Taxi drivers have had to take evasive steps many times in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland to avoid lynchings or murder, however never before have virtually all the taxi companies in a large British city been warned keep off the streets. This terrifying development shows the sickening depths the violent drunken fascists of the British Far Right have sunk to, in their campaign of violence and fear that the authorities have done precious little to stop.
Most of Stoke's large private hire car companies suspended service in and around the city centre on Saturday night after verbal threats aimed at their drivers by groups of right-wing extremists, and the threat of racial violence was so extreme, that the police gave out safety advice to the companies and their drivers of the risks to their lives if they went about their normal everyday business.
Approaching Holocaust Memorial, Day, in a chilling reminder of life in Nazi Germany when Adolf Hitler's blackshirted thugs, an army of ordinary everyday racists (also known as the National Security Volunteer Militia) carried out Kristallnacht (Night of The Broken Glass, the anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany which paved the way for the Holocaust to happen), targetting Jewish businesses with violence, once the EDL's phoney speeches had ended, and the EDL crowds were left to their own devices, more than 500 of the EDL's most violent thugs remained behind, engaging in running battles with the police while smashing windows of Asian-owned businesses, while others made sickening death threats to Asian taxi drivers.
The taxi companies were threatened with violence and murder against any Asian drivers who drove around the streets of Stoke, who were suspected of being Muslim.
One of the companies targeted was Auto Cab Private Hire, working out of Normacot. They received many threatening calls over the phone, and after consulting with the local constabulary, the company manager Mr Basharat Hussein agreed to take his cars off the road to protect his drivers and passegners from violent assaults from violent Neo Nazi thugs.
City Centre Private Hire Company suspended service after a call from a sergeant at Tunstall police station warning them not to go out, and that work in Cobridge, a district with a notable amount of racist BNP supporters, was also dangerous. Other firms which ceased operating over the weekend as a result of death threats and police advice included Magnum Cars in Burslem and Lucky Seven of Longton.
Shops and stores in the city centre closed early as lack of trade made it the worst day many of them had ever had, some reporting takings down as much as 90%, and market stalls packed up just after lunchtime when the EDL thugs started to invade Stoke. Several policemen and women were injured by EDL nazis, but it was the death threats against Stoke's Asian taxi drivers which was the most concerning factor about the EDL's presence in Stoke.
In previous cities where the EDL have met, the organisation's Goebels (Trevor Kelway) categorically blamed violence upon the shoulders of antiracist protestors, particularly Unite Against Fascism, claiming that if the UAF failed to turn up, there would be no problems at all.
In Stoke, many anti-racist campaigners were cautious to turn up in sizeable numbers because of the area's far right pedigree (the antiracist demonstrators according to the BBC, outnumbered three to one, and the numbers of police were far less than in Nottingham and West Yorkshire), meaning the EDL were given a free reign to do what they pleased, which resulted in injuries for the police criminal damage, and worst of all, sporadic mini-riots in the multicultural outskirts of the city centre.
The EDL do not need the UAF to wreak havoc in the towns and cities of England. The EDL are plain and simple a gang of drunken racist thugs who will stop at nothing to beat up Asian people, socialists and anarchists. Amongst the worst offenders are the Lincoln LTE gang led by Combat18 thugs from Lincoln Loyal, and the Oldham branch of the EDL whose Oldham FC supporting members are most racist and fanatical, and some of whom are veterans of the oldham riots nine years ago.
Oldham EDL do not give a damn about Sharia Law or upholding the memory of British soldiers who died in Afganistan. Oldham's football nazis are only in it for the "P*ki bashing" as they call it, as is BNP supporter and EDL co-founder Jeff Marsh who when chased into a Stoke park by the police, cried "BNP, BNP, BNP!!!" continually, before leading a sickening chant of "Paki loving bastards" at the police for stopping them from murdering Asian people.
The EDL might well be considering becoming a registered political party to distance themselves from the football thuggery they encouraged by their complicity, however at the moment, as several commentators have already pointed out, they could be banned tomorrow under anti-terror leglisation if the Home Secretary chose to do so. Causing race riots is their only aim, and their recently acquired terror tactics should be the nail in their coffin!!!!!
Ban Them Now!!!
25.01.2010 16:52
Only neo-Nazis would issue such death threats.
BAN THEM NOW!!!
Sandy
Who's going to proscribe them? They are the state.....
25.01.2010 17:07
anon
Agree - EDL are state
25.01.2010 17:52
Olaf
Islam4UK
25.01.2010 22:44
A
Interesting
26.01.2010 00:48
started toning down it's islamophobic rhetoric. they want to attract the muslim vote (or at least not put them off voting labour quite as severely as they used to). the state using the edl to wield the islamophobic stick gives them plausible deniability that it's nothing to do with them, preventing any mud from sticking to the govt/state. meanwhile, making muslims fearful of racist thugs means muslims will call on the state/the police to protect them, thus encouraging muslims to be more supportive of the state at a time when the UK state are desperate for them to do so.
Uri
The article is WRONG about Jeff Marsh
26.01.2010 01:45
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9lmFqYNOo4
Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but please try to be scrupulously accurate when researching your postings, as we need accurate intelligence to defeat the EDL and BNP
As for the conspiracy theories about the EDL being funded by the State, your EVIDENCE is... ?
