Twenty charged over violence at EDL rally

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL smokebomb Birmingham July 2013Twenty men are due to appear in court later this month accused of violent disorder during an English Defence League protest last year. The men were arrested as part of a nationwide operation to trace and identify people involved in the violence during the protest in Birmingham city centre on July 20 last year.

Around 2,000 protesters gathered on the day, with EDL supporters meeting in Centenary Square and those staging a counter demonstration meeting in Chamberlain Square. Arrests were made across the country following leads from an appeal on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme in January.

The 20 men will appear before magistrates in Birmingham next week charged with violent disorder, West Midlands Police said.

A total of 31 people have been identified from the images of 57 people released during last month’s appeal. Six men have been arrested and released on police bail pending further enquiries. A team of detectives is working to trace the remaining suspects. Images of seven men suspected of involvement in disorder at the counter demonstration have also been released. One of those men has also been identified.

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Tory MP says ‘EDL is not welcome’ in Grantham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nick Boles MPThe MP for Grantham has spoken out about the upcoming protests in Grantham which centre around a plan to build an Islamic community centre.

The Journal asked Nick Boles for his views on the double demonstration taking place on Saturday, one put on by the English Defence League (EDL) and the other by the Grantham Solidarity Network in opposition to EDL views.

Mr Boles said: “EDL is not welcome in Grantham and does not represent the views of the vast majority of local people. But the right to peaceful protest is an essential democratic freedom and I have total confidence that Lincolnshire Police will be able to maintain order on Saturday.

“I have no objection in principle to the establishment of an Islamic community centre in Grantham as our Muslim neighbours have the same rights as anyone else, but I have no views on the particular planning application.”

The Grantham Solidarity Network will set up in Avenue Road by Abbey Gardens at 1pm, while the EDL will set off on a march from the Blue Bull pub in Westgate to the green on St Peter’s Hill, where a static protest will take place. Police will be present.

Grantham Journal, 19 February 2014

Racist gang sentenced for ‘completely and utterly disgraceful’ attack on Cambridge restaurant days after Lee Rigby murder

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mai Thai RestaurantA gang launched a “completely and utterly disgraceful” racist attack on staff at a Cambridge restaurant in the wake of the Lee Rigby murder.

The five friends – three of whom have been locked up – chased and assaulted staff, threw glass bottles and bins and hurled racial abuse outside the Mai Thai restaurant by Parker’s Piece as they chanted “EDL”. They goaded two brothers into coming outside before attacking them while shouting racist abuse on June 6 last year, a few days after the brutal murder of Fusilier Rigby in Woolwich.

The manager of the restaurant, who did not want to be named, told the News after the Cambridge Crown Court sentencing they attacked Muslim and Thai workers – and then turned on some of the 20 or so police officers who arrived on the scene.

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Bristol EDL declares independence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bristol Defence League patriotism is not racismLast month the English Defence League leadership – now a committee known as the Management Group, which is composed of the regional organisers – issued what was on the face of it a stern warning to EDL members against involvement with the various far-right splinter groups that have emerged from the movement over the past few years.

Accusing these rival groupuscules (quite accurately) of being “openly White Pride and racist”, the Management Group emphasised (albeit not very coherently) that “we will not stand with groups that do discriminate and are racist such as the Britain First/SEA/NWI/NEI/EVF/BNP/NF/C18 & White Pride or such like minded openly discriminating against any creed, race, colour other than white”.

EDL members were told: “If you wish to have unity with these groups then you have the option to leave the EDL as a supporter and join one or all of these groups. The splinter groups have minimal numbers and need unity with the EDL to make their numbers up not the other way. If you choose do so then we wish you good luck.”

However, for all their pious condemnation of racism and fascism, the Management Group was not actually proposing a general ban on EDL members participating in the protests organised by these splinter groups: “If any EDL supporter wishes to attend any of these other groups demos then all that we request is that you do not wear EDL colour’s or state you are in attendance as an EDL supporter.” In other words, the EDL leadership has no principled objection to its members’ active involvement with white supremacist, antisemitic and homophobic organisations – just as long as the EDL’s name is kept out of it.

