Carl Andrew Donnelly is a 28 year old man from Gormal, Dudley. He lives with a wife and two children in one of the most culturally diverse parts of the country. From an early age Carl has, as a caring parent would describe “Been mixed up in the wrong crowd”.

From the ages of 21 where he was fined and given a community support order for stealing a bottle of Lacoste perfume from a local Debenhams, Carl has frequently been mixed up in public affray, violent crime and robbery. The final straw came a year and a half later when at 23 years old , Carl took it upon himself to smash an innocent bystander in the face with a bottle outside a cocktail bar whilst inebriated on a variety of drugs and alcohol. This attack left the victim with severe facial scarring. After laughing at the situation, Carl fled the scene shouting “Gornal Boys, Gornal Boys” and was shortly arrested afterwards.

Carl was convicted of GBH and jailed for 4 years.

You would think that spending 4 years in prison would be enough time for a person to reflect on their life – analyse where they had gone wrong, consider the future and how to make amends for the impact they have had on their society and community in general, but unfortunately this is not the case in some circumstances.

Upon release, Carl quickly integrated himself back into the band of friends he once had – Things were different this time though. Football, cocaine, binge drinking and violence wasn’t their primary objective anymore. A new interest had sprung up since Carl had been inside – The EDL.

What is the EDL?

The ‘English Defense League’ is a far-right sociopolitical nationalist organisation that wants to put and end to Islamisim, Islamic doctrine and Sharia ideology in the UK. Originally evolving from the ‘Football Casuals’ subculture, the EDL has transformed this once frowned upon subculture into a xenophobic, nationalistic, racist organisation.

With an active membership of over 150,000 people, the EDL picket pro-Arabic/Muslim interests and organise their own almost-monthly demonstrations around the country. The next one is this coming weekend in Luton on the 5th February 2011. This is where the EDL originally gained notoriety for organising and furthermore causing a disturbance at an anti-war protest. It is set to be their biggest event yet, with an expected 3,500 members to arrive from all over the country to show their support for their cause.

Leading the EDL is a short squat man, who stumbles on his words as he tries to recount the EDL’s mission statement to the public. His name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon, an Ex-BNP party member, Previously jailed for 12 months for causing actual bodily harm on a police officer. After a horrendous appearance on ‘Newsnight’ hosted by Jeremy Paxman, Lennon could not seem to differentiate if his party was against ‘Muslims’ or ‘Islam’, The way he trips and falls over his points is almost comical and I strongly urge you all to watch to see what kind of man heads up this growing organisation.

Feel free to watch the interview for more information.

Until recently Lennon has been using a pseudonym and declared himself a martyr for his cause. Lovingly referred to on the EDL forums and boards as “Our Tommy” the EDL members have an almost pseudo-religious fervour about him. Lennon tells everyone that he is “the voice of the people and he isn’t afraid to speak his mind” which echoes strongly of that well-known justification to a racist phrase you might hear someone utter once in a blue moon “I’m just sayin’, everyone’s thinking it but noone’s saying it”.

Running with the phrases – the whole concept of the EDL seems to fall down to “I’m not racist, But..”

I am sure by now you are beginning to see what kind of group the EDL really is. The question is how Carl, the EDL and I related in any way?

Last night I posted on my facebook the link to the interview with Stephen Lennon. I called upon my friends to bear witness to the travesty it was. No sooner than 10 minutes later, I had received at 3 emails informing me in broken, illiterate English that “I was a fucker and knew nothing” and that “I was a fool cuz tommy did a wel good job on TV”.

Slightly baffled at how and why members of the EDL were emailing me to insult me on my own page, I realised that my profile was open – Something that has never bothered me until now. Minutes later racial slurs were posted to my face book calling me a “Paki lover” and a “UAF dickhead” (See United Anti-Facist). I’d like to state at this point I am not affiliated in any way, shape or form with the UAF nor the MDL.

Anyway, troubled by this I decided to go to the official EDL facebook and ask them what trouble they were having with their members and to engage / highlight the people who were posting such vile and hateful things on my profile.

Of course – One of the names that came up – a one certain mr Carl Donnelly – Seemed to carry on and spew even more threats of violence against myself and my friends. He also went on to boast about his consistent use of cocaine and violence in the past few weeks.

As they say, birds of a feather flock together – This was no exception to the EDL official facebook page. After carefully explaining my situation I was set upon by what seemed like hundreds of illiterate morons. There did not seem to be a single English language GCSE’s between any of them and translating the messages was almost as hard as the pictures they were trying to paint of themselves.

Specifically what ‘Tommy’ or Lennon has done to cause such rigorous support to their cause is beyond me. It seems to be a case of the blind leading the stupid, or vice versa. In this short space of time most of the responses to my questions were this:

“YEAH BUT THIS IS ENGLAND”
Really. Thank you for that, I constantly forget where I have been raised and currently live.

“WE DON’T HATE MUSLIMS WE HATE EXREMISTS IN THE MOSQUES”
I see. Have you ever been to a mosque? Have you ever met ‘An Extremist?”

“SEND THEM HOME BECAUSE THEY TAKE OUR JOBS AND GIVE IT TO TERRORISTS”
I’m not actually joking, this is word-for-word taken from an EDL member. At this point something clearly clicked in the heads of many EDL supporters and the conversation changed to attack the Polish communities, Chinese and East-Asian communities, and finally that heart-warming age-old phrase:

“THERE AINT NO BLACK IN THE UNION JACK SAYS THE E-E-EDL!!!”
(From what I’ve established, the ‘e-e-edl’ is akin to a football chant, a rallying cry rather than a tearful stammer as it appears to be in text)

Anyway, as you can see from the pictures, people like Carl were enraged at my questioning of ‘Tommy’ and his potential as their leader. Shortly afterwards, I was banned.


Much to my delight however, the EDL administrator of the official facebook mentioned me (By name) to 71,500 of it’s members that have subscribed to that page. Treating me like some sort of folk demon, It publicly informed their members that it was OK now as I was banned. I laugh when I think that they were so worried I had shit in their proverbial sandwich by questioning the leadership of the EDL they had to silence me for it!

Carl, not satisfied that I had been banned carried on insulting and filling my profile page with inane threats, racist language and nationalistic dogma for hours to come. It was at this point I noticed other EDL members encouraging each other to use my phone number advertised on facebook to harrass me. It’s okay. My phone didn’t ring once last night.

I hope I’ve managed to give anyone reading this far a valuable insight into what kind of idiocy exists in this organisation – however they are not to be taken lightly. Journalists that have covered the EDL protests have been issued with death threats. Reporters investigating football related crime and links between the BNP have been assaulted and intimidated in the streets.

The threat of racist ideology and blind nationalism is as great as it has ever been, and as the EDL continues to grow – The threat to free speech, a united, tolerant and open-minded society also increases with it. People like Carl are amongst us, they are colleagues, pub friends and maybe even family. We must stamp out this racial bigotry and xenophobia before even more issues arise.

Please feel free to re-link this anywhere you feel necessary – The more people who understand this, the better in my opinion. If you wish to contact me, please email me at  marcallen86@gmail.com or add me on facebook.