EDL Walthamstow Protest: Banned, but will it go ahead?

This Saturday, the EDL plan to return to Walthamstow to demonstrate following a not so successful visit on 1 September when a large number of counter-demonstrators turned out to oppose them under the aegis of SWP-front group 'We are Waltham Forest' (WAWF). On Tuesday the Metropolitan Police applied to Home Secretary Teresa May for a banning order on marches in the borough, claiming that they had received intelligence that the protests could result in 'serious public disorder, violence and damage.'

Minister for Policing Damian Green this afternoon announced a ban on marches in the following areas for the next 30 days: Islington, Newham, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets. The EDL have instead been offered the opportunity to protest outside if Parliament this Saturday, but it is thought that they will instead opt to try and hold a static protest in Walthamstow. Green's decision has also irritated WAWF, so it would seem likely that at least a number of its supporters are likely to ignore the banning order.

This comes at the end of a turbulent week for the EDL, insofar as its leader - Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson) - was arrested on Saturday as one of a group of 53 EDL supporters who were en route to east London. He was arrested for the alleged assault of Sayful Islam in Luton on Saturday morning; 'suspicion of conspiring to cause a public nuisance' (this is why the 53 were detained) and for illegally entering the USA in September, allegedly using forged documents. Kevin Carroll, subsequently released, was also amongst the 53 detainees. According to the Gates of Vienna blog, Yaxley-Lennon's former political colleague Paul Weston was also arrested outside of Wormwood Scrubs on Monday when attempting to ascertain whether the former was being held at the prison, the pretext for his arrest being stated as 'a breach if the peace'. What has happened since then is not clear, as no information appears to have been forthcoming.

It thus seems that whatever happens on Saturday, the EDL leader will not be at the demo, wherever it takes place. His recent announcement that he was to turn the EDL into a political party and leave the BFP of which he had been joint vice-chairman for a number of months, underscored Yaxley-Lennon's desire to reconnect with the EDL support base, having ascertained that leading the movement was where his strength lay. The EDL's opponents will doubtless view this week's developments with a certain malign glee, but although they would wish that it were finished, it doubtless has life left in it yet.

EDL Walthamstow Demo: 1 September 2012

Review: ‘Proud and Prejudiced’, Channel 4 Dispatches

The publicity in advance of this documentary revealed that the makers of this programme had set out with the intent of portraying Sayful Islam’s Islamists and Tommy Robinson’s EDL as morally equivalent “extremists”, who both should be condemned for their “intolerance”. In this narrative expectation, we were not to be disappointed, although of course it was disingenuous of the Dispatches editorial team to portray the EDL as a “far-right threat” to be feared as much as England’s burgeoning Islamist movement. In the opinion of the author, the EDL represent a genuine grassroots working-class movement that has arisen to fill the vacuum created by mainstream politics’ unwillingness to address the real concerns that they articulate, albeit in a working-class idiom not as polished as that of the professional political class. In its treatment of the EDL, the Dispatches team on this occasion thus fell into the typical inverted snobbery characteristic of the mainstream media, treating EDL supporters contemptuously simply because of the manner of their speech. That said, this programme was in an altogether different class to Stacey Dooley’s ‘My Hometown Fanatics’ which covered much of the same ground in a more superficial manner last week.

Robinson (real name Stephen Lennon) may have commented at the latest EDL demo in Hyde on Saturday that the title of the programme could be interpreted as representing his “pride” and Sayful Islam’s “prejudice”, but Channel 4 would not concur, for “a plague on both your houses!” was its effective message, echoing the standard line now peddled by the anti-democratic leftist pressure group ‘Hope Not Hate’.

The documentary opened with Robinson driving through Luton town centre, noting how he used to walk through the area as a child, but could no longer do so for fear of being beaten up. Soon enough, Sayful Islam was spotted, and within a few moments he had strolled over to Robinson’s car for an ill-tempered verbal exchange which ended with Islam hitting Robinson in the face. Islam called Robinson “racist”, to which the latter retorted, “What race is Islam?”

