Category Archives: Nottinghamshire

2012/05/13

EDL organiser threatens independent media

Nottingham EDL organiser, Jay Clark, has made threats against the Nottingham Indymedia website in relation to an article on the site exposing the presence of the EDL and BNP at this year’s St George’s Day march. “It’s about time these pathetic cunts got wiped clean out of Nottingham” he wrote on Facebook. Asked whether he meant the EDL or the BNP he clarified “Nottingham Indymedia there a bunch of cunts”. He added that “it was them that put me all over the net leading to me getting raided for an harmless picture” referring to this repost of a photo from Hope Not Hate. Fellow EDL member Chris ‘pigs head on a stick’ Payne called Indymedia “fucking maggots”.

This is not the first time the EDL have threatened Indymedia. A group, including John ‘Snowy’ Shaw who is now leader of the North West Infidels, attempted to disrupt a meeting of the Sheffield Indymedia collective in 2010. Disrupting and attacking what are seen as left-wing or anarchist political meetings and stalls is a sideline for the EDL that they may well return to as their numbers on demos continue to plummet.

The irony is that Indymedia collectives are just providing a platform for anyone to post local news, such as “Fashwatcher”, the anonymous person who posted the article about St George’s Day. Jay could have posted his own responses on the article or his own write up of St George’s Day if he’d wanted to. Also, his assertion that it was Indymedia who put his face all over the net is not entirely accurate given that Hope Not Hate, an organisation with national rather than just local reach, published the original article.

The fact that the EDL are making threats against independent news sites is an indication of how seriously they take freedom of speech. Their response to criticism is not to engage in debate but to threaten to “wipe out” their critics and turn up in mobs to meetings with the intention of intimidating people. These are typical fascist tactics that show them for exactly what they are.

2 comments | tags: EDL, Indymedia, Jay Clark, nottingham | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/05/08

More on morons in Luton

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

We can confirm that the coach company used by the Leicester and Nottingham divisions for their transport to Luton (and other previous demonstrations) was:

G. H. Watts

The Coach Station
Foxholes Road,
Leicester,
LE3 1TH

tel: 0116 287 4037
fax: 0116 287 6142
email: contact@ghwatts.co.uk

In spite of all the hype about a big day out for the boys, the Leicester division’s coach was looking pretty empty so they indulged in the time honoured EDL tradition of getting hammered before they even arrived. Well, they need a bit of Dutch courage to face those muslamic rayguns.

Elsewhere, Nottingham’s Tony Curtis, who was doing important EDL business with the infamous Norwegian Defence League (you know, the ones who refused to distance themselves from mass murderer, Anders Breivik), got to speak on thue platform. Well he’s certainly as uninspiring as Tommy and Kev and has an equally shaky grasp on history, politics and religion so he’s a top candidate for the job.

Meanwhile, ex-communicated Sikh and virulent islamaphobe, Nottingham’s Guramit Singh, was said to be hoping for a job in the “struggling to get more than a handful of votes” British Freedom Party. That would be the party that had to hold its launch party on Twitter after the Luton venue pulled out.

The EDL: Lurching from crisis to crisis with a can of Stella in each hand.

Comments Off on More on morons in Luton | tags: BFP, coaches, EDL, Guramit Singh, Luton, Tony Curtis | posted in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire

2012/05/05

EDL in Luton as soldiers march through Nottingham

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Today the 73 Engineer Regiment marched through Nottingham, along with the Royal Band of Engineers and 30 Officer Cadets from the East Midlands Universities Air Squadron. The EDL were notable by their absence.

In the past the EDL have been vocally supportive of similar marches. When the Mercian Regiment marched through Nottingham in December 2009, 3-400 EDLers turned out and proceeded to show their “support” for British soldiers by getting rat-arsed.

This time the Nottingham Division seem to have decided that they’d rather spend the day travelling to Luton so they can stand around in a police pen and listen to Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon announce (to nobody’s surprise) that he is to become the deputy chairman of the British Freedom Party.

