As people finished work on Monday evening a crowd began to gather in Lancaster's Dalton Square, where they soon began to line the edge of the city's busy one-way traffic system. Hastily-made placards were passed around and held aloft.

By 6pm, a headcount revealed that over one hundred local people were now gathered. What was happening was a sudden and spontaneous outpouring of popular anger, sparked by that morning's news - a notorious Nazi extremist had taken a Euro MP's seat for our region. A megaphone arrived and rousing anti-fascist speeches filled the air, invoking the memory of our ancestors who sacrificed themselves in the battles to stop fascist rule in Europe. As the numbers swelled people stood on traffic islands and roadsides holding aloft signs that said 'Stop the BNP' and 'Unite Against Fascism'.

What was amazing about this gathering was that it had been announced only a few hours before. Word got out via SMS text messages, facebook and email, spreading rapidly around networks of families and friends. People had woken up that morning to hear the dismal news of Nick Griffins elevation to the EU gravy train. You can tell when people are really angry when sizeable protests seem to come out of nowhere, and take a only few hours instead of weeks to organise. It was like this with the poll tax and the build up to the Iraq war. People seem to be desperately seeking an outlet for their opposition, concern and rage, and take to the streets almost instantly. The same was also happening at the same time across the North West and Yorkshire, with reports of 2,000 gathering in Manchester, and many other hastily called protests each growing hundreds strong in Preston, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield...

More here:  http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/2009/06/lancaster-unites-against-nazi-bnp.html