Luton, intoned the narrator, has a population of circa 200,000, 15% of which is Muslim – five times the national average. Having set the demographic context the documentary moved on to the formation of the EDL in 2009 in response to a Muslim protest against a homecoming parade of the Royal Anglian Regiment in the March of that year. Throughout, the documentary tended to intercut interviews with Sayful Islam, formerly of ‘Muslims Against Crusades’ (now banned), and Tommy Robinson, giving their contrasting perspectives. However, Robinson tended to enjoy more of the limelight throughout.

Islam has five children and studied accountancy at local university, and worked for a time as a tax inspector: 

“We wanna shake the people and wake them up from their slumber. . . . The real heroes are people who have no homes, who have been raped, who have been violated.” 

And when we awake from our slumbers, what would he like to offer us? An Islamic state. In that case, please do not disturb my sleep.

He grew up in Bury Park and became a disciple of Omar Bakri, founder of the banned group Al-Muhajiroun. Sayful’s followers are banned from most local mosques. One of the fertiliser bomb plotters and the Stockholm suicide bomber came from Luton. He, like others of his ilk, claims that Shariah Law will deal with the problems of contemporary society, preventing drug problems, prostitution and promotion of homosexuality. He sees a society “full of sexual deviancy and every sin.”

Lennon too is married and has three children. The narrator stated that he had served time for assaulting an off-duty policeman during a domestic dispute, but provided no explanation as to what had happened. Why is he alarmed about Islamisation? “If this is happening now when 3% of the country’s population is Muslim, God help us if it gets to 20%!” In twenty years time, he fears that such an eventuality could unfold. As for Muslims being offended, he retorted “I’m offended when I see a woman in a burqa. . . . We’re offended on a daily basis.”

Returning to the genesis of the EDL, it was Muslim barracking of the Royal Anglian Regiment together with Muslims spitting in a soldier’s mother’s face that generated the anger that precipitated its formation. Robinson managed to gather together 200 people, mostly Luton football fans, to mount a protest calling for a ban on Islam’s group, with Robinson spending £400 getting a cameraman to film the protest. This resulted in him receiving a banning order from the town centre and an ensuing “summer of tension”. Two hooded men attacked a local mosque with firebombs. An imam – billed as a “moderate” -  opposed Sayful Islam, and claims that had Robinson stuck to attacking “Muslim extremism” he would not have a problem with that, but in his opinion he had now gone well beyond this and started attacking Islam as a religion. 

The EDL claims 100,000 supporters, and dozens of demos have been held since its inception. However, although the narrator claimed that many had turned violent, he did not explain the nature of the violence or indeed point out that on the majority of occasions when violence had flared, it had been instigated by UAF and most of those who turned out to be arrested were so-called ‘antifascists’. The shadowy world of the SWP-dominated self-styled ‘antifascist’ movement was not examined, which constituted a serious flaw in the documentary’s approach.

The documentary, as covered in the preview article and attendant clip a couple of days ago, then moved on to the ‘Luton in Harmony’ initiative, which has attempted to paper over the wide and deep cracks between the town’s Muslim population and the rest. Lennon stated: that living in harmony wasn’t a problem for “The Hindus, the Jews, the Sikhs, the gay community”, but only one “with the Muslims.”

Sayful Islam concurred that there was an absence of harmony in the town: 

“If you want to say Luton is in harmony, then why was the EDL born here?”

On the second anniversary of the EDL’s birth in 2011 Luton witnessed its largest EDL protest to date, and another one is planned for this year. As often on such occasions, UAF staged a counterdemonstration, which necessitated a massive police operation, with in excess of 1500 police being drafted in: “Luton was bracing itself for violence” intoned the narrator. Thankfully, the demonstration was remarkably peaceful. Only eight arrests were made throughout the £800,000 police operation.

That the EDL were having a political impact on the national stage appeared to be made clear by the fact that David Cameron chose to make a speech in Munich on the eve of the demonstration, stating that multiculturalism had failed (meaning nothing of the sort however, for his administration has continued to be a vigorous advocate of this policy). Lennon chose to disagree with Cameron, stating to the crowd:

“David Cameron is wrong, multiculturalism has worked. We live side by side as brothers and sisters.”

