EDL News reports that an English Defence League member named Diane Scrimshaw – one of the few in Essex who has remained loyal to the EDL leadership – has been boasting on Facebook about the damage she caused to a property in Westcliff-on-Sea owned by the Jaafriya Islamic Welfare Centre.

(The building has allegedly been used as a mosque without planning permission, and has already been the target of protests by both the British National Party and Britain First.)

First Scrimshaw appealed to her "edl friends" to inbox her as she had "something planned" for later in the week. She followed this up by posting a photograph of a flattened wall outside the Jaafriya Centre's building and added: "We went down Southend illegal mosque (just a shame the wall fell down PMSL)."

One of her Facebook friends commented "Vandal!", to which Scrimshaw replied: "I admit it Richard lol."

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The face of the master race?A mental health nurse has set up a new far right political party. Dr Andrew Emerson has joined other former BNP members to create Patria, which means homeland in Latin, which calls for Britain to withdraw from the EU, to repeal the Human Rights Act, to end all immigration and to repatriate non-British residents.

The group – which includes Ian Johnson from the New Forest who stood as a BNP candidate for Havant in the 2005 – will be fielding candidates in local and general elections. They left the far right BNP after becoming disillusioned with the way it was run.

Dr Emerson said: "Racism is a made up word. It's code for anti-white, anti-English. The people who accuse us of being racist can't explain what they mean by the word. What they mean is they’re against the English people standing up for themselves and their own rights in their own country. No other country in the world would allow the kind of immigration that we have seen over the last 10 to 15 years."

Liberal Democrat Faith Ponsonby represents Battins ward on Havant Borough Council and is a member of Havant Multicultural Forum. She said: "As far as human rights and immigration are concerned, we've always been a country which has welcomed refugees, from political and religious persecution. I'm actually descended from the Huguenots who came to this country in the 18th century from France.

"We welcome people who have been persecuted and this country has benefited from them. We have benefited from the skills they have brought here and what they have achieved. Personally I love the buzz of walking round places like London where there are different people from different countries who want to live here and contribute to our economy.

"I know people are concerned about immigration and people taking from the country but I feel that the benefits from multiculturalism are huge."

Dr Emerson, of Chichester, and Mr Johnson have stood as BNP MEP candidates.

Portsmouth News, 10 January 2013

Patria held its inaugural meeting in Dorset on 10 December. One attendee reported that the meeting "was kept deliberately small", which is another way of saying that very few people turned up. Details of the organisation's founding members can be found here.

Since then, Patria's leading team has shrunk somewhat. Both its chairman Richard Franklin and deputy chairman/press officer Colin Poulter have disappeared from the "Who we are" section of the Patria website. In Poulter's case, it appears that objections were raised to his alleged membership of the Church of Scientology.

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A man launched a drunken attack on a mosque after watching a news report about the desecration of Commonwealth graves in Libya.

Barry Stanbury, 42, was caught on CCTV cameras at shortly before 2.30am on March 5, wandering around the Exeter Mosque before a window was smashed, Exeter magistrates heard.

The court was told Stanbury was wearing "a distinctive hoodie" with a logo of a large cross on it, and a police officer recognised the defendant.

Clifford Howard, prosecuting, said: "The criminal damage occurred at the Exeter Mosque at 2.23am. We have the precise time because it was caught on CCTV."

When interviewed Stanbury said he was "so drunk he did not remember doing it".

Mr Howard said he told police his motive for carrying out the religiously aggravated criminal damage was seeing on the news that Commonwealth graves had been desecrated in Libya.

Stanbury, of Laxton Avenue, Exeter, denied racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage at the mosque but was convicted after a trial. Magistrates sentenced him to 80 hours unpaid work, £100 compensation and pay £150 costs.

