English Defence League - A Searchlight briefing

A Searchlight briefing November 2010

The English Defence League

Summary

The English Defence League (EDL) is a racist organisation that engages in direct action demonstrations against the Muslim community. Although it claims only to oppose Islamic extremism it targets the entire Muslim community and its actions deliberately seek to whip up tensions and violence between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Many of its protests have resulted in violence and it taps into a general Islamophobia in society which is both growing and mainstream. What started as a loose network of football hooligans is now developing into a new social movement.

Origins

The English Defence League (EDL) emerged in Luton in March 2009 in the aftermath of a protest by a handful of Islamist extremists at the homecoming parade of the Royal Anglian Regiment through the town.

Anti-Islamic in its outlook, it now has thousands of supporters across the country. What began as a loose alliance of people around various social networking websites is increasingly turning into an organisation with a national, regional and local structure.

With the demise of the British National Party in recent months the EDL is now the largest rightwing threat in the UK today, with over 55,000 supporters on Facebook and able to bring anywhere from 100 to 3,000 people out onto the streets.

Leadership

The key figure in the group is “Tommy Robinson”, whose real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a former British National Party (BNP) member. Lennon has recently been charged with assaulting a police officer.

Number two in the EDL is Kevin Carroll, Yaxley-Lennon’s cousin. He signed the nomination papers for Robert Sherratt, a BNP candidate in Luton in 2007 who was also an activist in the tiny nazi group, the November 9th Society.

The organisation is supported by Alan Lake from North London who has links to Christian evangelical groups in Britain and the USA and sees the EDL as both a “street army” and a bridgehead towards the creation of a larger anti-Islamic movement.

When Lake addressed an anti-Islam conference organised by the Sweden Democrats last year he spoke of a battle on many fronts, the EDL being just one. He identified a need for “people that are ready to go out in the street” and boasted that he and his friends had already begun to build alliances with “football supporters”. “We are catching a baby at the start of a gestation,” Lake later told The Guardian. “We have a problem with numbers. We have an army of bloggers [on the far right] but that’s not going to get things done.

“Football fans are a potential source of support. They are a hoi polloi that gets off their backsides and travels to a city and they are available before and after matches.”

Lake operates a series of anti-Islamic websites, of which the EDL forms just a part. He is in touch with Christian evangelical groups, both here and in the US, has had discussions with middle-ranking officers in the UK Independence Party and is now suggesting that Britain needs a Tea Party-type organisation.

Structure

The EDL is run by 15 key people across the country who co-ordinate activists via email and social networking sites, such as Facebook. It uses social media in a way that no other far-right organisation does in the UK. It is because its method of organising is different from traditional models that the police and other statutory bodies have been slow in understanding its threat and potential.

It claims to have dozens of “divisions” around the country. Over the past few months the EDL has begun to organise meetings and events on a regional basis. National mobilisations are coordinated centrally.

Politics

While the EDL is publicly opposed to Islamic extremism it still lacks a coherent message or vision. Even within the organisation it means different things to different people. The EDL serves as an umbrella for a range of other groups and activists. The leadership is at pains to reject any charge of racism and fascism, regularly claiming that fascists are violently removed from demonstrations, but the reality on the ground is quite different.

The EDL is quick to highlight the involvement of black and Asian supporters. For example, Guramit Singh, from Leicester, is a leading EDL member and is often put up as the group’s spokesman to deny the organisation is racist, but he and the other non-white activists are few and far between. At the EDL protest in Bradford there were fewer than ten non-white people in an EDL crowd of over 800.

EDL demonstrations are always accompanied by anti-Muslim chanting and signs. More general racist chants are heard and there have been examples of Hindus and Sikhs being abused and even attacked by EDL supporters.

EDL protests have been frequented by members and former members of the BNP, the National Front, the Racial Volunteer Force, the British People’s Party, Blood and Honour and Combat 18. Since the decline of the BNP in recent months a growing number of the party’s activists, including organisers, have been turning up at EDL events. While the EDL leadership tries publicly to distance itself from these people there is no attempt to stop the racist chanting or the general anti-Muslim abuse.

Football hooligan links

The EDL is largely organised through what remains of the football hooligan network, and current and former football hooligans will make up at least half of any EDL demonstration. Rival football gangs, who would normally fight one another at every opportunity, have come together for EDL events. For example, at a recent EDL protest in Leicester hooligans from Watford and Luton travelled up on a coach together. Wolves, West Brom and Aston Villa – three West Midlands clubs whose hooligan fans hate one another – join up at EDL events, as have Bradford and Leeds hooligans.

There have, however, still been clashes between different hooligan gangs at EDL events, and hooligan gangs in some cities where EDL protests have taken place have not taken kindly to the arrival of hooligans from other areas.

Violence

Since its inception the EDL has staged over thirty protests across the country at which there have been violent clashes with both anti-fascist protesters and the police, leading to several hundred arrests in total. More than £5 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on policing these demonstrations. The violence directed at the police has grown in recent protests, for example in Leicester four police officers were put in hospital after they came under attack from EDL supporters armed with bottles, smoke grenades and even firecrackers, which were used to scare police horses.