 However, he stated:

“Stop building mosques in our community, we’ve had enough of it!”

“Every single one of you is in the forefront of the struggle against militant Islam.”

It seems to me however that it is precisely multiculturalism that has failed, for it is this ideology that has allowed Islamisation to take root and flourish. Lennon, it would appear, is confusing multiculturalism with multiracialism. He has always strongly objected to allegations that the EDL are racist, and was at pains to rebut this on a number of occasions, contrary to UAF claims which cited comments made on the EDL’s Facebook page as evidence. As he pointed out, he and his organisation could not be responsible for every comment posted. He himself had joined the BNP for a year in 2004, but claimed that he failed to renew his membership because he objected to the way that they barred blacks not only from the party, but also from social activities. 

The rest of the documentary covered a number of other protests in 2011, including the EDL Tower Hamlets demo and a MAC demo at the American Embassy. Lennon was also shown being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman in the wake of the Breivik atrocity, during which he acquitted himself well (click here for full video of the interview). Interestingly, the programme did not touch upon the EDL’s proposed collaboration with the British Freedom Party announced last November. Why was this not mentioned? Will Robinson eventually declare that he will join the BFP and perhaps stand as a parliamentary candidate? If so, the documentary gave no hint of this possibility. Is however, a credible new party about to emerge which will fully address the concerns of the EDL without being as narrowly focused as the BFP? This is a distinct possibility, as is discussed here.

Overall therefore, this was an interesting documentary that gave us a view into both the EDL and to a lesser extent the world of Sayful Islam’s Islamists (see ‘My Brother the Islamist’ for a better treatment of Islamism in England today). However, the documentary would have been greatly enhanced if it had set its subject matter against the backdrop of the real trends towards Islamisation in England today, and examined the concept of Islamisation. In all likelihood though, this would have necessitated a two-part documentary. Dispatches has produced a number of excellent documentaries on Islamist extremism in the past, but this one did not quite live up to those high standards. As such, it was something of a curate’s egg.

On Thursday evening Channel 4 will be screening a documentary entitled ‘Make Bradford British’. It used to be, but it is no longer. Rather like buses, it would seem that documentaries dealing with the problems posed by Islamisation (although not explicitly framed that way) come in threes, for in the past ten days we will have had two documentaries on Luton and one on Bradford. Does this tell us something significant about the public mood and the preoccupations of the mass media, or is it just coincidence?

Preview: ‘Proud and Prejudiced’, Channel 4 Dispatches

Channel 4 has uploaded a taster of Monday evening’s documentary on “extremism” in Luton (see video at the foot of this article), in which Dispatches spent a year investigating and filming the activities, personalities and views of the town’s militant Islamists, such as Sayful Islam, and their opponents in the EDL led by Stephen Lennon (Tommy Robinson). The documentary is said to feature footage in which Islam punched Lennon in the face as he unwound his car window to speak to him.

The clip itself opens with a shot of a meeting of the local council’s committee on promoting cohesion in the town, swiftly followed by comments from Sarah Allen, Luton’s Cohesion Officer:

“We’re in a time of recession. We know that in a recession, those sorts of ideas – scapegoating, racism can increase.”

In this statement, Allen displays the characteristic non-thinking ‘analysis’ trotted out by anyone on the Left who is either unwilling or unable to grant any sort of autonomy to cultural phenomena. The EDL did not arise as a response to a downturn in the economy, and it has not sought to scapegoat Muslims for our economic plight. It arose because of a specific problem with Islamism within our shores – the desire of a section of the UK passport-holding Muslim population to Islamise our society, and to live by the norms and social practices of their ancestral familial homelands. The phenomenon of Muslim paedophile grooming – of which the current trial in Liverpool provides but the latest example – is part of this unbidden and unwelcome imported cultural assemblage.

Allen remarked of the emergence of the EDL:

“I think it just happened and it struck a chord, and that is not to be denied or to be ignored; but I don’t think it is because of something to do with this town.”

