A victory for common sense

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Friday, 11 June 2010, 18:42

English Defence League "Patriot march on London to challenge Parliament" © David Hoffman

The racist English Defence League has called off its planned protest in Tower Hamlets for Sunday 20 June after the Troxy cancelled a booking for a conference that was due to be addressed by radical Islamic clerics.

It appears that a lot of pressure was put on the Troxy to cancel the booking, particularly by the council. In a statement released last night the EDL announced that as a result of the cancellation they were calling off their own protest.

While this removes the prospect of confrontation and is a victory for common sense it also highlights the complete failure of the authorities to address the growing EDL threat. Over the past few years hundreds of millions of pounds have been ploughed into community cohesion and other such initiatives but then we are told that groups that are deliberately setting out to whip up tension and violence cannot be stopped.

The problem appears to stem from the Public Order Unit at the Home Office, who have taken it upon themselves to act as the champions of free speech in advising successive Ministers that EDL protests should be allowed to happen. Their analysis and advice has been so shallow that one Minister refused to accept one report they prepared on the EDL and another commented "I learn more about the EDL from Searchlight than I do from our own official briefings".

They currently hide behind the legal opinion that static protests cannot be prevented but their real reason is far more ideological and short-sighted. I shall be writing more about this in the July issue of Searchlight.