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English Defence League (EDL)

The English Defence League (EDL) was trying to spread fear, violence and hatred against the Muslim community. Violent, far-right groups such as the 'English Defence League' and the 'National Front' have been operating with tactics of intimidation and violence. They use force and fear to cause divisions in working class communities. The definition of terrorism: to threaten and/or enact violence to push an ideology. Legislation allows for a group to be proscribed in the UK only if the Secretary of State believed it was currently concerned in terrorism, within the meaning of the Terrorism Act 2000.

The "English Defence League" are an organisation devoted to violence, public disorder, hooliganism, and the incitement of hatred under the convenient guise of making some kind of political statement. The EDL, formed in 2009, organised marches and demonstrations in several cities across the UK, which have seen sometimes violent confrontations with anti-fascism campaigners. From their earliest protests the EDL’s members sought to highlight issues including sharia law, Islam’s attitudes toward minorities, and the phenomenon that would become euphemistically known as “grooming gangs.” In reality these protests often descended into hooliganism.

Tommy Robinson was a British political activist and “citizen journalist” who came to prominenceo when he founded the English Defence League.In 2011, English Defence League leader and founder Tommy Robinson said that the “the Islamic community will feel the full force of the English Defence League if we see any of our British citizens killed, maimed, or hurt on British soil ever again.” Robinson left the group in October 2013, saying he has concerns over the "dangers of far-right extremism". The EDL organises protests across the UK against "radical Islam". Robinson said it was still his aim to "counter Islamist ideology", although "not with violence but with better, democratic ideas".

Professor Matthew Goodwin of Nottingham, who has studied the EDL, said: "I would treat the announcement with extreme caution given Stephen Lennon's (aka Tommy Robinson's) recent comments against Islam in general on Twitter, and already signs that a new movement that was not geared around demonstrations may be formed. In hindsight, this may all owe more to the quest for publicity than to a genuine conversion to democratic ideas"

The overriding grievance of EDL members was over continued immigration into the UK, and particularly Muslim immigration. EDL supporters express growing dissatisfaction with government and its ability to improve the economic situation. EDL supporters are significantly more likely to hold pessimistic views about their economic prospects than non-EDL members. EDL supporters are "ultra-patriotic", and some may disavow racist ideologies.

While the BNP was the most popular political party amongst EDL supporters, the majority of members state that they are democrats. EDL supporters are, for the most part, 18-24 year old males. The EDL has Afro Caribbean, Hindu, Sikh and Jewish members, but they constitute a tiny and insignificant minority, although their presence has allowed the leadership to disavow racism.

The EDL has no political programme, and few self-declared leaders. Its main activity was the holding of street demonstrations and marches, which are organised via Facebook and other social media. These may be used to intimidate Muslim communities and their institutions, or to protest against Muslim and Islamist public activities. They are often violent, and print and electronic media reports refer to their racist chanting and the giving of Nazi salutes by some members.

One EDL sub- group, the NE Infidels, was more openly racist and violent.

The English Defence League published following statement on 17 November 2010 on its Facebook page.

"In the last 66 years we as a nation, as a race have had our national identity stolen from us by politicians who have forced us to accept multiculturalism. They have and still are practicing cultural genocide on their own people, despite warnings that we will not accept it. They have forced us to accept the dilution of our heritage and history by the implementation of laws which will stop us from rising up, even if that's just to voice an opinion.

"Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving us of our integrity as distinct peoples, or of our cultural values or ethnic identities. Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of the rights of the native or indigenous people. Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on us by legislative, administrative or other measures was cultural genocide.

"And unless we find our backbone and stand up to the ones who are committing crimes against the English people we shall continue to be subjected to slavery by a British elite aided by outside influences whose only intention was to destroy us from within and wipe us out as a race."

Although some leaders and members have also been members of the BNP, the EDL was most accurately understood as a new populist social movement, rather than a traditional political party or group of the far-right. The threat that it poses is, at the moment, to public order, and beyond that to community cohesion.

The Swedish academic, Dr Tore Bjorgo, who has studied Europe's far-right movements for over twenty five years, noted in 1995 that increasing support for xenophobic and far-right parties enabled the growth of militant neo-Nazi organisations and networks which target asylum seekers and visible minorities in Europe. He further observed that groups perceived as "right wing" or "racist" frequently turned out to have no connections with extreme political organisations, and had only a rudimentary idea of any ideology. He suggested that theirs "is an anger against perceived outsiders, or the state, which could take a violent path".

