EDL News and Hope Not Hate draw attention to a report in the Sunderland Echo that Paul Duffy, a former regional organiser for the English Defence League, has been jailed for five years after pleading guilty to possessing a prohibited firearm, live rounds of ammunition, a prohibited weapon and drugs.

Duffy was found in possession of a Webley 8mm pistol and two rounds of ammunition when police raided his house in December following a tip-off. He claimed he was looking after them as payment for a drug debt.

Duffy was the EDL’s North-East organiser before he left to join the even more extreme breakaway group, the Infidels (who the EDL once denounced as Nazis but now hail as “great patriots“). He was one of five members of that group who were arrested by the North-East Counter Terrorism Unit in April last year on suspicion of posting race-hate material online. However, after consultation with the CPS it was decided not to press charges.

A teenager spray-painted racist graffiti near a mosque and daubed the names Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden on flats during a booze-fuelled spree.

Laura Woodward, 19 of Byron Road, Addlestone, admitted four counts of racially and religious aggravated criminal damage and two of criminal damage.

Woodward, appearing before Guildford magistrates last Thursday, also admitted racially aggravated damage to the front door of an Asian man whom she knew.

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The English Defence League (EDL) has made bizarre accusations that counter demonstrators used “violent language” and “terrified children”.

Leaders of the anti-Islamic group also claim 85 of its members turned up at a rally in Cambridge’s Christ’s Pieces and not the 30 estimated by Cambridgeshire police. They also turned on members of Cambridge Unite Against Fascism (CUAF) for holding a counter-demonstration on Saturday, February 23.

The group says it has now formed a Cambridgeshire Division after the rally claiming they had increased support from residents.

A spokesman said: “After speaking to residents on the day, we had many members of the public showing their support for us being there and have had many Cambridgeshire residents wishing to join in our campaign since visiting and have since set up a new EDL Cambridgeshire Facebook page for them to join. It was a local demo, of which, despite contrary reports we had 85 members who arrived and protested peacefully.”

He criticised the CUAF for its “long march around the city centre causing streets to be closed off with a huge police presence throughout”. The spokesman claimed he had received “many reports” of people being unhappy about the CUAF and of “children being terrified by them and the disruption they caused”.

Cambridge News, 6 March 2013

It is of course likely that more EDL supporters turned up in Cambridge than actually joined the rally. Some of them reportedly stayed in the pub, embarrassed by the low turnout – and also no doubt by the antics of the few dozen drunken idiots who did participate in the protest.

The English Defence League is set to open a headquarters in Luton, says its leader, who has been released from jail.

Stephen Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, said the HQ would be at his tanning shop premises in Hastings Street.

“It will be like the Discover Islam centre but we will be telling the truth about Islam,” he said. “I will be in there every day. It’s going to be a nightmare for the police because it’s going to get attacked.”

Lennon said the headquarters would be run as a “charity”, as he was unable to run a business because the police had had his bank accounts frozen.

The EDL leader has a tag to ensure he obeys a curfew order after spending 18 weeks in jail for entering the US on a false passport.

Luton Today, 6 March 2013

Here is an example of the sort of education about Islam that visitors to the new EDL HQ can expect to receive from Lennon: