Tag Archives: EDL

2012/09/30

Walsall fallout

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

As members of the East Midlands EDL divisions are quick to point out, yesterday’s demo in Walsall was a disaster for them. Only 150 turned up, continuing the downward trend in numbers since the start of the year. They attacked the police with missiles, many of which missed and hit their own side, and then had a massive whinge when the police battered them in return. Now I’m not keen on seeing people getting beaten up by the police, but these morons shouldn’t have expected any other treatment, especially with all their “fuck OB” posturing after Walthamstow.

Leicester’s Steve “Bod” asked his fellow patriots how the day had gone seeing as he, like so many others, couldn’t be arsed to turn up. Fellow East Midlands Infidel, Nicolette Voss, was clear: “Bad Bod, mindless violence will make EDL look bad x”. Nottingham chump, Martin Wealthall reckoned that it was “very messy” and Leicester’s Glen Warren thought it was “propa bad” and that “loads been done by coppers”.

The EDL were whingeing about the police attacking their stewards “who are there to help with crowd control” (usually to stand in line to be the first ones hit by other EDLers when they kick off), before threatening, once again, to withdraw police liaison. Vinny James was sceptical: “No Police Liaison – heard that before…” and received a lot of support from other EDL members fed up of the leadership’s endless lies.

It’s all gone very wrong for the EDL in the last month and their return to Walthamstow at the end of October looks likely to be a massacre for them.

Comments Off on Walsall fallout   |  tags: , , | posted in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire

2012/09/30

Anti-fascist action against EDL coach company

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

While the EDL were getting their pre-demo beauty sleep on Friday night, anti-fascists from Leicester were busy locking up the gates of GH Watts coach company, the company that has been ferrying East Midlands divisions around the country on their pointless excursions for a few years. While the EDL aren’t admitting whether it had any effect on their travel plans, the action will certainly have sent a message to the fascist-enablers who run the company and might make coach hire a wee bit more difficult for the EDL in future. Well done Leicester Antifascists!

Last night we took action against G H Watts coach company at their depot on Foxholes Road, Braunstone, Leicester. Their gates were D locked shut in a number of places and their locks were glued. We did this because G H Watts have consistently supported the EDL over the past few years.

The EDL are nothing more than class traitors. Their leadership have formed an alliance with investment bankers and property speculators who send their army of useful idiots to do their bidding. They try to blame all of society’s ills on their favourite scapegoats, the Muslims, in the same way that the Nazis blamed Germany’s problems on the Jews. These attempts to divide the working class along lines of race and religion divert anger away from our real class enemies: capitalists, politicians and bosses.

As antifascists we see it as our duty to combat the reactionaries of the EDL and all the tiny groups riding along on their coat tails. This includes taking action against companies that profit from their politics of hatred.

For working class action against fascism! No pasaran! – they shall not pass.

We have been exposing GH Watts’ role in servicing the EDL over the past year and have spotted their coaches at Walthamstow (Sep ’12) and Luton (May ’12) as well as Bristol (Jul ’12), Rochdale (Jun ’12), Hyde (Feb ’12), Cambridge (Jul ’11) and Blackburn (Apr ’11). Leicester and Nottingham divisions regularly travel in GH Watts coaches and sometimes they pick up Derbyshire members as well.

Sometimes they’ve opted for other companies, such as Nottingham’s Silverdale coaches for their infamous trip to Tower Hamlets where the coach was attacked by anti-fascist locals and trashed. The hapless EDL were escorted off their bus by police who then arrested them all, leading Nottingham organiser Richard Carroll to release a hilarious ‘STATMENT’ on the Nottingham EDL site.

Comments Off on Anti-fascist action against EDL coach company   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Leicestershire

2012/09/26

EVF: The latest fascist brand

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

With the EDL disappearing faster than a pile of coke in front of Tommy Robinson, other far right groups are trying to steal the rats jumping the ship. Nick Griffin is making a concerted effort to woo disillusioned EDL members with Zionist conspiracy tapes made in his bedroom and numerous new splinter groups are springing up. Last week we reported on the New Patriots Alliance (NPA), a Bill “Muslim killer” Baker-led outfit that tried to poach Nottingham EDL’s Tony Curtis, until he decided they were too racist for him. One of its competitors is the English Volunteer Force (EVF) which has sprouted a handful of local ‘divisions’ including one in Lincoln.