Exeter Express and Echo, 1 November 2012

Via ENGAGE

The claim that Stanbury's attack was suddenly triggered by a news report is clearly nonsense. A glance at his Facebook page confirms that he is a member of the English Defence League (its Kingston-upon-Thames division, as he now lives in Reading) and his list of "likes" includes virtually every far-right organisation in existence, from the British National Party to the National Front.

Following the EDL's Luton demonstration in May this year, Stanbury commented that he was "fed up with peaceful protest". As support for the EDL's street protests continues to shrink, it can be anticipated that more disgruntled members like Stanbury will turn to direct acts of violence against the Muslim community.

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A man has been charged after allegedly making online threats to carry out an "Oslo-style" bomb attack on Muslims.

Kenneth Graham Holden, 30, will appear before magistrates later this month charged with two counts of sending offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing messages or matters.

Police launched a probe after race-hate posts were allegedly made on Facebook in April this year.

Detectives discovered comments threatening a pipe bomb attack on Ocean Road, in South Shields, South Tyneside, inspired by the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.

Right-wing extremist Breivik stood trial over the deaths of 77 people, eight in an Oslo bombing and 69 shot dead on Utoya Island.

Chief Insp Michael Barton, of South Tyneside Area Command, said they would not tolerate "racial incitement" on the internet.

Yesterday, a Northumbria Police spokesman said: "Kenneth Graham Holden, from Winskill Road, in South Shields, has been charged with two counts of sending offensive, obscene, indecent or menacing messages or matter."

Northern Echo, 6 September 2012

See also "Man charged after 'Oslo-style' Facebook bomb attack threats to Muslims", Shields Gazette, 6 September 2012

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Hope Not Hate reports that thanks to photographic evidence they were able to give the police, an English Defence League member, Steven Crispin, has been convicted of an attack on two Muslim brothers during an EDL anti-mosque protest in Dagenham last year, in the course of which he kicked one of the victims and fractured his jaw. Unfortunately a decision was taken not to charge Crispin with a racially aggravated offence and he received a jail sentence of just three months.

In December last year another EDL member, John McAndrew, received a 14-month custodial term to serve a minimum of seven months having been convicted of participating in the attack on the brothers. He was subsequently handed a five-year CRASBO banning him attending EDL demonstrations or entering mosques, Islamic cultural centres and Muslim festival sites.

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A supporter of the English Defence League head-butted one of the group's opponents during an anti-racism music festival.

James Lee Elliott, 20, was drunk when he attacked a member of Leicester Unite Against Fascism during the festival last year. The assault took place during a free music festival called Love Music, Hate Racism in Leicester's Market Corner in October, Leicester Magistrates' Court heard.

Elliott, who the court heard is already subject to a three-year football banning order, approached an information stall run by Unite Against Fascism and tried to pull down one of the group's posters. After three attempts, the court heard, he managed to pull the poster away and was challenged by a one of the people who were running the stall.

Prosecutor Cheryl Goes, told the hearing on Thursday that Elliott head-butted the man before he was restrained by onlookers and the police were called. When two police officers arrived to take him away, Elliott became abusive, calling the two constables a series of foul names. The officers said Elliott smelled of alcohol and was glassy-eyed.

The officers initially intended to issue him with a dispersal notice, which would have meant he would have to leave the city centre. However, as he continued to swear at them and struggle, they attempted to restrain him but he began attempting to punch and kick them, the court heard. He was eventually handcuffed when a third officer arrived to help his colleagues.

Ms Goes told the court: "During his police interview he accepted he was at the event and was a member of the English Defence League and was angered by the poster." Elliott has seven criminal convictions dating back to 2007, Ms Goes said.

Elliott, of Rona Gardens, Thurnby Lodge, Leicester, had previously pleaded guilty to using threatening behaviour, but denied resisting arrest and assault. He was due to be tried for those offences – which were caught on CCTV cameras – but changed his pleas to guilty on the day of the trial.

Kerry Patrick, representing Elliott, told the court that her client accepted he had been drunk and abusive but denied he had deliberately head butted his victim. He had pleaded guilty to the assault charge because he accepted there was contact between him and the man.