Neverthless, as EDL News reported at the time, this provoked defections by a number of EDL divisions. One of them is in Bristol, where the leadership took badly to being given instructions by the national leadership. Leading local EDL activist Chelsea Anne White posted an indignant response to the new orders, complaining on the EDL Support Group’s Facebook page that “when i joined the EDL 3 years ago i was led to believe it was a street movement not a dictatorship”. According to White: “Good leadership dosen’t tell people what to do…..it is there to offer knowledge, assistance and support.”

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Littlejohn’s Islamophobic rant provokes response

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yesterday the Daily Mail published a piece by Richard Littlejohn on the Legoland Muslim fun day controversy, headlined “Jolly jihadi boy’s outing to Legoland”. As you might expect, it’s so juvenile and ignorant that it doesn’t merit a detailed reply. Still, its impact hasn’t been entirely negative. It has led to the launch of a new Facebook page, Exposing the Islamaphobic Daily Mail, which you can “like” here.

See also “Littlejohn’s anti-Muslim bigotry exposed”, ENGAGE, 19 February 2014

You can complain to the Press Complaints Commission here.

Man yelled racist abuse at mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man unleashed a racist tirade outside a Scottish mosque shortly after drummer Lee Rigby was killed in London.

Grant Gallagher was heard shouting: “The soldier was innocent. He didn’t deserve to die – you terrorists killed him.” He angrily grabbed the gate of the mosque in Livingston, West Lothian, while yelling racist abuse.

Livingston Sheriff Court heard that an Asian man who had stopped his car and wound down the window and a woman having a cigarette in her garden nearby both heard Gallagher’s bizarre rant at 2am.

The prosecutor said: “It’s my understanding that the incident wasn’t protracted. It lasted a few minutes. Such was the concern that the police were summoned and the accused was detained and arrested some time later.”

He said Gallagher had made no reply when he was charged by the police. He added: “I have no information as to why he was shouting these things at the mosque in particular and I’m not told whether or not he was sober. He certainly was on his own at the time.”

Gallagher, 54, of Lime Grove, Livingston, pled guilty to behaving in a threatening and abusive manner on May 26 last year. He admitted shouting and swearing and making racist remarks during the incident, classed as a racially aggravated offence.

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Katie Hopkins says she is not a racist during unruly Channel 5 show Big British Immigration Row: Live

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Katie Hopkins black curtain tweet

Rabble-rousing motormouth Katie Hopkins insisted that “this country is full” during a typically histrionic performance on last night’s The Big British Immigration Row: Live.

“I am not a racist because I believe there should be a universal treatment for everyone,” she insisted during the Channel 5 debate – having ‘jokily’ tweeted earlier in the day that she would greet civil rights commentator Mo Ansar in the studio wearing a ‘black curtain’.

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Attackers of Plovdiv mosque fined for hooliganism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dzhumaya Mosque windows smashedThe first four people involved in a February 14 2014 mob attack on the historic Dzhumaya mosque in Plovdiv have been penalised under a fast-track procedure. Two were each fined 400 leva (about 200 euro), one was fined 300 leva and another was sentenced to two days’ detention.

A further four of the 120 arrested during the melee in Bulgaria’s second city on February 14 were to be penalised on February 17, local media said. By February 15, just 10 of the 120 initially arrested were still in custody, prosecutors said. Of those penalised, none was from Plovdiv. They were from Sofia, Varna, Vratsa and the town of Kozloduy. Police worked overtime at the weekend on preparing cases against those accused, according to the Interior Ministry.

The conduct of the police in Plovdiv during the incident, which saw not only the mosque targeted with paving stones, fireworks and bottles, but also the crowd of about 3000 march on the Turkish consulate and the city headquarters of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, has come in for criticism. Centre-right GERB opposition leader Boiko Borissov alleged on February 16 that police deliberately had been pulled back to allow the attack on the Dzhumaya mosque.

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Virginia county sheriff hosting anti-Muslim training by disgraced conspiracy theorist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John-Guandolo

The Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia is planning to host a three-day training by John Guandolo, a notorious Muslim-basher and conspiracy theorist who resigned from the FBI before he could be investigated for misconduct, according to promotional materials.

It’s hard to believe that the Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office would knowingly associate itself with such a disreputable character, who regularly attacks the U.S. government, claims that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is a secret Muslim agent for the Saudi government and says that American Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.”

Josh Glasstetter of the Southern Poverty Law Center writes at Salon, 17 February 2014