This first-hand report from the ICLA website recounts what happened when several members of the English Defence League (EDL) in Bristol attended what was advertised as a “public” meeting by United Against Fascism (UAF). The response of UAF members to the presence of “racists” and “Nazis” in their midst illustrates what Humpty Dumpty said:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”
So much for the words “public” and “free speech” when uttered by the “anti-fascists”.
Here’s the report from ICLA:
The following is an account from a member of the English Defence League who attended a UAF ‘public meeting’ in Bristol:
Through facebook I heard about a public meeting being arranged by the UAF on the 17th of March in the railway club by Temple meads in Bristol, as a member of the public and proud member of the EDL I put this on the EDL Bristol divisions facebook page and decided to attend myself.
I arrived with my girlfriend Ruth (who is also a proud EDL member) There were about 40 people present, we didn’t know then that about 10 other loyal EDL members were present. To begin with the meeting was a shambles as the main speaker had cancelled and the replacement speaker had not arrived.
The man leading started with a brief description of the UAF explaining that the organisation was a coalition of socalist worker party and several trade unions but surprise surprise at no point were the links between the UAF and the Labour party mentioned. He went on to explain that they were dedicated to stopping the spread of the BNP and their racist foot soldiers the EDL, I couldn’t help but notice how he used the usual UAF propoganda method of putting the BNP and EDL in the same category but in spite of this slur the EDL members present did a remarkable job of not rising to the bait.
Then as he had no notes and needed to stall for time until the speaker arrived he opened the floor to questions from the public.The first woman to speak told of how she had rounded up a few neighbours to confront a BNP canvasser in her street (so much for free speech and democracy).
The second person to speak started by announcing that he was a supporter of the EDL, as these three letters left his mouth you could hear an audible gasp from the UAF people as they realised that there were patriots in the room, before he said another word the woman who organised the meeting took her phone out and as she left the room myself and Ruth heard her saying “I’d like the police please…” we didn’t hear anymore of her phone conversation as she quickly shut the door behind her, once again I shall say so much for free speech and so much for being a public meeting, after all we the EDL are members of the public!
– – – – – – – – –
The EDL supporter tried to speak again but every time he tried to speak he was assaulted by cries of “racist” “facist” and “nazi” the speaker struggled to make himself heard over the crowd and reminded them that this was a public meeting and everyone had a right to speak, he said that all speakers had a three minute time slot to have their say (this was not mentioned for the previous woman who spent at least five minutes talking) and I firmly believe this was only to buy time for the police to arrive as the EDL man and his friends were at the back of the room and would not have been able to hear what the woman had said on the phone.
The gentleman from the EDL carried on speaking but with frequent interuptions from people hurling abuse. Anytime he was interrupted in this manner myself and the other EDL members countered with calls of “what about free speech” and “It’s a public meeting”. The EDL man speaking informed the crowd that he wasn’t a BNP supporter but was in fact currently serving in the forces, once he mentioned that he was in the forces the UAF refused to let him say another word without being verbally abused. Up until that point I was merely annoyed by the lack of manners and decorum displayed by these thugs but once they refused to let one of our brave soldiers speak freely I was absolutely disgusted!
At this point the meeting broke up into small groups as the UAF supporters continued shouting the usual insults anytime any of us tried to speak, the men of the UAF looked like rabbits in the headlights and the women who did most of the shouting had the most hateful looks on their faces, I was quite shocked by the level of hatred even though I have seen many videos of them on demonstrations, Ruth and me managed to have a brief conversation with a man in his 40s, he was willing to listen to what we had to say which I found surprising but we were frequently interrupted by heckling from the other UAF members as they shouted abuse and generally tried to goad us into being aggressive towards them, I believe we at least managed to convince this one man that we weren’t racist or fascists and he did say at one point “If I thought you were nazi’s I wouldn’t be talking to you” I only managed to get that far because another UAF member pushed himself between us and accused me of racism, I simply replied that Islam is a religion not a race so I was not under any circumstance a racist, he then said there is nothing wrong with sharia law so we shouldn’t be against it, which really shocked me, I explained about men being allowed to hit their wives and this idiot responded “so what?” I mentioned that if that happened in a normal relationship the police would charge the man, he said that they wouldn’t!! I then mentioned that the independent think tank Civitas have published a report that sharia law goes against human rights he responded that they weren’t independent and so could not be trusted. No matter what I said he disagreed and I was no doubt that he was trying to goad me into a fight, so I ignored him as I have no intention of getting a police record for such a loathsome excuse for a human being. It was then that approximately 20 police officers arrived and began asking us to leave the building whilst the UAF members moved the meeting to another room in the building.
