Category Archives: UK

EDL supporter sentenced to 12 weeks imprisonment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man has been sentenced to 12 weeks imprisonment for his part in the disturbance which occurred during the English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism protests in the city centre.

Ryan Herbert (06/04/87) of Bland Road, New Parks, pleaded guilty at Leicester Magistrates Court last month to criminal damage to property and to a Section 4 public order offence. He was sentenced last week.

The incident happened on October 9, 2010, in Humberstone Gate East when damage was caused to windows at Fabrika Bar at the Arts Centre.

Leicestershire Constabulary news report, 17 March 2011

Sunday Telegraph sued over ‘extremist’ claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yahya_IbrahimAn Islamic preacher is demanding libel damages of up to £100,000 over a Sunday Telegraph story.

Yahya Ibrahim launched an action for defamation claiming the story suggested he was a proponent of terror who holds offensive, violently extreme and anti-Semitic beliefs. The story, headed “Hardline cleric banned in the US will preach to British universities” ran in the paper and online in January last year.

According to a writ filed with the High Court, Ibrahim says the story suggests he intended to preach his dangerous beliefs to students in the Yuk in a bid to radicalise them and turn them to violence. Ibrahim says he is a moderate teacher committed to religious tolerance, denies he holds radical views, and is opposed to violence.

After he complained by email, the writ claims, publishers Telegraph Media Group ran a short apology and changed the online version of the story. However, Ibrahim claims the article included defamatory allegations until April last year.

Ibrahim, who lives in Western Australia, claims he suffered acute embarrassment and distress, and argues that his personal and professional reputations were damaged by publication.

He also claims his distress was compounded by the paper’s solicitors who falsely accused him of having discriminatory and anti-Semitic views. The solicitors also tried to tarnish him by citing untrue and defamatory material from the internet to support their position, without any proper research, the writ claims.

Ibrahim is seeking aggravated damages, saying the paper ran the stories without checking the facts with him first or giving him the chance to comment, and then published a woefully inadequate and insulting apology in the print edition. He is also seeking an injunction banning repetition of the allegations at the heart of his legal battle.

Press Gazette, 16 March 2011

Via ENGAGE

The offending article, by Patrick Sawer and Philip Sherwell, which was published in the Sunday Telegraph on 24 January 2010, was a typical scaremongering piece about “extremist preachers” speaking at British universities.

The reliability of the article may be judged by the fact that the main source for the attack on Yahya Ibrahim was David Ouellette, formerly of the (now defunct) right-wing Zionist website Judeoscope, which specialised in portraying mainstream Muslim figures as dangerous extremists. Ouellette was quoted as saying that while Ibrahim was “widely considered as a ‘bridge builder’ between Muslims and non-Muslims” in Australia, he was in reality “a hard-core activist of the Wahhabi strain working to spread in the West the hateful, terror-inspiring Salafi ideology, the likes of whom should not be welcome in free societies fighting Islamic extremism”.

The article also quoted critics who had “called on the Government to take a tougher line on barring extremists from Britain”. Predictably, these critics were Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens and Paul Goodman.

What has been the point of the EDL’s KFC protest?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL halal protestFor twenty-eight days members of the English Defence League are protesting outside a KFC. The protest is against the serving of Halal meat at the Blackburn store based on Haslingdon Road.

Things began with the predictable gusto on February 20. But trying to link the serving of halal food to “Islamification” was never going to be easy. In what way does halal food mean that a country was being Islamified? Why not also demonstrate against the serving of Kosher meat? Was halal food really impacting how people eat? And why only pick on KFC? Meat being served at other restaurants and takeaways across the region is halal. Should it really matter?

A specific reason given by the group is that it is inhumane to kill an animal the halal way. But these particular chickens are stunned before they are killed. KFC adheres to its strict laws and regulations as it did before the food became halal. Some would claim the slaughter of KFC chickens is done in a more humane way that the meat sold in your average supermarket!

Within days the Facebook page was asking for more demonstrators. By February 28 things had become a little desperate. A message read, “Tonight the turn out at the KFC was pathetic! All the so-called members of the Blackburn division and we have six stood up there! We need to sort this out!”

KFC meanwhile have handled the situation as diplomatically as possible. The company already came under fire from the Halal Monitoring Committee (HMC) for its use of stunning so to have a daily protest on its doorstep because you are too halal must be annoying to say the least.

Asian Image, 17 March 2011

Empty your pockets please – Quilliam needs financial support

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In response to the parliamentary debate on Tuesday where government minister Damian Green confirmed the news that the Home Office would cease funding them at the end of this financial year (i.e. next month), the Quilliam Foundation has circulated a begging letter – sorry, press release.

Quilliam point out that they have never enjoyed the sort of generous state funding that some have supposed: “Figures provided by the government during the debate showed Quilliam has received less government money than was regularly reported … since 2008, Quilliam has received a total of only £2.7 million from the British government for all its work in the UK, Pakistan and elsewhere – far less than the ‘million pounds a year’ that Quilliam’s detractors have frequently alleged.”

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EDL supporter fined for racial harassment and assaulting a police officer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A factory worker punched a police officer after he was arrested for a drunken racist rant when he said all immigrants should be shot, a court heard.