Apparently, the EVF was started in July by “EDL co-founder John Sheridan with significant backing”. This “significant” backing amounts to around 180 likes on Facebook and 60 odd people saying they will be attending the EVF’s first event in February 2013 so it’s not exactly setting the nationalist world on fire. The “anonymous” leader excites EVF enthusiast Andrew Chambers who writes:

i think the main man should be invisable to the uaf,so can,t be continually brow beaten by leftwing scum,and if the lefties don,t know who to point the finger at the leader is,nt going to have to spend half his time defending himself from character assainations by the far left and treacherous mainstream liberal media

Unfortunately for Andrew, we know exactly who “John Sheridan” is. It is the alias of former EDL leader, Chris Renton. Renton was a BNP activist in Weston Super Mare before joining the EDL and tried to make links between the EDL and Combat 18. He was outed by another former EDL leader, Paul Ray, and since then the dreaded “lefties” have been digging all kinds of shit on him. According to Ray, Renton was the EDL’s enforcer on its web forums and Facebook pages:

The groups online presence is enforced with a strong hand and any comment or hint of debate is deleted and the person who questions EDL tactics denounced as a traitor, repeated ‘offences’ by an EDL member such as the crime of questioning EDL policy or suggesting new tactics for protests that do not involve fighting the police or UAF members are met with a vicious smear campaign led by none other than the Sheridan alias himself. One woman, a 57 year old Grandmother who will remain nameless decided she would email the EDL’s leaders to give her support and offer some ideas, she was then met with a barrage of hate mail including messages from the Sheridan alias himself, many of which had a crude sexual twist to them, all of which are too shocking to print here.

Sounds like the kind of chap a good wholesome patriotic movement needs!

Very naughty boy: Chris Renton AKA “John Sheridan”

Renton fell out of love with the EDL some time ago and is now busy promising to lead his Volunteer Force back to the fabled glory days:

We watch on with utter disgust the absolute implosion of the English Defence League, What the fuck has happened?! From thousands of die hard warriors to a couple of hundred pissed off people, EVF will mirror the early EDL of the days of stoke/manchester/nottingham, I absolutly promise this. No Surrender Ever!

The EVF seems to want emulate the EDL without police liaison, and without the British Freedom disaster (“The EVF think politics is not the way forward”) i.e. holding flashmobs and fighting cops, Muslims and anti-fascists. They have apparently forgotten that the EDL have never managed to get more than a few hundred to their flashmobs, numbers which were never anywhere near as high as their publicly advertised demos. They are also clearly not learning from the experiences of the Infidels, who tried to do something very similar when they split away from the EDL, and have failed to get significant numbers to their events.

The EVF are vowing that all the money from their £30 hoodies and merchandise is going back into the organisation. Let’s hope it’s not the leadership’s drugs and booze fund this time!

Bizarrely, for a group called the English Volunteer Force, they are going to a troops homecoming parade in Bridgend, Wales, in October. At least the EDL made up a Welsh Defence League before showing their faces west of the border.

The EVF are not shy about saying they are against all Muslims:

Whilst we stand against Militant Islam, We do however feel militancy is deeply embedded in Islam as a whole, Within their ideology and in the way practicing Muslims conduct their lives and by the way the vast majority choose to not integrate with our core values…

We are absolutly convinced this country is currently being Islamified.

…err, right. Their response to this “Islamification” is going to be a demo in Trafalgar Square next February, but we reckon the 65 boneheads who’ve agreed to turn up so far are going to look a little lost.

The EVF website’s “policies” section carries a fairly hilarious smear of their anti-fascist opponents as well:

We see the Far-left and the politically funded Anti-fa and Unite Against Facism (UAF) as a great danger to our country as we believe they have created the conditions that have permitted Muslim extremists to push our laws to their boundries.
These people have absolutly no morals whatsoever, They are simply deluded and extremly dangerous

This is a bit rich coming from a group that takes inspiration from the Ulster Volunteer Force, a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland that murdered over 400 civilians during it’s campaign of executions and bombings. They followed the maxim that if “you couldn’t get an IRA man you should shoot a Taig” according to their leader Gusty Spence. In 1971 the UVF carried out the McGurk’s Bar bombing which killed 15 Catholic civilians and in 1974 they planted bombs in Dublin and Managhan that killed 33 people and injured around 300. During the mid-’70s, a unit of the UVF dubbed the Shankill Butchers carried out a number of murders of Catholic civilians in which victims were abducted at random, beaten and tortured before having their throats slashed. In 1994, UVF members carried out a machine gun attack on a pub in County Down on the basis that its customers were watching the Republic of Ireland playing in the World Cup and were assumed to be Catholics. Six people were killed.