She is correct in thinking that the rise of the EDL is not specific to Luton, for the problems suffered by this town as a by-product of its Islamisation are painfully familiar to English residents of other towns and cities such as Rochdale, Keighley, Bradford, Derby, Blackpool, Rotherham, Dewsbury and Sheffield. The first five in the list have all have borne witness to ugly and significant cases of Muslim paedophile grooming of white English girls. This however, is not something that Allen is aware of, or seems to wish to be aware of. Those who support the EDL, Casuals United and various other nationalist groups and parties are painfully aware of the existence of this criminal problem. Muslim paedophile grooming has nothing to do with recession, and everything to do with the example of the 53-year-old paedophile Prophet Mohammed and the consummation of his marriage to his six-year-old bride Aisha at the age of nine.

Commenting on “Luton in Harmony” Allen stated that it:

“is not a political campaign. It is a media, if you like, a branding concept. Our intention is to undermine those hateful messages and to promote the unity that we know exists in our town.”

Well, a true “Luton in Harmony” could exist if those troublesome elements that insist upon wishing to live their lives by Shariah were to be deported to their ancestral familial homelands where they could indeed do so. Unless that happens, there will be no harmony in Luton or anywhere else in England where Islamist fanatics agitate for our downfall and the imposition of Islamic law and governance.

The programme’s executive producer Paul Woolwich told Luton Today:

“Both men [Stephen Lennon and Sayful Islam] have valid comments to make, and it’s a debate that at some stage will need to be had”.

“We have to try and find ways of engaging with what they are saying.”

As predicted, it would thus seem that this latest documentary in Channel 4’s Dispatches series, that has produced some excellent exposés over the years, has chosen to portray the EDL and Islamists as being of the same ilk, with a “plague on both their houses” attitude. Channel 4’s intent seems to be to denounce both parties with a view to propping up an increasingly creaky and worm-eaten concept to which it is ideologically wedded: multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has had its day. It has failed. That, rather than any editorial voiceover, will be the real message of Monday’s episode of Dispatches. A full review of the programme can be read by clicking here.

Dispatches: the EDL and Sayful Islam

On Monday 27^th February at 10pm, Channel 4 Dispatches will be screening a documentary on the EDL and Sayful Islam. As is to be expected, its billing reveals that its approach is not to be without a certain bias, for it has already been trailed as featuring two sets of “extremists”: the EDL and Sayful Islam's Islamists. The mandatory NUJ tag of “far-right” was also appended to the EDL, so although we may expect something rather more thoughtful and considered than Stacey Dooley’s primary school style ‘report’ on current divisions in Luton, we can be reasonably sure that a negative conclusion with respect to the EDL had been reached long before the first camera had started shooting. Then again, perhaps I shall be proven wrong, but I doubt it.

The documentary is said to have been a year in the making, so irrespective of its tone and political slant, it will be worth viewing if only to discover which tack the EDL’s opponents will be taking on this occasion. On a day when the media, particularly the BBC, are refusing to use the M-word (Muslim) in connection with the 11 men from Rochdale standing trial in Liverpool for grooming and sexual exploitation, and instead slurring “Asians” en masse for this phenomenon, it would seem that the existence of the EDL is as much needed today, if not more so, than when it was established in 2009. Click here for a video preview of the programme.  

‘My Hometown Fanatics’ on BBC3

Stacey Dooley the documentary maker was, to put it bluntly, irritating. “Why’s my hometown becoming so divided?” she chirped at the programme’s outset. Perhaps I am being a little unfair in my evaluation of Dooley, so let me flesh out her character a little more, for she is more than just irritating: she is also ignorant, naïve and deferential towards Muslims and Islam. She appears to be one of those people who is so open-minded that her brains fall out, as Richard Dawkins might put it; someone ripe for conversion to Islam. Then again, this young woman is the product of a politically correct education system, so her lack of awareness vis-à-vis the fundamentals of Islam can be comprehended, if not forgiven. In sum, she’s as dense as a pig of lead, and thus perfect for presenting a piece celebrating Luton’s “diversity” on BBC3.

