The day the EDL came to town

[Cyberman]

Yesterday was far from the typical Saturday in our little market town, as the far-right English Defence League staged a demonstration in the town centre. So far there have been twenty-eight arrests.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bir...m-19773187

Further reportage here, including videos:

http://www.itv.com/news/central/story/20...l-protest/

http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-s...-31932615/

(The video at the end of that second link is on auto-play, so watch out for that.)

We live only a few minutes away and we could hear it all from here. The entire town was locked off to contain the rioters.

They were opposed by a counter-demonstration at the other end of the town, next to our shiny and very expensive Art Gallery, by the Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and We Are Walsall campaign groups. For some reason, the only news coverage of the second demo seems to be here:

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=29675

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Incidentally and completely off-topic, on the right (!) of the street shown in the videos where the EDL were contained, Leicester Street, is a side entrance to our Town Hall. Before it was refurbished, it was used as a filming location in early series of the BBC cop show Dalziel and Pascoe, as the police station exterior.

[Something completely different]

I find it to be quite the irony that almoust every european country has a fashist party and that a lot of european countries also have them sitting in their parlament. But only germany has a fringe left wing bunch of former GDR SED members in parlament

[cratehorus]

The EDL is just a bunch of angry britons, sprinkled with fascism, who hold fake marches along the english countryside, and they will dissapear as sporatically, as they were formed in 2009.

Anti-fascist movements like the UAF should avoid these counter protests, they purposefully hold them in areas that will oppose them in hopes of starting a riot, thus creating a disillusionment amongst the populace, against the very government, that protects them, from these hate groups

Cops protect the fascist, the crowd get violent toward the fascists, the cops start arresting people, the crowd riots, shops burn, your own police cars are flipped, and the white supremacists slink off smirking and unharmed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k4wEq5lpR4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDQg5zG0joA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N97sOBOjD4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0pWQRlJi...1349237864