English Defence League "Patriot march on London to challenge Parliament" © David HoffmanIt appears that a lot of pressure was put on the Troxy to cancel the booking, particularly by the council. In a statement released last night the EDL announced that as a result of the cancellation they were calling off their own protest.
While this removes the prospect of confrontation and is a victory for common sense it also highlights the complete failure of the authorities to address the growing EDL threat. Over the past few years hundreds of millions of pounds have been ploughed into community cohesion and other such initiatives but then we are told that groups that are deliberately setting out to whip up tension and violence cannot be stopped.
The problem appears to stem from the Public Order Unit at the Home Office, who have taken it upon themselves to act as the champions of free speech in advising successive Ministers that EDL protests should be allowed to happen. Their analysis and advice has been so shallow that one Minister refused to accept one report they prepared on the EDL and another commented "I learn more about the EDL from Searchlight than I do from our own official briefings".
They currently hide behind the legal opinion that static protests cannot be prevented but their real reason is far more ideological and short-sighted. I shall be writing more about this in the July issue of Searchlight.
Nick Lowles at Hope not hate
The rationale behind Home Office reasoning allows the EDL to make the Home Office look like total fools. The Home Office insist they can only ban marches and that they have no right to ban static protests. The police then escort chanting and flag-waving EDL supporters (including the EDL's ever present Nazi contingent) to and from designated protest sites - actively transforming "static" protests into the exact sort of provocative MARCHES that the Public Order Act sought to ban in 1936
ReplyDeleteAs for the money poured into community cohesion, the preference for cultural "identity" over a culture of UNITY has gone so far that in our area some of this money has been used to pay Islamo-Fascist activists from Hizb-ut Tahrir, who, to a grand total of ZERO opposition from the local Labour Party, put themselves forward as "Muslim scholars" and as "representatives" of the local Muslim community!!
Good on the Troxy for refusing to host extremist speakers, but they should never have accepted the booking in the first place.
Something needs to be done to stop what remains of Bradford City Centre from being turned into a fucking bath which is going to happen if the council allow the EDL to exercise free speech in inciting, what EDL neo-Nazis\have been boasting on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, is going to be World War III.
ReplyDeleteEvery racist and Nazi will descend upon Bradford days before the riot smashing up Muslim cemetaries and daubing racist graffiti on gravestones in preparation for the main event, all-out racial warefare on the streets of Bradford unless the event is banned.
EDL in Bradford will be tragic, bloody, and with vigilantes returning street violence against, Malcolm X fashion to defend Bradford against all this, as well as the UAF, free speech definately doesn't come into the argument.
Come on David Cameron. You cannot introduce racist, restrictive English Lauguage tests while allowing the EDL to destroy Bradford, so Asian people get alienated and treated as outsiders like the Jews in Nazi Germany.
The Troxy was so much more pleasant when it was a cinema.
ReplyDeletetulip