This analysis supports the view that within Europe as a whole, there was a growing political reaction to continued migration, and especially Muslim migration, which was perceived as a challenge to European culture. This may arise because of genuine concern over the future rather than as a by-product of racist or neo-Nazi ideology.

In 2007, the EU Terrorism Situation and Trend (TE-SAT) Report published by Europol, noted that: "Although violent acts perpetrated by right-wing extremists may appear mainly sporadic and situational, right-wing extremist activities are organised and transnational'. Also that 'Right-wing violence was partly driven by the agenda of their perceived opponents".

In 2008, the TE-SAT report noted that "Activities from right-wing extremist groups are increasing", and in 2009 that "several right-wing extremists were acting alone without links to an extremist organisation" and that "Individual members of the WPM (White Power Movement) scene have exhibited their readiness to use violence, threats or coercion to reach their political goals. In 2010, it observed that 'far right activists are engaging in paramilitary training in EU Member States … and that individuals who act alone continue to pose a threat", and in 2011, that "right wing extremist groups are becoming more professional in their manifestations" and that they "still pose a threat in EU Member States".

The ACPO National Community Tension Team noted in 2008, with reference to far-right terrorism in the UK, that: "The unorganised nature of such activity makes it difficult to police but individuals within known Right Wing Extremist groups are the subject of covert operations locally, regionally and nationally" and that "Lone Wolf operatives in the UK have primarily targeted Muslims whereas there was more evidence of an anti-Semitic focus in continental Europe".

An important underlying philosophy for right-wing terrorism was that of "leaderless resistance" as proposed by an American Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam, in his online journal, The Seditionist, and the messages contained in the novels of National Alliance founder, William Pierce, writing under the name of Andrew McDonald. In The Turner Diaries, Pierce depicted a violent revolution in the USA that leads to the overthrow of the federal government, and the extermination of all Jews and non-Whites. His other book, Hunter, describes a campaign of targeted assassinations of couples in inter-racial marriages and civil rights activists carried out by a Vietnam War veteran who gets drawn into a white supremacist group planning insurrection.

These two novels were a formative influence on both Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Alfred P Murrah Federal Government Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, and David Copeland, the London Nail Bomber in 1999. The philosophy proposes that individuals, or small groups, who are radicalised act out their beliefs without either participating in the political movement itself or without being part of a command structure.

Within Europe, parallel ideological developments included those promoted by the American-born Francis Parker Yockey, author of Imperium, who campaigned for a transatlantic and trans-European alliance; Jean Thiriart, a Belgian former Nazi collaborator, who established the Jeune Europe Movement, and who advocated abandoning the trappings of Nazism and who campaigned for a wider European collaboration from the Atlantic to the Urals; and Povl Riis Knudsen and Michael Kuhnen who adopted elements of leftist theory into their violent far-right ideologies. Kuhnen was among the earliest far-right terrorists in Europe, who was convicted in 1979 of organising an armed assault on a NATO establishment.

Targets for far-right terrorists have been Muslim communities, state institutions and Jewish communities. It was no coincidence that the Norwegian Anders Breivik bombed the Norwegian Prime Minister's Office in Oslo. He had been preceded by a Swedish neo-Nazi group, who in 2005, planned to bomb the Swedish Parliament and murder large numbers of young people. The four members of the Kameradenschaft-Sud, a neo Nazi group, were convicted of a plot to bomb the rededication ceremony of a synagogue in Munich in 2003 which was to have been attended by the German federal president, Johannes Rau and members of the Cabinet. Had the plot succeeded, the German government would have been decapitated.

Far-right political parties and groups provide the arena in which radicalisation occurs, even if the number who go on to commit acts of terrorism has remained small. But there was little public support for terrorism, and interdiction of plots by effective law enforcement counterterrorist operations has resulted in a number of significant arrests and convictions in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

Far right terrorism was committed by very small groups and lone operators or "Lone Wolves". Far right groups lacked cohesion, and had a low degree of overall coordination, but it should be noted that support for their views has risen historically in times of high unemployment and economic distress.