Saturday 4 April 2009

March for Divisive St Georges Day Gathers Pace


Events are moving are moving fast to the effect that a far-right activist in Dunstable is well-advanced down the route of organising a St George's Day march in Luton Town Centre with the twin themes of terrorism and immigration.

Dunstable blogger Paul Ray ( http://lionheartuk.blogspot.com/ ) was arrested last year by Bedfordshire Police for inciting racial hatred by the extreme anti-Islamic writings.

Recently he was in the forefront of a campaign to have a march in Luton Town centre on March 28th, when the organiser, James Yeomans, called it off given the evidence of far-right activists hi-jacking the event.

This time, Ray has put in a request himself for the march to take place on St Georges Day. Helping him according to the dedicated Facebook page is Dunstable BNP activist Laurence Jones.

There has been a very polite exchange of messages between police, town hall and Ray. The next move is on this coming Tuesday when Ray appears at the Safety Advisory Group - a Town Hall body with multi-agency respresentation. This body can advise on various organisational matters, but is unlikely to intervene on the wider political question of whether the march should take place.
These points need to be made :

1) This march is coming at the wrong time - given that the community needs time to return to normality after the Poachers March on March 10th

2) It is a strange situation when Dunstable activists are seeking to organise a march in Luton. Dunstable has no such event - why do they not organise one for there ? They will leave with no thought to the consequences left behind.

3) If it happens once, it is likely to become an annual event

4) The wrong people are taking the reins. If you truly wanted a family-friendly St George's Day march in Luton you don't want it being organised by a anti-muslim activist arrested for incitement backed up by the BNP.

5) It is unnecessary given the fact that Luton already has a full programme of St George's Day CULTURAL events planned for 25th of this month.

6) It is not necessary to introduce overtly extreme POLITICAL themes of terrorism and immigration into what should be a pleasant cultural celebration.

7) Of course what overrides is the fact that the organisers have the wrong motives. Using the trojan horse of St George's Day, far-right forces are instead trying once again to destabilise our community by focusing on extremely divise themes.

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