Category Archives: UK

BNP supporter who sent hundreds of racist letters denies she’s a racist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Margaret Walker (2)A Hampshire gran has denied being a racist – despite sending hundreds of letters containing racial slurs. Pensioner Margaret Walker sent the handwritten mail to parish councils, MPs, businesses, pubs and clubs nationwide.

The targets of her anonymous campaign ranged from politicians – including Prime Minister David Cameron, who she claimed was “flooding the country with ethnic people” – to the BBC, which she claimed was a “Marxist organisation”. Walker, 73, of Walnut Drive, Fareham also referred to Scottish people as “scum”, called people of Pakistani origin “scroungers” and used a variety of racist terms.

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£200,000 bill for policing protests over Scout hut in Thurnby Lodge, Leicester

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police have spent £200,000 supervising protests against plans to turn a disused Scout hut into a community centre. The cost of the operation in Thurnby Lodge, Leicester, is rising daily as discussions continue to resolve the building’s future.

Officers from city stations and as far afield as Hinckley and Coalville have had to be redeployed from their normal duties to oversee regular protests – occasionally lasting late into the night – against a plan by the Muslim group As-Salaam Trust to convert the Nursery Road building into a community centre.

The protests, which began early last month, have taken place outside the nearby community centre in Thurncourt Road, where members of As-Salaam have been meeting for the past two-and-a-half years.

Leicester Mercury, 10 September 2012

For previous coverage see here, here and here.

EDL to return for rematch in Walthamstow

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Walthamstow anti-EDL demonstration

The English Defence League was planning to hold a demonstration in Norwich on 27 October, the primary purpose of which was to express solidarity with a notorious right-wing Christian Islamophobe, the Rev Alan Clifford, whose church has been refused permission to hold a stall on local authority premises after a well-founded complaint that it was distributing anti-Muslim hate literature.

However, having held a meeting with regional organisers to discuss the way forward following their organisation’s recent humiliation in East London, the EDL leadership has announced that the Norwich protest has been postponed and they intend to return to Walthamstow and hold a further demonstration there on that date.

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Daily Star claims security services saw Newham mosque as potential terrorist threat to Olympics

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It looks like the right-wing press is resuming its hysterical campaign against the proposed Tablighi Jamaat markaz at the Riverine Centre in Newham. “Bomb fear at mega mosque” is the shock horror headline to an article in the Daily Star Sunday, which follows the recent scaremongering report in the Evening Standard.

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EDL member who attacked anti-racism gig to be thrown out of army

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cavan LangfieldA soldier who smashed up an anti-racism event with his English Defence League pals is set to be kicked out of the Army.

Cavan Langfield, 18, and a gang of mates stormed a Rock Against Racism gig in Leeds last year. They smashed windows and hurled bricks and bottles, knocking a teenager’s tooth out.

Langfield, from the Yorkshire Regiment, and eight other members of the gang were convicted at Leeds Crown Court last week.

A source at the Ministry of Defence said: “The wheels are in motion to get him thrown out. That’s a whole promising career up in flames.”

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Michael Coleman conviction for blog comments is liberty’s loss

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Michael Coleman BNPWell, that’s the editorial view of Stoke-on-Trent’s local paper, the Sentinel, on the recent conviction of the city’s British National Party leader on a charge of racial harassment over articles he posted on his Stoke Patriot blog.

According to the Sentinel,  the racist abuse that fills Coleman’s blog merely amounts to “purple prose” and his views are “at worst objectionable”.

This is a man who couldn’t even bring himself to condemn the attempt to blow up a Stoke mosque. Stating only that he could not “sanction” their actions, Coleman described the two men jailed for this crime as “patriotic Britons” and wrote: “I understand and share the anger that must have been in their hearts as they witnessed this Mosque been [sic] built in their city.”

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EDL member charged over pipe bomb threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man has been charged after allegedly making online threats to carry out an “Oslo-style” bomb attack on Muslims.

Kenneth Graham Holden, 30, will appear before magistrates later this month charged with two counts of sending offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing messages or matters.

Police launched a probe after race-hate posts were allegedly made on Facebook in April this year.

Detectives discovered comments threatening a pipe bomb attack on Ocean Road, in South Shields, South Tyneside, inspired by the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.

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Stoke-on-Trent BNP leader Michael Coleman in court over ‘racist’ blogs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stoke Patriot

Stoke-on-Trent’s BNP leader posted racist articles on a website including claims the city was being “flooded with Muslims and blacks”, a court heard.

Former city councillor Michael Coleman has gone on trial at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court accused of racially-aggravated harassment. The 46-year-old was reported to police after two blogs he wrote in response to last summer’s London riots appeared online.

In them, he said the riots were a perfect example of “the difference in personality, perceptions and values of people of the darker races and ourselves”. And he accused Stoke-on-Trent City Council of “flooding this city with Muslims and blacks, a complete population replacement programme. Darkies in, whites out.”

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The EDL’s ‘fascist end-goal’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL on Warsi (1)

Unsurprisingly, the far right were very pleased to hear yesterday that David Cameron had succumbed to right-wing pressure and removed Sayeeda Warsi from her post as Tory party co-chairman. The subsequent news that Warsi had been appointed Faith and Communities minister was less well received.

We have already drawn attention to the English Defence League’s response to Warsi’s appointment (see above). However, it’s also worth checking out the comments that followed this official post on the EDL’s Facebook page.

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