UK Fightback / BNP info
Loyalists in the EDL
26.01.2010 12:02
Frankie
How to get more people involved in Anti-Fascism
26.01.2010 14:07
I was heavily involved in last year's events in Harrow. The 1st demo against Harrow Mosque was called by the EDL then promptly cancelled (which was already a victory for us). SIOE re-scheduled the protest for Sept 11, a hastily formed local UAF branch called a counter-protest, and 1,500 people showed up, routing a handful of EDL, SIOE and BNP (the right-wing exaggerated the response as a "Muslim riot", but then again they misrepresent everything). SIOE promised to return on Dec 13, giving UAF months to promote the counter-protest, to print and circulate 5,000 flyers, to set-up stalls in the shopping centre and organise a festival of unity. UAF had some success getting the local press to write-up the festival as a "success" but it was a dismal failure - the event was heavily branded as explicitly socialist / left-wing and not surprisingly only 25 people showed-up, to be bored witless by speeches from corrupt Labour MP Tony McNulty.
UAF street stalls were set-up right next to SWP stalls and the result was that UAF alienated all of the local population who aren't revolutionary socialists, and only 300 people turned-up to oppose SIOE on Dec 13. To be fair, 300 still massively outnumbered the handful of SIOE and EDL (eg - Joel Titus), and the MAIN reason attendances fell was because the Mosque (quite rightly) asked Muslims not to rise to SIOE's provocation. Nonetheless what had been a friendly and genuinely popular Anti-Fascist victory in Sept , was by Dec "successfully" turned into a circle-jerking party for left-wing paper sellers, with only a handful of local youngsters turning-up, and UAF must accept responsibility for their contribution to this outcome.
Seriously, I was joking to a friend that some lefties are so delusional there's even a micro-sect who publish a paper called "Workers Hammer", when at that exact moment a woman popped out of the crowd to try and flog us a copy of... "Worker's Hammer" - it was embarrassing
Although I'm not a UAF member and strongly dislike the SWP, we'd volunteered to help distribute UAF leaflets in Harrow despite the fact that these leaflets were frankly crap. We also helped distribute Hope not Hate "Never Again" leaflets which were in comparison (for all the things people say about Searchlight) excellent - showing real cultural subtlety in, for instance, celebrating British Muslim war heroes like secret agent Noor Inayat Khan instead of banging-out left-wing clichés. In Stoke UAF's LMHR operation invested tens of thousands of pounds in a big music festival to engage local youngsters, but still drew a miserable 300 supporters to oppose the EDL last weekend. UAF need to do some serious homework on refining their strategies and engaging with popular culture, and perhaps a time when music sales are at an all-time low should tell UAF that live music culture (although important) is not as important as on-line culture in engaging the general public in the 21st century
As a case in point, UAF's "presence" on You Tube is a joke - consisting almost entirely of BNP videos which (to some extent successfully) exploit UAF's achilles heel of being opposed to free speech
Harrow United
Tabloid Media Conditioning
26.01.2010 15:24
Yes indeed, the media do manipulate the stories of world events with an Islamophobic bias. If you go back to the Iraq War, papers like the Sun, Mail and Express, plus the broadsheets such as the Times and the Telegraph went along with the story about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction as it was absolute truth. The rightwing newspapers are now all 100% supporting the Tories at the upcoming election, and sadly, as you would expect from Tories, they are very much as warmongering as Tony Bliar. Maybe worse.
If Cameron does get in, expect far more institutional racism, as the supposedly "political correct" protections against racism and homophobia are relaxed, to set us back to square one.
Likewise, although the Tories did complain about Guantanamo Bay, they only did this to get at the Labour government. Not cos they really give a shit about human rights, which goes without saying. Things are gonna be much, much worse under "Revamped Tories" than "New Labour". Gordon Brown might be crap at managing the country but Cameron will make him seem like a saint. Believe me!
As for Islamophobia, the recent bout of the hate disease originated from an American Conservative George W Bush, and was parrotted by the liberal British left in an affort to banish socialist principles from Western politics, thus Blair became Bush's poodle. It was the Daily Star that first gave the EDL positive press releases which tied in with the War On Terror, a war that David Cameleon will continue if he gets elected this Springtime, and if the British left are not gonna act swiftly and decisively, it's gonna leave them up shit creak without a paddle, rather like the true American left, who make do with CIA-forced militarism hoping to also be spoonfed morsels of social progress.
Every day you indeed read press releases in the Sun/Mail/Star telling us that Muslims are the Public Enemy Number One.
How many ordinary tabloid-fed working class people who support BNP/EDL read between the lines after being fed years of Murdoch misinfo?
We need to find new ways to diseminate socialist/anarchist info to counteract government/media lies, misinfo and spin, to counteract the programme of pro-state conditioning that produces lackeys who believe that Sharia Law is a genuine threat and get seduced by racism.
How many people buy the socialist worker or morning star??????
Joe60
sorry to meddle in your EDL love-in
27.01.2010 12:39
loyalists at this very moment are intent on disrupting the NI assembly over the devolution of policing powers, something they could never live with, as they, the unionists, have controlled policing and law and order for nigh on 8 hundred years in Ulster. The truth remains that the biggest threat to stability in NI is not petty dissident republicans, but powerful, "connected" unionists and loyalists from the DUP and all the rest.
fucking loyalists are the lowest of the low.
EDL are a bunch of fucking retards, too. let them bask in their own ineptitude. and for those EDL that dont know big words, that means your uselessness, or incompetence, or complete and utter stupidity.
Provo