The first person she stated she wished to interview was EDL leader Stephen Lennon, whom, it transpired, she had vaguely known years before as the two of them had grown up in the same area of town. Upon his non-arrival for an interview at a local radio station she gave vent to some disparaging remarks about him, whilst savouring the opportunity to speak to the oleaginous Inayat Bunglawala who unfortunately proved to be on hand to extol the virtues of Islam. Dooley, Bunglawala and a local Muslim politician had something of a “love in”, with the latter commenting with respect to the EDL: “They’re not a nice bunch of people”. Not as “nice” as all of those devout lovers of Shariah, needless to say.

Dooley next headed to Lennon’s tanning salon, but sign of Lennon there was none. The reason for his absence and non-attendance at the radio station was, it transpired, that he had been arrested whilst protesting.

The next section of Dooley’s attempt to legitimise the Islamic presence in Luton consisted of a potted and incomplete history of the Muslim settlement of the town, which she attributed to the demand for labour in the Vauxhall Cars factory which closed in 2000. The area in which they chose to settle, as every Lutonian knows, was Bury Park, which now hosts a population of 30,000 “Asians” who happen to be predominantly Muslim. Dooley commented that she had never shopped there and that “it’s really interesting” as “you could easily mistake it for not being an English town”. Her squeals of delight were difficult to suppress, as she revelled in revealing that there are now circa (not the word she chose to use) 30 mosques in Luton.

Dooley’s next encounter was with a group of Lutonian Muslims, yelling the usual anti-British slogans and curses involving death, hell and sundry other unpleasantries. This was, apparently, a demonstration in “defence” of the wife of a Muslim resident who had bombed Stockholm. “I found their chanting provocative and extreme” said Dooley, enjoying the frisson occasioned by the slogan ‘British police burn in hell!’ All was not sweetness and light however, for even Dooley’s dimwittedness gave way before some burka-clad harridan’s injunction for the reporter to “put some clothes on” to cover up her nakedness: “I tried my hardest to sympathise with people who were different to me”, stated Dooley, but her patience was momentarily wearing thin. “One of the saddest things, is that people have brought their kids along” she continued.

The next interviewee was to be Islamist windbag Anjem Choudhary, whose speech bore in its cadence a startling resemblance to that of Nick Griffin’s: “If the law of the land is Islamic, we’ll respect it” he enunciated, in his typically self-assured manner. Still, Dooley was undaunted in leaping to the defence of Luton’s Islamic population: “Of the 30,000 Muslims living in Luton, there are less than a hundred at this rally.” Furthermore, although she ventured to comment, “I do feel shocked at this protest,” she was quick to emphasise her belief that it was not representative of the views of Muslims in Luton.

As was to be expected in a BBC ‘documentary’ of this type, the presenter paid a visit to her old school in an attempt to track down some of her old schoolmates. Strangely, she appeared to be unawares of the existence of the data protection act, so quite naturally her old teachers could not provide her with contact details of other ex-pupils. Sadly, one of them was an English girl who had converted to Islam, for which the school must be assumed to bear a considerable degree of culpability. In order to demonstrate her multicultural credentials, Dooley revealed that she had had a Muslim classmate named Amara, “what I would call a moderate Muslim.” Well, she so wished to seek her out because, after all, “Sometimes, Islam gets a rough old time.” How touchingly naïve of her to say so.

Unfortunately, Amara was duly tracked down, and when asked about the likes of Choudhary and Sayful Islam provided a typically slippery Muslim response which basically told us that she concurred with their views, but she’d prefer to deceive us on camera, describing them as “Not bad people, but people with different views.” So, this self-styled “moderate Muslim” turned out to be just as “moderate” as one would anticipate.

Having thus ‘established’ that other than the hundred or so slogan-chanting bomb enthusiasts all of Lutons Muslims were “moderates” it was time to rubbish the EDL by describing them as “extremists”: “Many believe they’re a violent racist organisation that recruit from football terraces.” Really? And what do you believe Dooley? There wasn’t much insinuation at play there, was there?

