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[1] 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!

[1]  http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news787.php

For more:

 http://www.edlnews.co.uk/

 http://antifascistnetwork.wordpress.com/