The EDL members did as requested and made no efforts to obstruct the police in carrying out their duty, I did advise a few officers close to me that it was advertised as a public meeting and we had done nothing wrong, the officer closest to me was very apologetic when he explained that as the UAF had paid for the venue they had a right to change it to a private meeting and had unfortunately aked the police to remove any EDL members.
As me and Ruth were led down a corridor towards the exit several officers blocked the hallway to separate the unruly UAF members from us, one UAF member who had been silent up until then looked around the police line and shouted fascist at us, Ruth turned and gave him a Paddington hard stare and he shrank into hiding behind the police line like a true coward.
I find the following statement from the EDL author very interesting:
“..the men of the UAF looked like rabbits in the headlights and the women who did most of the shouting had the most hateful looks on their faces, I was quite shocked by the level of hatred even though I have seen many videos of them on demonstrations.”
Two things strike me here. The first is that the UAF men understand violence, but want no part of it because they know it hurts.
The women have no problem getting carried away with a hate filled emotion, because they know, deep down, they are unlikely to end up going toe to toe.
Secondly, what is with women and hate driven extremist movements?
The UAF fit the description “hate filled” perfectly, and many historians have pondered over the frenzied attraction to Nazi/Communist movements by women, who showed a degree of fanaticism several stages higher than that of men.
It is a sex/power thing? After all, heterosexual girls faint at Madonna concerts whilst heterosexual boys, when pressed, may admit casually that… they would, you know, if she was a bit younger….
If some of these UAF wimmin had been a little more attractive during their school-days they would have been aware that the bike sheds were there for purposes in addition to that of two wheeled storage.
Sadly though, they were not, so rather than settling down happily with a dentist in Surrey they find themselves heading up extremist organisations like the UAF and thus finally, albeit unwillingly, into the arms of men who are not averse to close proximity grappling, even if it is just to lead them to a paddy-wagon.
If I knew how to shorten the URL I would include a link to that wonderful photograph of the creature at the EDL rally in Bolton. She must make her parents very proud, although they would probably rather she had a little more experience behind the bike shed than the police car park.
Yes, it was the wimmin who were most prominent with the “peace camp” at Greenham Common, allegedly protesting about the cruise missiles supposedly based there.
The main point that I pick up is that this is yet another Socialist Worker front organisation. They are always entering into “partnerships” with trades unions and other bodies that can be hoodwinked into providing cover for a policy that is clearly driven by the Socialist Shirkers.
Sadly there are many members of the present British government who were members of like minded hard left organisations when they were student militant radicals. During Jack Straw’s time as President of the National Union of Students he was a member of the “Broad Left”; a body that would have made the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist) seem like a capitalist support group!
Paul Weston, what an interesting comment…
Afonso Henriques
The “looney left” and their Communist/Anarchist friends all try to subvert political will through “the back door” ie through powerful trade unions who actually sponsor ministers of parliament and fund a certain political party. In this case it would be the Labour party who have been given 11 MILLION pounds to aid their election campaign from Unite, Britains largest union. If you go to The English Defence Leagues website at http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/
You will find an aptly titled article “Labour Party’s Affiliation To Union Criminality”
That should clear things up somewhat about the political climate of the UK’s governing party.
So much for the tough UAF talking. I guess they are only comfortable being violent towards the police who generally are restricted in how they can retaliate. Of course they love the police suddenly when they have to call them because they were crapping in their proverbial pants.
Paul Weston-
I know exactly which extremely unattractive female from Bolton you are talking about in the photo. I call her “Rage Girl”. The absolute frothing hate in her face is chilling. It is the kind of anger one would expect when confronting the individual who murdered your entire family. I think you are on to something.