In addition there is unquantifiable damage to businesses where the EDL holds protests, both physical damage to premises, fixtures and stock and loss of profits where businesses have to close or customers are put off coming into town. Such losses may not be covered by insurance, or insurance premiums may rise as a result.

The EDL focuses its protests on towns with large ethnic or more particularly large Muslim communities such as Bradford, Oldham, Leicester and Preston. After the EDL protest finished in Leicester hundreds of the participants went on the rampage in an attempt to attack the local Muslim community. On some occasions mosques are daubed or damaged, or bacon or pig’s heads are placed on the premises.

The EDL is increasingly staging spontaneous “flash” protests to get around liaising with police over marches, which could be banned. In Oldham on the anniversary of 9/11, 120 EDL supporters at a “flash” protest clashed with police leading to eight arrests.

Individual EDL activists are staging increasingly provocative protests. In Gateshead six EDL supporters were arrested for inciting racial hatred after burning the Koran and posting a video of the event on YouTube, leading to clashes with the police as EDL supporters gathered outside the local police station. There have been other EDL activities in Blackburn, Wolverhampton, Stockport, Portsmouth, Nuneaton and Kingston – to name but a few.

International links

The EDL leadership is increasingly trying to establish links with like-minded groups in Europe and North America. Its international links include:

Sweden EDL guru Alan Lake addressed a Sweden Democrat conference in September 2009 at which proclaimed that it was necessary to build an anti-Jihad movement. He spoke of the need for “people that are ready to go out in the street” and boasted that he and his friends had already begun to build alliances with “football supporters”.

Germany A hundred people rallied at the Dutch Embassy in Berlin to support the Dutch Islamophobic politician Geert Wilders. The Islamphobic Pax Europa Citizens’ Movement and the stridently anti-Muslim and leftist “Politically Incorrect” blog run by Stefan Herre, a teacher from Cologne, organised the event, which was also attended by Portsmouth members of the EDL.

France EDL leaders travelled to France in early July to meet representatives of the Identity Bloc and Vérité, Valeurs et Democratie (Truth, Values and Democracy). Identity, which has fewer than 1,000 members, is not anti-Jewish and even has contacts with some hardline members of the right-wing, ultra-nationalist Jewish Defence League. VVD is a website launched in December 2009 which is neo-conservative, anti-Islam and claims to be part of an “anti-Sharia Alliance”. The EDL visit came shortly before an attempt to launch a French counterpart of the EDL in early September. There is the League 732 and the French Defence League (LDF). The LDF wants to work with the JDL, in contrast to League 732. However, the LDF is a curious mix of Identity followers, hooligans and autonomous nationalists who are not particularly willing to work with Jews.

Netherlands The EDL linked up with the Dutch Defence League to hold a rally in Amsterdam on 30 September, in support of the anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders. He distanced himself from the EDL and the rally was an embarrassing flop.

United States Eight EDL supporters travelled to New York to attend a protest against the planned Islamic centre two blocks from Ground Zero on the anniversary of 9/11. However Tommy Robinson was refused entry to the USA. The event was organised by Stop Islamization Of America and was addressed by the former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Geert Wilders and the New York Senate candidate Gary Berntsen. The organisers of the event later publicly defended the EDL despite its link to violence, football hooliganism and racism.

There are also several Facebook groups that are spin-offs from the EDL.

They include the Norwegian Defence League, Russian Defence League, Belgium Defence League, Australian Defence League, United States Defence League, Serbian Defence League, Norsk Defence League, American Defense League, Italian Defence League/Casuals United, Swedish Defence League, German Defence League, Cyprus Defence League, Chinese Defence League, Canadian Defence League, Lebanese Defence League, Nigerian Defence League, Indian Defence League, French Defence League, Indonesian Defence League and the Ulster Defence League.

Conclusion: the threat from the EDL

The EDL poses the biggest threat to community cohesion in Britain today. Its activities are designed to increase tensions in communities with a large Muslim population and especially in areas that have had problems in the past. By demonstrating in these areas they embolden local racists and seek a violent reaction from local Muslim youths, which in turn will lead to a new cycle of violence.

It should be remembered that the race riots in Oldham and Bradford in 2001 were sparked by small groups of white racists seeking trouble. In Oldham it was a group of 12 football hooligans, many linked to the nazi terror group Combat 18, who ran down a predominantly Asian street attacking people and their property. In Bradford it was a small group of Combat 18 and National Front supporters who attempted to hold a protest in the city centre despite being banned by the Home Secretary.

By the very nature of how the EDL organises and its preferred type of confrontational protests, the group will be a magnet for more extremist, violent and politically motivated groups and individuals.

Just as importantly, however, the EDL taps into and increases the general Islamophobia in society and any publicity and trouble resulting from EDL protests simply confirm, in the minds of many, the incompatibility of Muslims with life in a Western democracy.

To dismiss the EDL simply as a bunch of racist thugs or a street version of the BNP underestimates both its significance and its danger. It is a threat that is potentially far more significant than anything we have seen in Britain for a very long time because it is just one manifestation of a much bigger cultural and political battle against Islam that has only just begun.

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