Next on the list of interviewees was leading EDL spokesman Kev Carroll: “I’m not aggressive, I’m just passionate, you know?” He singles out the “Islamic community” as alone amongst immigrant groups to who have not made any effort to integrate, unlike Sikhs, Chinese and blacks. Dooley though clearly thought that he was “extreme”, most likely because he didn’t have a holy book to back up his beliefs. If you have a holy back upon which to base your bigotry, then for Dooley this is entirely legitimate, as was evidenced by her total lack of awareness of the theory and reality of Shariah Law. After all, as Caroll indicated, the penalty for adultery is stoning. However, not to be dissuaded from trying to understand and empathise with the advocates of Shariah, Dooley spoke to a Shariah apologist who claimed that stoning was not really a punishment because there were supposed to be four witnesses to such a crime and there rarely were, so in practice people were not stoned for the crime. Did he believe with it in principle. Well, yes, as all Muslims want Shariah. Dooley proved to be blithely accepting of Omar’s explanation and naturally designated him a “moderate”. With such “moderates”, who needs “extremists”?

Dooley continued: “The problem with Luton, is although the central mosque preaches peace, down the road it’s a different story.” Down the road she happened upon Sayful Islam, a former member of Al-Mahajiroun who last year assaulted Stephen Lennon/Tommy Robinson, but he would not condescend to speak to her, claiming that he was busy. Thus, Dooley decided to speak to two others of his ilk who refused to shake her hand. They claimed that women in the UK are “degraded” and “humiliated”. They don’t believe in democracy and secularism and predictably claimed that “Islam is the real solution”. One implied that he supported Al-Qaeda, and eventually Dooley’s even chirpy, sugary idiocy dissolved: “That makes me feel that we’re always gonna have issues in Luton.” She suspected that they, and their kind, “would encourage and applaud others” who carried out acts of terrorism. Yes Dooley, that is how it is. You are not very quick on the uptake, are you girl?

At the central mosque, interviewees claimed that the extremists were loudmouths who were “cowardly”, because although they called for people to go and fight the Americans, they would not go themselves. “It saddens me that young vulnerable Lutonians are being groomed by the radicals” Dooley opined with respect to the malign influence of these Islamist poltroons.

Strangely, she described the call to prayer as a sign of “how diverse” Luton had become. How could this be “diverse”, given that it is a supremacist expression of confident Muslim monoculturalism. She then insisted on smiling at a couple of niqab-clad droids. They were, unsurprisingly, a couple of hostile individuals, who wore this garb as a deliberate statement of their rejection of the host society and its cultural norms. Dooley even went so far as to don full Islamic dress, niqab included: “I do feel so different in this. I feel like people are staring a little bit.” Someone told her to take her mask off: “Why do people think that they can dictate what you wear?”

At last, the final ten minutes of the programme finally brought the much-sought-for interview with Stephen Lennon, who claimed that the EDL had put Luton on the map for a positive reason: “I love Luton, and I want what’s best for Luton.” Dooley, as befitting her lack of morality engendered by her surrender to cultural relativism argued that Muslims should be able to live their lives by Shariah Law, in Luton: “I persuaded Stephen to walk through Luton with me.” He stated that he had not walked through Luton with his wife and kids for two years, and mentioned that she did not agree with the EDL, neither did her parents. Nonetheless, Lennon remained steadfast in his belief in the EDL’s cause for “Islam rules through fear and intimidation” and there was no way that he was going to let it silence him.

Dooley continued to be excruciating, defending the niqab and the burka, and insisted on speaking to a random Muslim on the street who stated that he wanted Shariah Law, yet she still considered him to be a “moderate”. More “moderates”, it would seem, were in the vicinity, for “Soon several young men were following us and I was beginning to feel on edge.” Muslims closed in on Lennon, attempting to intimidate him through force of numbers.

