Luton Squabble.

As I briefly mentioned yesterday there was a little bit of trouble in Luton, Bedfordshire on Sunday May 24th when around 500 people went on the rampage attacking Asians and clashing with the police. This is not the first bit of trouble Luton has seen in recent months. Back in March there were angry scenes when a group of pro-Taliban protesters picketed a welcome home parade by the Royal Anglian Regiment who had just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. This has already been commented on by everybody and anybody including myself who covered it in a series of post entitled National Bullshit Month.

In April a group of local football hooligans, casual racists and some ordinary Luton residents who were pissed off by the events in March staged a small, impromptu demonstration. This led to some minor scuffles with the police as the group meandered through Luton town centre with no clear purpose. I've found this video of that days events.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpDrgrxrR3c

Looking at that footage I don't think any of the demonstrators are involved in politics full time or affiliated with any political party. The tone of the placards would suggest that some of the protesters loosely follow a far right/racist ideology specifically that of the British Peoples Party (BPP). The BPP are a small and relatively new group mainly made up of people who have either been thrown out of or denied membership of the British National Party (BNP) for being too racist, too violent or just too odd for the BNP

While the April protest went largely unnoticed by people outside of Luton it clearly came to the attention of the British far-right movement. A pressure group called March for England http://marchforengland.awardspace.co.uk/blog/ who are connected to both the BNP and the BPP soon set about organising another, larger march on May 24th. Initially Luton's Labour controlled council granted permission for the march to go ahead. Then March for England pulled out of the demonstration presumably because they realised that being associated with violence so close to the European and local elections in June would discourage people from voting forfar right parties. With the association with the BNP broken Luton council withdraw permission for the demonstration.

This didn't stop the locals who took part in the April demonstration and a small number of people from outside Luton who follow the British Peoples Party ideology going ahead. The march started at 17:00. At around 17:15 a group of about 500 broke off from the main march and charged into town looking for a fight with any Asians it encountered. During this time one Asian man was assaulted, three cars had their windscreens smashed and an Asian owned restaurant had it's windows broken. By 17:30 the police had deployed mounted units and officers in riot gear. By 18:30 the group had been contained and then dispersed. As you can see from this video although there seemed to be plenty of people willing to get stuck in it can hardly be called a riot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A37CQTyVRV4

In conclusion while the protests at the Royal Anglian Regiment parade contributed to Sunday's events I think it was just the work of 500 or so local hooligans engaging in what the Territorial Support Group would call a quiet afternoon at the football. If there was any hidden agenda it was being orchestrated by the local Labour party who were trying to associate the BNP with violence in an attempt to get the people of Luton to vote Labour in the local elections of June 4th.