The UVF were also involved in dealing drugs within the Protestant community, and according to Alan McQuillan, assistant director of the Assets Recovery Agency, this dealing “is generally run for personal gain by a large number of people”. Ex-policeman Colin Robert Armstrong, whose luxury homes were seized in a high profile drugs case, had links to the UVF.

The EVF, then, is part of the move towards a more racist and violent mode of operation in the far right, following the collapse of the EDL. This realignment hasn’t worked for the Infidels and we fully expect the EVF to follow them into obscurity.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Lincolnshire

2012/09/18

Tony Curtis leaves the EDL

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Nottingham’s Tony Curtis, until very recently “number 3” in the EDL after Tommy’n’Kev, has left the group, and it hasn’t been an amicable split.  His departure has stirred up a very satisfying shitstorm in the EDL, with accusations and counteraccusations being chucked about right left and centre (but mostly right!).  Curtis was a popular figure in the EDL, and was favoured as a potential leader by some discontented members, who seemed to enjoy the paranoid speeches he often made at demos; it seems that muppet-in-chief Mr. Tommy was starting to feel threatened by Curtis’s increasing prominence.

Watching the EDL go down the drain – Tony Curtis

Curtis had been working on building a new far-right grouping, the “New Patriot Alliance” (which must have ruffled Tommy’s feathers a bit)….but then Curtis decided he wouldn’t join the NPA gang because the NF were involved, and they’re too racist for his liking.  So, now he’s without a political home, caught between the far-right and the far-far-right, nursing his hurt pride and trying to work out where he can vent his anti-muslim feelings.

It will be interesting to see how this affects EDL morale in our region.  As mentioned, Curtis has made his mark in EDL circles, and his barney with tin-pot Tommy may push even more disillusioned members to show regional loyalty and abandon the group.  It’s likely that it won’t just be Curtis who’s missing from the East Midlands contingent at the next little EDL demo.

Comments Off on Tony Curtis leaves the EDL   |  tags: , | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/09/02

EDL march blocked in Walthamstow

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

It sounds like the EDL had a very bad day indeed yesterday. Less than 300 of them bothered to turn up for their national demo in Walthamstow and attacked their own stewards before their march was blocked by over 1000 anti-fascists. Tommy Robinson had to set up his gazebo in a backstreet somewhere and get pelted with missiles before the Met decided to nick all of his followers and kettle them for 7 hours before dispersing them throughout London. Facebook is now full of whingeing fascists threatening to get revenge on the OB, calling for Tommy and Kev to resign and saying that the EDL is a “laughing stock”.

People from Leicester, Nottingham and Derbyshire divisions were there again, as evidenced by the now familiar sight of a GH Watts coach and a coach from Glovers of Ashbourne, Derbyshire:

Glovers Coaches,
Moor Farm Road East,
Airfield Industrial Estate,
Ashbourne,
Derbyshire,
DE6 1HD
Tel: 01335 300043
Email: gloverscoaches@btconnect.com

GH Watts coach parked at Walthamstow EDL demo yesterday

It is important to note the the much greater strength of anti-fascist forces when mosques and Muslim leaders actively encourage people to protest against the EDL rather than complying with the police and telling people to stay at home. Mr Rashid, the secretary of the Lea Bridge Road Masjid, is quotes as having said “We’ve been publicising the anti-EDL demonstration at every prayer and event we’ve held—and we’ve received a positive response each time.”

Hopefully this massive failure will mean another round of infighting within the already beleagured EDL and a further boost for the anti-fascist movement.