Although it should begin to be obvious to new recruits what they are joining, I still feel sorry for the police who are reduced to this kind of work.
Also, the EDL and other groups should fund-raise to send some UAFers/AntiFA on a fact-finding mission to a sharia society. With first hand knowledge of the sharia it would be interesting to see how many would continue in their mission of hate.
Spackle
If you google “EDL Bolton Telegraph” you get the picture on the telegraph site.
I have seen further photos of her as well, but cannot remember where.
If anybody would care to link the photo with one of the Baron’s SHORT url links…..I would if I were not of the computer dark ages …
Paul … seriously. When you have a question like that, google it. You could do one of Geico’s “Even a caveman” ads for this.
The article you are referring to:
http://tinyurl.com/ycvwf6a
Just the photo:
http://tinyurl.com/yf6j8dt
Is this thing even female?
I have no respect for people that disrespect the armed forces of a country(don’t mistaken the army or navy with the police, for who I don’t have that much respect, at least the one of my country). These people die because they are sent in stupid wars by the government YOU elected. I recall that one of my country’s brave men died in Afghanistan and some idiot commented on the news that who knows how many little children he killed so who cares. That filled me with rage, considering that our troops there are mostly about peace keeping and building stuff. Still, the most outrageous thing that I heard was this December when this woman whose son died in 1989 in the overthrow(yes, I’m dissing my country’s constitution who apparently is written by historians, not lawyers since they falsely label it a revolution) and the parents or wife/husbands of the fallen people got post-mortem medals and she was wearing it on her blouse as the 20 years anniversary since then was coming and this cretin snatched her medal and told her that her son is a traitor and that people lived better before 1989(yes, I bet my parents loved waiting for their rationed food in queue lines and not having electricity, heating or gas during the winter and so on so I guess the idiot was an appartachik) and I don’t know why, but I burst into tears. These people deserve absolutely no respect.
But again, all these people deserved a swfit and merciless execution if we had a real revolution. I’m ashamed that my country is paying retirement benefits to people like this while we send our troops anywhere with the kind of obsolete garbage we have as military technique. Only the most despicable person can not respect a person that is willing to give his life for his nation(and I mean nation, not state). These are the same type of people as our communists pre-1989 who defiled the monument and grave of the unknown hero in my city(on whose tomb was written that “Here the Mister Unknown Soldier sleeps, fulfilled through making the ultimate sacrifice for the unity of the Romanian nation. On his bones the land of Romania made whole rests”) so that they can build some stupidity praising the fallen communists. But they didn’t replace our heroes from one place and that’s our hearts. There’s a saying here that heroes never die implying that through their death they earned a place in the heart of the nation forever. But they do die and that’s when the nation dies. And here we are today as Europeans – if we lose our past and our identity based on it we will lose our future. I hope historical monuments won’t become simple names with no meaning with which politicians will take place – by their mere presence at some ceremonies they demean their meaning(no offense to Paul Weston intended, I would vote for you if I was your constituent, especially since all the other parties in the UK are unmitigated disasters; I think you should persuade Daniel Hannan to join your party since he has a similar take on things).
Anyway, leaving my rant aside since it started to sound like a speech(it happens when I get emotional and I don’t need a telepromter for it), these people are not mere useful idiots. They are traitors, especially the ones saying that there is no problem with Sharia law. The difference is that an useful idiot is supporting a certain thing, like communism, due to him finding it superior even with all the evidence against it. A traitor is someone who is willing to harm his own people in order to support a certain ideology, which is what these people are doing.
Rollory
I googled “even a caveman” and could only find links to Osama bin Laden and the Hindu Kush.
But I did google “tiny url” and was able to do this:
http://tiny.cc/x4lw4
Thanks, it was easy!
“Is this thing even female?”
Geez, I would have opted for a guy if I didn’t know the truth beforehand. She doesn’t even look human. Let me explain. I’m not sure if you are aware of the tv-series Buffy The Vampire Slayer and it’s spin-off Angel. When they turned into vampire-mode they looked something like her.