Nottingham Division on the way to Luton (source: EDLNewsExtra)

Comments Off on EDL in Luton as soldiers march through Nottingham | tags: EDL, Luton, nottingham, Nottingham Division, Tommy Robinson | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/04/24

Infidels or imbeciles?

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

The recent arrests of members of EDL splinter group, the Infidels, have raised the profile of this tiny far right protest group. Anti-fascists might be wondering whether the Infidels have a local presence and what kind of threat they pose. We did the dirty job of scouring their websites so you don’t have to. Here’s the deal:

Derbyshire Infidels

These guys go for an old school white supremacist vibe, devoid of punctuation or grammar: “The futures bright the futures white ktf ns!”, “Unite the right to be white”, “white white white is right kick them and fight fight fight”, etc. As with many of their fellow on the far right, the urge to write bloody awful racist songs and ‘poetry’ cannot be suppressed:

They say they are “sometimes violent” and use fascist imagery of fighting for the white race, etc. So are they a threat?

Erm… don’t think so.

Leicester Infidels

These fellas are more happy to show their links to Nazism, littering their posts with “14w” (reference to a 14 word phrase codified by David Lane, leader of white separatist organisation, The Order) and “88” (8th word of the alphabet is H, HH stands for Heil Hitler). They think that “jew scum took control of the uk/world media” and are obsessed with anti-semitic conspiracy theories and holocaust denial. Fortunately they seem like too paranoid a bunch of lunatics for most people to show the slightest bit of interest in them and have to resort to liking their own posts.

Nottinghamshire Infidels

A relatively new Facebook group that seems to have aroused very minimal support. Set up by Phil Murfet, a Notts County fan whose speciality is rape jokes, race hate jokes and jokes about Tommy Robinson involving race hate. ” ‘Sex with someone who doesn’t want to is rape’ … I call it marriage” the little charmer wrote in a recent status update. Another recent ‘joke’ called black people at KFC “native, wild black members in their home tribe” an “uncivilized group” who “sloppily munched into their food”. Little Miss Murfet refers to Tommy Robinson as a “fenian” funded by “jew boy” Alan Lake. A nasty piece of work to be sure, but without any support.

What is noticeable about all of these tiny Facebook fan pages is that they have very little local support and seem capable of very little independent action. They are full of links to the North West Infidels, British People’s Party and National Front and their members occasionally report going to fairly small demonstrations in the north. In short, although they love to think of themselves as the hardcore street army who have had enough of what they see as the multicultural, Zionist, Irish-led EDL, they will always be in its much larger shadow.

The threat of more militant, hardline fascist groups like these is not that they might have any mass influence, but that they might give rise to future ‘lone wolves’ – radicalised individuals who resort to violent atrocities in order to ‘fight back’ against ‘the Jewish conspiracy’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘cultural Marxism’, ‘Islamic takeover’ or whatever their current bogeyman is. We have had homegrown Breiviks in the past – David Copeland, Martyn Gilleard and Robert Cottage spring to mind.

Fortunately the Infidels phenomenon does not seem to have taken off in the Midlands and the police raids on several of the leaders of the movement in the north and London will hopefully dampen their spirits. However, we should not be complacent. These fascists need to be stamped out.

Update 30/04/12: Origin of the 14 word phrase corrected.

2 comments | tags: Infidels, leicester, Philip Murfet | posted in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire

2012/04/23

Nottingham fascists on St. George’s day

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Nottingham Indymedia reports that some local fascists were seen attending the official St.George’s day parade today, although without their public branding. The local EDL also organised Saturday’s parade in the Clifton area of the city in memory of soldier Kieron Hill and Nottingham organiser Jay Clark even got quoted in the local paper. Not everyone thought the event was as successful as the Post made out though. One local said “it was not the turn out I expected” and “it seems as tho everyone just wanted to head to the pub”. When the EDL are in charge that’s what we come to expect. It seems they headed straight to Weatherspoons after the Nottingham march as well.

