EDL March in Bradford.

On Saturday August 28th the English Defence League (EDL) staged a demonstration in Bradford, UK in an attempt to provoke the cities large Muslim population into riot. In the end very little happened except for a few minor scuffles. However this peaceful outcome was the result of the tolerance of the residents of Bradford rather then the actions of the police who put in a rather sloppy performance.

Firstly they did not feel the need to enforce the Home Office's ban on marches and processions in the city. I think it is fair to compare an EDL demonstration with a football match where crowd trouble is expected. In those circumstances the police intercept the coaches carrying the travelling supporters on the motorway and then escort them to a designated disembarkation point which is normally very close the their destination. This is done to stop random groups of supporter wandering around the city where they may run into rival supporters or cause trouble with local residents. While the police made a point of being seen to follow this procedure with four of the EDL coaches they allowed six more to make their own way into the city to let off their passengers where they liked. This led to groups of 30-100 EDL supporters walking through the streets to the site of the demonstration chanting, annoying the locals and generally making their presence known. To me that sounds very much like a march or procession.

The second problem with the police's plan was the location for the EDL's static demonstration. It's been widely reported that the EDL demonstrations was being held in a section of Bradford's Urban Park which had been fenced off especially for the occasion. This isn't true. The Urban Park is actually a construction site for a shopping mall development that ran out of money. The developer and the city council then agreed to fence off the half finished building foundations and let the rest of the site go to seed in order to make it look more like a municipal park then a sign of recession. So while the police made a big show of searching the EDL supporters for weapons by passing them through metal detecting arches as they entered the site the police were actually marching them on a construction site littered with bricks, stones, timber and metal bars all of which could easily be used as weapons.

Despite being something of a mini armoury for rioters the pre-existing fencing at the Urban Park did provide the police with a massive advantage that they decided not to use. What they should have done was compress the EDL into a small area up against the fencing. This would have allowed them to set up a small cordon of police officers that could easily be re-enforced. Instead the police allowed the EDL to spread out in the centre of the site while surrounding them with a large cordon of police officers. As a result of giving the EDL plenty of space to move about and an overstretched police cordon the police soon lost control as their line was broken and small groups of EDL were able to escape. Then rather then being caught and placed back in the Urban Park these escapees were allowed to search out groups of Muslim youths and some were actually escorted into these groups by the police. A tactic that is only really asking for trouble.

Although they did eventually deploy officers in full riot gear the police never fully regained control of the situation. This was mainly due to them taking a very soft approach to the EDL. In all the footage of Saturday's events that I've watched I only saw one police officer with his baton drawn and even then he wasn't using it. So the G20 kettle at the Bank of England this was not. At the end of the demonstration this lack of control coupled with the confusion over the location of the EDL's coaches to allow two large groups of EDL supporters to escape the police cordon as the police were attempting to load them on to coaches. Fortunately the EDL are a cowardly lot so as soon as these two groups were confronted by groups of counter-protesters they quickly retreated back to the protection of the police averting major disorder.

The police force in charge of the operation was West Yorkshire police force. In their jurisdiction they also have the home ground of Leeds United Football Club. Like Millwall, Cardiff and West Ham Leeds Utd have a long and fearsome reputation for hooliganism Therefore I find it very hard to believe that the police officers in charge of Saturday's operation were not aware of the mistakes they were making.


Today, August 30th the English Nationalist Alliance (ENA), an EDL splinter group tried to stage a protest march in Brighton. About 30 of them turned up and were prevented from leaving Brighton railway station by around 200 counter-protesters. In order for the ENA to be able to begin their march the police drove the counter-protesters away from the station through the city and kettled them. The ENA then held a short march and a tiny rally before heading home. While the ENA were left to smash up a pub Brighton police spent most of the afternoon chasing counter-protesters through the city with police horses.