The sorry tale of the EDL is perhaps wending it's way to an anti-climax. Yesterday saw a piss-poor turn out in Barking end up in an ignominious defeat in Whitechapel.

The league decided to make a stand in Barking – long an area of widespread BNP support. Admittedley this was only intended to be a regional demo not one of their national 'big ones' but even so the turn-out was poor.

SchNEWS spoke to a local anti-fascist “It really was a poor turn-out about 80 of them mostly old guys in their fifties or young kids – no casuals to be seen”. The EDL were cordoned off by police outside Barking Town Hall and exchanged points of view with a small UAF contingent. Later the right-wingers were bombarded with pots of yoghurt from above.

After that not particularly inspiring effort a few leaguers decided to up the ante. Around twenty of them got off the tube at Bethnal Green and pub-crawled their way up to the East London mosque. Attentive SchNEWS readers will know that this was the target of the EDL Tower Hamlets demo back in September.

According to our anti-fascist witness “They were there briefly, shouting 'Allah is a paedo', then almost straight away one of them got knocked out. Within ten minutes there were three or four hundred locals there ready to confront them. There were also TSG [riot police] all over the shop. The EDL were then all arrested for their own safety” Nice one guys!



For more:

 http://www.edlnews.co.uk/

 http://antifascistnetwork.wordpress.com/