This documentary left me feeling exasperated at Dooley’s wilful ignorance and stupidity. The woman appears to be incapable of rational thought, preferring instead to emote and empathise, even with those who would treat her like trash. “Ignorance is what causes extremism”, Dooley concluded. Now, although I do concur with this conclusion, I do not do so in a manner that she would find agreeable, for it is the ignorance displayed by politically correct cultural relativist dupes such as Dooley that allows “extremism” to flourish. The BBC, once again, has excelled itself in producing a piece of apologia for Islam's presence, entrenchment and growth in contemporary England.

Stacey Dooley: a bit dim, or an animatronic mannequin?

 

Tommy Robinson assaulted by Sayful Islam

In the following video, Tommy Robinson/Stephen Lennon drives a reporter around his home town of Luton, taking him through the town’s Islamic enclave. There they encounter local Islamist Sayful Islam who recognises Robinson and approaches the car to repeatedly call Robinson a ‘racist’ before hitting him in the face. It would behove Jeremy Paxman to witness this ugly reality, given his condescending refusal to recognise the genuine problem that exists with Islamisation in England today. Paxman’s BBC colleague John Humphreys visited Luton relatively recently to interview both Robinson and Islam. At the end of his report he seemed to be on the verge of recognising that the EDL might be articulating genuine concerns, but ultimately the report was equivocal. What would he make of this recent encounter between the two men?

John Humphrys on Luton, Islam and the EDL: has the Penny dropped?

One of the irksome aspects of the BBC radio ‘Listen again’ facility is the fact that recordings of broadcasts remain available for only a week after their initial airing. Nonetheless, here is the link should you wish to give it a try.

Having been in a rush this morning, I caught only part of John Humphrys’s report on Luton, and thus listened to it in full this evening. Indeed, I had earlier wondered if I had still been half asleep when I heard his conclusion to the piece, as it struck me that Humphrys seemed to be on the dawn of realising the reality of Islamisation and the threat that it poses to England and the English. Astonishingly, it seems that this may be the case. If so, this will mark a watershed moment for one of the country’s most influential political broadcasters.

The report was run as part of the BBC’s build up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and although entitled ‘9/11 ‘led to rise inIslamophobia’’, the airtime afforded to Tommy Robinson/Stephen Lennon meant that the EDL perspective had a chance to reach millions of listeners across the country. The EDL leader, currently under arrest and staging a hunger strike, acquitted himself with aplomb, and not once did the report refer to the EDL as ‘far-right’, which was a staggering achievement for the BBC given its record on this score.

Luton had been selected as the location for the report not only because that is where the EDL was born, but also because of the events that functioned as the catalyst to its formation: the barracking of the Royal Anglian Regiment by a group of Islamists during their homecoming parade in 2009 and the fact that the 7/7 bombers departed from the town on the morning that they unleashed wanton carnage in London in 2005. The report was set out in typical BBC style, seemingly posing a question whilst structuring the report in such a fashion as to make the answer implicit and predetermined, thus in this instance it was a case of contrasting Islamist views with those of the EDL, with the “Muslim community” being cast in the role of the moderate majority. The clear implication was that the Islamist and EDL perspectives ought to be perceived as equally ‘extreme’ and repugnant, and that those of the “Muslim community” should be applauded. Now, that of course means that the English view was structurally displaced and portrayed as by definition ‘extreme’. What a dreadful pass we have come to when our own country’s state broadcaster deliberately portrays our native population as beyond the pale! Nonetheless, as will be seen, the unpleasant reality of what has happened to Luton appears to have even made some impression upon Humphrys.

Thus, the report opened with references to halal butchers, sari shops and women wearing mostly full Islamic dress with faces covered – “Nothing unusual in Britain today”, dutifully noted Humphrys, before stating that Luton has “acquired a reputation as a breeding ground for Islamic extremism” which “the city fathers” think is “rubbish”. Before the interviews commence the scene is finally set with the comment: “But listen to these voices, all people born and bred in Luton, and you’ll hear the story of a town divided.”

