Some laid a wreath at the war memorial in Yorkshire Street.

Up to 50 supporters threw bottles at a police car at about 1315 BST, a Greater Manchester Police spokesman said.

Four were arrested over public order offences. Another four were arrested, also on suspicion of public order offences, in the town centre.

BBC News, 12 September 2010

See also Hope Not Hate, 12 September 2010

Update:  See “No complacency over new EDL ‘flash mob’ tactics”, UAF 13 September 2010 and “EDL’s new tactic”, Indymedia, 13 September 2010

One of the ‘courageous English patriots’ who went to New York to support Pamela Geller

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL at 9-11 protestHere’s a pic (via TPM) of a member of the EDL contingent who unlike Tommy Robinson made it though Immigration at JFK to attend Pamela Geller’s anti-Park51 protest in New York. It looks to me very much like EDL co-leader Kevin Carroll, who is regarded as a bit of a hero in the EDL having been convicted of a public order offence following a clash with Islam4UK demonstrators in Luton.

Carroll also featured in a recent BBC TV documentary on the EDL. His protestations that he was neither a fascist nor a racist were rather undermined when he was confronted with evidence that he had signed the nomination papers for a British National Party candidate in the Luton council elections two years ago.

Indeed, Three Counties Unity reported that Carroll “has been an enthusiastic BNP supporter, living on the same estate as Luton BNP organiser Peter Fehr. He is well-known to local anti-fascists and was only dissuaded from standing as a candidate in the 2007 Luton Council elections by a last-minute plea from his partner, Mary Stevenson.”

Pamela Geller, of course, has long been a fervent admirer of the EDL, hailing them as “courageous English patriots” who have been smeared by the media. “Libel and slander like ‘racist’, ‘fascist’, ‘bigot’, etc. color every news report of every counter-jihad action”, Geller has written. “The quisling media is the propaganda arm of jihad. It’s despicable. There is nothing racist, fascist, or bigoted about the EDL.”

An enthusiastic proponent of conspiracy theories, Geller argues that if there are fascists within the ranks of the EDL it is only because they have “infiltrated” the organisation in an attempt to discredit it – “because the neo-Nazis have generally aligned with the Islamic jihad that the EDL resists”. Will Geller now perhaps denounce Carroll as a fascist supporter of Islamism who has joined the counter-jihad movement in order to destroy it?

Update:  See also “English Defence League members attend New York mosque protest”, Guardian, 13 September 2010