Ian Logan remembers very little about the incident when he assaulted the officer, who tried to arrest him following his racist diatribe, which also championed the English Defence League, Darlington Magistrates’ Court heard yesterday.

Alison Nunn, prosecuting, told the court the police officer had arrived in North Road at 11.20pm on a Sunday night, after being called to the area to deal with another matter.

The officer had seen the 48-year-old staggering across the street, Mrs Nunn said: “He hears the defendant shout out, “EDL, EDL, get the f***ing immigrants out. You lot are f***ing useless, what the f*** are you doing about all these b******s? Control immigration, you should shoot them all.” Logan then shouted more racist obscenities, the court heard.

When the officer, who thought Logan was drunk, tried to arrest him, he pulled the officer’s arm and then punched him in the face, the court heard. The officer reached for his pepper spray, which failed to activate, and Logan pulled him by his body armour and made aggressive comments, forcing the officer to “knee” Logan. Logan continued to be physically and verbally aggressive until he was put into a police cell.

Logan, of Thompson Street West, Darlington, pleaded guilty to assaulting a police office and racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress. He was fined £190 for each offence and ordered to pay £85 costs and a £15 victim surcharge.

Northern Echo, 16 March 2011

Logan must regret punching the police officer. Otherwise he’d have the full support of Spiked, who would indignantly defend his right to free speech.

East End Gay Pride march cancelled

Posted on by Bob Pitt

East End Gay PrideEast End Gay Pride has been cancelled, the organisers have announced. In a statement this morning, they blamed “personal attacks” and a “personal vendetta” against them by local gay campaigners.

The march was due to be held on April 2nd as a response to anti-gay stickers plastered around London’s East End. But it quickly became controversial, as local groups Rainbow Hamlets and Out East accused the march of being a front of the English Defence League (EDL) and claimed that it would cause tensions between gay people and Muslims in the area.

Yesterday, one organiser, Raymond Berry, resigned after gay Muslim group Imaan revealed he had been a founding member of the EDL, a far-right group. Imaan said it was about to publish evidence to show that other organisers had “right wing and fascistic associations”, although organiser Mark Bourne said that they were simply “patriotic”.

This morning, gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell called for the march to be postponed and said he was withdrawing his support for it. Pride London had supported the march but said yesterday it had been “misled” by Mr Berry, who had not declared his past support for the controversial group.

Pink News, 16 March 2011

Roberta Moore and Stephen Lennon kiss and make up

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Roberta MooreYou may recall that a few weeks ago the English Defence League leadership had a bit of a falling out with the EDL Jewish division over the latter’s decision to ally itself with the far-right Jewish Task Force whose leader, Victor Vancier, served a five-year prison sentence in the US for a 1980s bombing campaign waged in protest against the treatment of Soviet Jews.

At that time the EDL – or more precisely Helen (“Muslims are total scum bags“) Gower, head of the EDL admin team – issued a stern warning to Jewish division leader Roberta Moore:

“A member of the Jewish Division this week decided to link herself with terrorist organisation JTF. This was the decision and wishes of one single individual within the EDL, and does not mean that the EDL is linked with this movement. If they continue with their plans to forge links with the terrorist JTF, the EDL will have no option but to sever its links with the Jewish division as we cannot support terrorist sympathisers.”

But hey, why let a minor matter like support for a convicted terrorist sour relations between the EDL and its Jewish division? Earlier today Roberta Moore reported on the Jewish division’s Facebook page that friendly co-operation has now been re-established with Tommy Robinson (Stephen Lennon) and Kevin Carroll, the joint leaders of the EDL:

“I went to a meeting with Tommy, Kevin and others of our counter-jihad group yesterday and it was great! We were filming a documentary for the Australian TV which will be shown on Sunday. After the filming we had a meeting to discuss our goals, tactics and the future of our country. I am very excited because the things we agreed last night were nothing like we have done before!”

And what of the EDL leaders’ statement threatening to break with the Jewish division over its terrorist links? According to the Jewish division, “some people ‘suggested’ it, but these were facebook admins and not the real leadership”. In any case, Moore adds, “the statements were removed over a month ago”. And she’s right, the EDL statements criticising the Jewish division have indeed disappeared.

What next? Will the EDL be rescinding its decision to sever connections with the English Nationalist Alliance? If the Jewish division is allowed to continue its assocation with a convicted terrorist, it is difficult to see why the ENA’s “links with Nazi groups like Combat 18 and Redwatch” should be an obstacle to further co-operation with the EDL. Particularly so, given that Moore herself is a founding committee member of the ENA and so far as we know still holds the post of “Co Chairperson, Political Liaison” in that organisation.

Update:  See also “The EDL has closer links to terrorism than 99.999% of British Muslims”, Exposing the English Defence League, 16 March 2011

Understanding Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Matthew GoodwinIn a piece for the Ballots & Bullets blog on the University of Nottingham website Matthew Goodwin, author of the forthcoming book New British Fascism: The Rise of the BNP, draws our attention to his exchange of views with former Tory MP Paul Goodman at the ConservativeHome blog, which began with Goodwin’s defence of Baroness Warsi and moved on to a more general discussion of Islamophobia and the views British Muslims (see here, here, here and here).

As anyone reading through this debate will find, Matthew Goodwin’s analysis proves superior to Goodman’s in two respects. He actually knows what he’s talking about, and he’s not an anti-Muslim bigot.