The revelations will be a blow to the local Labour party’s attempts to portray themselves as anti-racists. The St. George’s Day march has grown from a tiny group of football fans in a pub in Radford to the large march through the town centre that it is today largely thanks to the Labour city council’s promotion. It will be extremely embarrassing for them that the event is being used as a platform for groups like the EDL.

It’s no big surprise that fascists will be at such public events, especially on St.George’s day, as it’s one of their best chances to safely show their collective ugly mugs in public. The far-right, opportunists as they are, will always seek to use any space they can to gather and organise, and piggybacking on mainstream events is a relatively easy way to achieve this if they can get away with it.

Comments Off on Nottingham fascists on St. George’s day | tags: BNP, EDL, Jay Clark, nottingham | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/04/22

Jon Collins can fuck right off

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

According to a post on Nottingham Indymedia, the anti-mayor campaign currently being run by the Labour Party in Nottingham has sunk to a new low.

A leaflet (found in the street outside a mosque) claims, “The Racist BNP & EDL want a £1M Extra Mayor. That’s the only way they can win in Nottingham.” This is desperate stuff on Labour’s part.

While it is true that the BNP have expressed support for elected mayors and will presumably stand somebody in the unlikely event that the city votes in favour of a mayor in the May 3rd referendum, they are unlikely to win anything more than a handful of votes. As “Weasel Hunter” points out, “They polled at around 3% of the vote in the ward where they stood in Nottingham last year.” The EDL meanwhile are not a political party (despite the aspirations of some members) so their opinion on elected mayors (if they have one) is of no consequence.

That Nottingham Labour is now using the threat of the far-right to further their political agendas is particularly ironic given that when the EDL came to town in December 2009, council leader Jon Collins encouraged people not to join the counter-protest. Fortunately he was widely ignored.

This sort of cynical exploitation of anti-fascism by politicians, seeking to protect their power, can only serve to discredit serious anti-fascism – presenting it as a conservative force, defending the status quo – and needs to be condemned in the strongest terms.

Comments Off on Jon Collins can fuck right off | tags: elected mayor, jon collins, mayor, nottingham labour | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/04/04

Meet the EDL’s organiser in Newark: Chris Conroy

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Last summer the Newark division of the EDL was founded with much self-trumpeting in the local press. In an interview for the Newark Advertiser, founder Chris ‘Spike’ Conroy talked up a march of 1,500 members through the streets of Newark and boasted of an inaugural meeting of 72 people. Ten months on we’re still waiting for that march and the EDL struggles to attract half that number to their national demos. As to the claim of 72 people at the meeting, we’ve got the photos and we’ve counted about 40 (mostly bussed in from Nottingham).

Chris ‘Spike’ Conroy

So Newark EDL are fading into total insignificance, but a core group around Conroy remains loyal to the cause. Conroy is big pals with Nottingham and Leicester EDL organisers (the East Midlands Infidels) who may well be the people who asked him to set up a Newark division of the EDL.

From left: Craig ‘Leicester’ Elliott (Leicester EDL organiser), Jay Clark (Nottingham EDL organiser), Chris ‘Spike’ Conroy, Tony Curtis (Nottingham EDL), Baz ‘Nottingham Knight’ (Nottingham EDL)

In his interview, Conroy said “This is patriotism, not racism” and that the EDL embraced multi-culturalism. However, the views he expresses on Facebook make us think that these are just more porkies he is trotting out for the press.

Take for instance Conroy’s ‘joke’ in February that a lesbian Muslim is “a fucking Godsend.”

At least she won’t give birth to another dirty, stinking, sweaty, ignorant, robbing, cricket-playing, stone-throwing, bacon-butty-dodging, pyjama-wearing, bomb-making, AK47-wielding, terrorist, murdering, democracy-hating, benefit-cheating, lazy, horrible, good for nothing cunt! God bless equal opportunism and freedom of speech.

