This was one of the issues addressed on last Sunday’s edition of the BBC television discussion programme The Big Questions.
Writing on his Demos blog, one of the participants in the programme, Jamie Bartlett, says the answer to the question is “no”. In particular he is dismissive of the idea that the English Defence League represents any serious threat and asserts that the police and media are “probably giving them too much attention”.
I take the opposite view. Despite its relatively small numbers – a Demos study co-authored by Bartlett estimates that it has between 25,000 and 35,000 supporters – the EDL exercises a disproportionate influence in encouraging acts of aggression against the Muslim community. This worrying development is in fact almost entirely ignored by the national media.