Comments Off on EDL march blocked in Walthamstow   |  tags: , , | posted in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire

2012/08/27

Bulwell EDL supporters guilty of racism

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Two men who subjected an Asian family to racist abuse were jailed for 10 months on Friday. Kelvin Barratt of Courtleet Way, Bulwell, threatened the owners of a store with a knife and said “I’m EDL” and asked them “What religion are you?” Stefan Davis of Bromley Close threatened to smash and rob the shop.

Both men admitted racially aggravated harassment and using threatening words or behaviour. Barratt additionally pleaded guilty to having the knife. Davis said that alcohol was a factor in his behaviour.

 

Comments Off on Bulwell EDL supporters guilty of racism   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Nottinghamshire

2012/08/25

EDL: “the influence they have on people’s thinking is unbelievable”

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Because the region’s far right isn’t doing anything interesting right now, I thought it would be useful to highlight this recent post by Exposing the English Defence League. It features the words of former EDL member, Steve Littlejohn, about his disillusionment with the organisation and reveals some insights into the cynical strategies they’ve employed.

Littlejohn says that the EDL manipulate their followers into hatred:

EDL post stuff giving you a negative view about Muslims and if you around people who think the same it becomes normal and believable until you hate with a passion

“[I]t’s dangerous stuff” he says “The influence they have on people’s thinking is unbelievable and it takes just one really fucked up individual worse than me and you’ve got another Norway episode.”

He claims the leadership aimed this hateful ideology at “football hooligans and really aggressive people” because they knew they “were goin to face violent opposition” but “as it got publicity they didn’t want us kind and tried to get over this peaceful protest shite”.

Littlejohn is critical of EDL leader, Tommy Robinson, who he said was manipulating the group’s propaganda to be “all about boosting Tommy up to be a messiah”. This was important in attracting a certain kind of follower:

[T]here’s so many people in it that need leading and their the people that would fire bomb a mosque to feel like their hardcore

The cost of this blind devotion to hatred to ordinary members is serious:

You,l b surprised how many fellas lost their mrs to EDL it’s powerful stuff you see them as a little street group but it’s dangerous stuff

Indeed, Steve himself left “because it was a case of leave or lose my family plus towards the end I’d lost faith in it all and started to see the bigger picture.”

We hope that Steve and many other followers get out of the fucked up little cult that is the English Defence League and can rehabilitate themselves.

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2012/08/20

Thurnby Lodge protests rumble on

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Evidently sensing a major embarrassment, Leicester City Council is backpedalling furiously on its decision to lease an abandoned building to a Muslim charity. The latest news is that mayor Peter Soulsby has said that the council is looking for an alternative site for the As-Salaam Trust’s proposed community centre.

Mohammed Lockhat of the Muslim group said that some worshippers had stopped attending prayers at the existing community centre due to a level of “intimidation” from protests, which have featured members of the BNP, including leader Nick Griffin, the EDL and Casuals United. However, it would be wrong to write off the protests as entirely islamophobic in nature as locals have clearly criticised the involvement of “outside groups” like the BNP and EDL in the press saying that their protests are about a lack of transparency in the council’s allocation of the building.

The Leicestershire BNP’s report on the protests of course talks up the involvement of the party and introduces the Islamic bogeyman wherever possible, decrying the appearance of a group of Muslim youths after one of the protests. “[W]hy were random muslim youths from outside the area getting involved with an issue which is none of their business?” they ask with massive hypocrisy. Muslims from the other side of town had far more business to be there, when their co-religionists were facing intimidation from the far right, than did Nick Griffin, who drove over from Wales in an attempt to stir up trouble. Far right dregs from across the area descended like a pack of wolves at the rumour of a clash between whites and Muslims, so it was only natural that there would be some kind of defensive response.

The BNP repeated the long scotched fake rumour about a Christian cross being covered to avoid offending Muslims, although they picked a different area to the EDL. They also insinuated that once As-Salaam had the scout hut soon the pub would be shut, invoking the magical “thin end of the wedge” argument with apparently no evidence whatsoever.

The BNP are not very good at using the internet. “What is this As Salaam sect?” they ask. “Nobody knows, nobody has heard of them, and nothing comes up on Google.” They clearly aren’t very good at searching because within a few seconds I’d found the group’s Facebook page which is linked to from a number of other sites. Mystery solved. “Where is a small, completely unknown sect getting so much money from?” I would imagine that, like most religious organisations, As-Salaam gets its money comes from donations from local worshippers. Why there should be any dark secret about this is never explained.