Charming. But of course, it’s ‘just a joke’ and only politically correct idiots would be offended, right?

Likewise, I’m sure no one could be offended by the joking use of racist terms against the Muslim victims of a mosque firebombing in Luton. Conroy rolled his eyes at the MDL “flapping there gums” about the attack suggesting it was bullshit. Of course, the EDL are never involved in attacks against mosques. Chris Payne (himself convicted of leaving a pigs head at the site of a mosque in Nottingham) from Nottingham EDL responded “im glad…cock smokers” to which Conroy replied “tu-pakis init bruv”.

Conroy’s response to the standoff between the Toulouse gunman, Mohamed Merah, and French police was to invite his friends on “a trip to France to help that islamic pig dodger to top him self”. When friend Gez Jenkins replied saying “that’s the best way I’ve ever heard a Muslim be described” Conroy replied “i could go on but i would get banned off facebook” and “its a hobbie”.

On finding that an imam in Nottingham was being charged with sexual assault, one of Conroy’s friends suggested “slap him with a bacon joint”. Conroy’s response: “i’d rape him with one…”

Conroy also ‘jokingly’ responded to a pronouncement of the Muslim Defence League with the words “FUCK OFF MUZZIE!” I’m sure it was meant in a multiculturalism embracing way.

Kris Klan Konroy?

Conroy, like many EDL men, is also a casual sexist who expects his knickers to be clean and a pork chop to be steaming on the table when he gets home. In a typical moan he wrote “Females… doing mens heads in sice time began” to which Nottingham EDLer Grant Purdy agreed “thats wot there ere for pal”. When Conroy’s girlfriend told him to “Shut up” he responded “you should cook and clean then wench”.

Chris sporting a stabproof vest on the way to an EDL demo

Given Conroy’s ~~racist~~ patriotic tendencies and his love of violent and sexually violent threats, it’s not a surprise that he’s found himself in trouble with the law. The day after fellow Newark EDL member Simon Harris threateningly posted “think it about time to have a little walk through newark we or here to stay” on the division’s page, Conroy broke the news that “i got nicked again last night for a public order offence atfet it kicked off in a pub in newark”. He later blubbed to his fellow nationalists “Me and another Newark EDL member are at newark police station tomorrow to answer bail on bullshit charges.” Without going further into why it was “bullshit”, he expected the division to turn up and support him. Let’s hope it wasn’t another Richard Price campaign.

Conroy, like the rest of the dregs left at the bottom of the rapidly emptying EDL barrel, is a virulent hater of Muslims who hides it beneath the facade of ‘patriotism’. He thinks “tu-pakis” and women should know their place and stop being uppity. He threatens violence when faced with events that do not conform with his worldview and expects his division to unthinkingly back him when he gets in trouble. It’s no surprise that his fantasy of thousands of people marching behind him through Newark have never come true.

1 comment | tags: Chris Conroy, EDL, Newark | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/03/21

Why supporting anti-fascist prisoners matters

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Ravi Gill is currently serving a 21 month prison sentence for standing up to neo-Nazis in Welling. A benefit gig in support of the anti-fascist prisoners was held in Nottingham last month. One of Notts ABC forwarded us this message from Ravi about the support he’s received:

I am really grateful for all the support me and the others have received. It’s not just because of the money raised but just knowing that there’s people like you who are going out of their way writing and/or arranging benefits or even just attending them and maybe talking or reading about the case, it really is so inspiring and makes the time in here that much easier to deal with. It does feel like we were/are in here for everyone and in turn everyone’s out there for us.

Comments Off on Why supporting anti-fascist prisoners matters | tags: prisoner support | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/03/14

EDL trucking idiot…

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Another local EDL member has been making a muppet of himself on facebook. This time it’s Brendan Moran, from the shambles that is the Nottingham Division.

Comments Off on EDL trucking idiot… | tags: EDL, nottingham | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/03/09