Most of the report consisted of interviews with Farasat Latif (Imam at the Al Ghurabaa Mosque), Luton Islamist Sayful Islam and EDL Leader Tommy Robinson (Stephen Lennon). Humphrys seemed to be taken aback both by the positions of Sayful Islam and Tommy Robinson, but his concluding remarks are interesting, and perhaps suggests that Humphrys is awakening to the fact that the EDL is not an organisation of paranoid football hooligans, but a genuine English patriotic movement seeking to preserve the English way of life from an all-too-real Islamic threat. Below I provide a transcript of some of the key parts of the report. Note in particular the last three paragraphs that taken together seem to indicate Humphrys’s dawning realisation that all is not well with the BBC’s official line with respect to the ‘religion of peace’ (sic).

Sayful Islam (formerly of the banned organisation Al-Muhajiroun): 

“What I would describe myself as is someone who doesn’t want to compromise in terms of Islam. If I believe in Islam, and if I practise Islam and if I’m called to Islam, I will not compromise on any aspect of that because obviously if I do then I might fall into falsehood, and when I do something like that, you see a clash of civilisations where you see the Islamic way of life does clash with the Western way of life: stuff like British values and British identity obviously is something that I will never adhere to or follow”

John Humphrys:

“But you live here?”

Sayful Islam:

“Yeah, of course I do live here and I have lived here for many years. I’ve lived here all my life. Britain claims to be a place where you have freedom, where you have the right to practise whatever you want to. Then why don’t I have the right to practise Islam?”

Humphrys went on to note that 60% of the population in the area he was visiting was Muslim:

“The English Defence League is appalled by that. Set up and run by a Luton businessman Tommy Robinson, the EDL has been remarkably successful in a very short time at getting people around the country to come out onto the streets to protest against what they see as a growing threat from Islam.”

 Tommy Robinson:

“Thirty years ago in this town there was 3,000 Muslims and one mosque yeah. If you’d have said to people thirty years ago, in thirty years time there will be 19 mosques, there’ll be 30, 40, 50,000 Muslims, they’ll be banning the emblem of St George in your school, they’ll be opening a prayer centre in the Arndale Centre, they’ll be attacking your troops when they’re walking home, they’ll have stalls set up promoting jihad and extremism every single week in the town, thirty years ago people would have said “never, that’s not going to happen in Luton”, but it’s happened. At the end of the day Islamic demographics are terrifying; the birth-rate and the statistics are terrifying.”

John Humphrys:

“Are you just racists?”

Tommy Robinson:

“I’m not racist at all, I completely hate racism. We’ve defeated Nazism yet we’re allowing Islamism to flourish because it goes under the banner of a religion.”

John Humphrys:

“But aren’t you promoting hatred against them?”

Tommy Robinson:

“We don’t do anything out of hate we do it out of love; love for Christianity, love for our culture, love for my kids’ futures.”

John Humphrys:

“At the heart of this conflict is obviously fear. But is it of fear of Islamic terrorism, another 9/11, or is it something else? Robinson says what his organisation fears is Sharia Law.”

Tommy Robinson:

“In 2003 the European Court of Human Rights outlawed Sharia Law in Europe and said that it’s incompatible with Western democracy because of their views on homosexuals, their views on women and their views on infidels – that’s all of us. It’s incompatible. It won’t work. And all we see now is a louder, louder voice and a louder call for Sharia Law, and aspects of Sharia Law to be implemented in the British legal system.”

John Humphrys:

“More moderate Muslims dismiss that out of hand. Sharia simply enables them to practise their religion they say, to observe their culture. It’s not law in any meaningful sense. But Sayful Islam delivers what sounds a rather chilling warning.”

Sayful Islam:

“I believe that Sharia is the alternative. The fact that I am calling for [an] Islamic state, a state that would implement Sharia, it’s not just the Muslims that want an alternative, we can see even now non-Muslims are searching for an alternative, uh social fabric of this society even the economic, political are collapsing and this is where people like myself come along and we present this alternative which I believe is Islam.”

John Humphrys:

“That’s exactly what the English Defence League fears, or maybe we should call it the Englishness Defence League. What’s happened here in Luton over the past ten years suggests that it’s no longer a threat to the security of England that so many fear, it’s more a threat to the English way of life.”

Better late than never John, eh?