Finally the BNP have their obligatory moan about the unfairness of the mainstream media, in this case the Leicester Mercury which they say has not “report[ed] what the people of Thurnby Lodge are protesting about. They’ve been awfully quiet on the subject so far!” What they mean, of course, is that the Mercury’s reporters aren’t giving coverage of the BNP’s own reasons for protesting. The Mercury has given extensive coverage to the protests and has quoted protesters at length but because it doesn’t match with the BNP’s analysis it doesn’t count.

On the positive side, the Cautiously Pessimistic blog has picked up on our posts on the matter and has some interesting ideas about how anti-authoritarians in Leicester could organise on this issue:

[I]f we’re going to decisively win people away from the far-right, we need to demonstrate that, while our enemies on the right are ultimately just another set of politicians-in-waiting, we’re actually willing and able to do practical things to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

Cautiously Pessimistic suggests that helping to set up a community run social centre in the area might be a good way to do this:

It’ll take a lot of work, and at the end of the day you might not have anything much more interesting or radical than a boxing club to show for it. But it’s better than lining up on one side or another of a racial divide, or just chasing round after big one-day strikes, protests in London and international summits while the far-right recruits on our doorsteps.

Comments Off on Thurnby Lodge protests rumble on   |  tags: , , , | posted in Leicestershire

2012/08/19

EDL still pissing in the paddling pool

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

Leicester EDL are helping to whip up a frenzy of ill-informed prejudiced hysteria in the run up to their next piss up in Walthamstow. They’ve reposted a poster for a Muslim swimming session as proof that there is a two-tier creeping-sharia reverse-racist politically-correct system oppressing them and their beloved England because, *ghasp* it is “FOR MUSLIMS” and that there are “separate sessions for brothers and sisters”.

Their objection seems to be to the fact that “women must be dressed modestly” which is, apparently, “another way of saying F@@K YOU!!! to other religions and a show of how they can play the system and win”. Right…

The response of their fans has been the usual display of infantile pratfalls. Michael Baverstock starts us off with “the only time id piss in the pool and not feel guilty” before mumbling some barmy conspiracy theory about a cull of 2.5bn people. Keith Finch reckons he would “leave bacon and pork sausage in the changing rooms the night before”. What a naughty little boy! But Ed Coates wants to go further saying he would “put a dead pig on a lilo and float it in the middle of the pool”. Dean Smith recommended “fill[ing] the pools with acid” and Adrian Read hoped that this would be “Joined by pirahna s”. Their mums have all been informed and they’re not allowed to play out for the next week.

Slightly less immature, but considerably more loony, are the comparisons of the move with apartheid. For those in the EDL who seem a bit hazy about South African history, apartheid was enforced by the white colonists who had military and political control of the country and used a theory of white racial superiority to segregate society. Holding a weekly swimming session to accommodate the desires of a religious minority doesn’t quite compare. The EDL are paddling in the shallow end as ever.

2 comments   |  tags: , | posted in Leicestershire

2012/08/13

Far right not welcome in Thurnby Lodge

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

The BNP have been roundly criticised by locals involved in protests in Thurnby Lodge. Maxine Williams, manager of the Stirrup Cup pub, said outside groups such as the BNP and Nick Griffin were not welcome. In an extensive comment on the ThisIsLeiecstershire site, FORGOTTENEST said “It has absolutely nothing to do with Muslims!” and that

Neither EDL or BNP were invited to attend any of the peaceful protests staged by the local residents. They turned up of their own accord with their own agenda. This is not the agenda of the local community.

Another poster commented that “I would be the last person to vote the bnp in to power, our country is in enough trouble as it is thank you.”

Meanwhile, in a crass attempt to get more political mileage out of the situation, the EDL have been spreading a very obviously false story about a church cross in the area having to be covered up so that Muslims were not offended. Although they claimed to have “solid eye witness reports” they called out for anyone with “real legitimate news” to let them know. Well here goes: Canon David Monteith, Acting Archdeacon of Leicester, said: “There is no truth at all in the malicious rumour that the church was asked to cover the cross. The information is totally unfounded.”

Looks like another fascist fail.

Comments Off on Far right not welcome in Thurnby Lodge   |  tags: , , , | posted in Leicestershire