Eyewitness: Dogs and riot shields
The following is the eye-witness testimony of an NUJ member who joined the anti-fascist protest in Bolton on Saturday
My first and only face-to-face encounter with the EDL on Saturday wasn’t even in Bolton. It was at the motorway services in Newport Pagnell.
My coach, which had left central London at 6.15am, had stopped to pick up the last of our passengers. It was around 10am, and raining lightly, yet the EDL’s young supporters were all dressed in T-shirts. They were all young men, all in their late teens or early 20s, with the exception of one or two well-spoken older men, who I didn’t even realise were with the EDL until they began ushering the younger men back onto their coach.
Shivering, despite my four layers of clothing, I didn’t have to wait long to understand why the EDL lads weren’t cold. Those who weren’t downing pints in the boozer were clutching cans of Strongbow, waving at the UAF supporters from a half-empty coach.
Needless to say, they weren’t confrontational. Bullies never are when there’s a danger they might be outnumbered. None of the threats they make on internet chat rooms from the safety of their bedrooms about “if I’m ever face-to-face with such-and such a UAF member I’ll do such-and-such” materialised.
And that’s the point. When EDL members are in small numbers, they don’t have much to say. When, on the other hand, they are allowed to gather unopposed in large numbers, they show their true colours. Take Stoke, for example, where the EDL ran rampage through Muslim areas of the town, smashing up shops and attacking citizens.
Later in the afternoon, in Bolton, I didn’t see any more than a handful of EDL. I wasn’t in the main square, because my coach arrived after the police had already closed it off, and the police made sure that the EDL weren’t confronted with counter-demonstrators on their march to the square.
I watched from behind the barrier the police had erected to prevent any further demonstrators from joining the UAF protest, as riot police with dogs and shields forced UAF demonstrators into an increasingly-restricted space.
I saw two officers in riot gear dragging an elderly man across the ground. He was bleeding from his face and the back of his head. A photographer was pushed to the ground by a member of the riot squad as she tried to photograph the arrest of a young woman who had been taking part in the UAF demonstration. A young Asian man, who wasn’t taking part in the protest, was manhandled by a male police officer as his female colleague screamed that it was for the man’s own good.
A legal advisor who travelled on our coach told me later that she’d gone to a police station to monitor arrests. The police weren’t very forthcoming, but the partner of an arrested protester said that according to her partner, people were being charged mainly for swearing, or else weren’t being charged at all. Hardly the mass violence the police later claimed they faced.
A young Muslim woman explained to a friend of mine why she defied Mosque leaders who told her not to take part in the UAF demonstration: “I’m sticking up for my rights in my home town,” she said “and that’s too important to miss.”
Laura J
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