Ms Patrick said: "He accepts he was being abusive throughout and that he was intoxicated. He also accepts he was angered by the content of the poster and that he took it down after several attempts."

The chairman of the bench, William Langley, adjourned sentencing until Thursday, August 2. In that time, probation officers will compile a report on Elliott and his criminal history to guide the magistrates who sentence him.

Elliott was released on unconditional bail.

Leicester Mercury, 14 July 2012

Elliott's criminal history includes a conviction for assault following an attack on a UAF organising meeting in the run up to the EDL march in Leicester in October 2010.

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A member of the British National Party and former Stoke-on-Trent councillor has denied charges of racism.

Michael Coleman, 45, of Caverswall Road, Weston Coyney, denied two counts of racially aggravated harassment. The charge relates to allegedly racist language used in two articles on his website between 8 August 2011 and 8 March 2012.

He appeared at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court and will go on trial later this year at a date to be set.

BBC News, 21 June 2012

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The question is posed by Ted Jeory in the Sunday Express. The English Defence League member in question is one Toni Macleod, who claims she has now in fact left the EDL, though reportedly this is only because she's joined the overtly neo-Nazi breakaway group the Infidels.

Thirty-five weeks pregnant, Macleod has been told by Durham County Council social services that she would pose a "risk of significant harm" to her baby and they want to put the child up for adoption. According Jeory, this is because they "fear the child would become radicalised with EDL views".

The source of this bogus story is Macleod's MP, the Lib Dem John Hemming, who has even raised her case in the Commons. He has a post on his blog in which he uncritically repeats Macleod's assurance that she is "not racially prejudiced" and "has many friends who are Muslims and Sikhs". Hemming claims that his unfortunate constituent has fallen victim to the "thought police" and argues "I do not think association with the EDL is good cause to remove a new born child from a mother".

As the Express reports: "He contrasts her treatment with that of the extremist Islamic cleric Abu Qatada, who was allowed to remain with his children when he was briefly remanded on bail earlier this year as the Government tries to deport him."

Hemming is quoted by Jeory as saying: "It raises a curious question as to why Abu Qatada is allowed to radicalise his children but the state won't take the chance of allowing Toni McLeod to look after her baby in case she says something social workers won't like."

Read beyond the shock-horror headline and misleading introduction, however, and a rather different picture emerges of the reasons why social services might think that Macleod is an unfit mother:

The 25-year-old has a string of convictions for violence, including butting and biting a police officer after an EDL march in 2010 and she has been banned from owning dogs after setting a pit bull on a former partner.... Last month, a judge ruled that her three other children, who have different fathers, should be permanently removed from her care.... Documents seen by the Sunday Express reveal social workers are worried about Mrs McLeod's previous alcohol and drug misuse, her "aggressive behaviour" and her alleged "mental health issues".

Before she married her husband Martyn, Toni Macleod was known as Stella Evans. You can read a report of her arrest at the November 2010 EDL protest in Preston, and details of her conviction for setting dogs on her former partner, here. When social services took the view that Macleod posed a risk of harm to her child, the issue of her EDL opinions was clearly well outweighed by her record of violent criminality, along with a history of substance abuse and behavioural and psychological problems. Presumably this explains why her other children have already been taken into care. To draw a parallel with the case of Abu Qatada – who of course has not been convicted of a single offence, terrorist or otherwise, in the UK – is just absurd.

Under normal circumstances, the Express would no doubt portray Hemming as a naive liberal who is willing to put a baby in potential danger by whitewashing its mother's record. But because he has raised the issue of supposed double standards, claiming that a foreign Muslim terrorist suspect has been given favourable treatment compared with that accorded to a white non-Muslim UK citizen, the Express took a different line. And Jeory, with his extensive experience of Islamophobic journalism, was just the man for the job.

As for Hemming, he says that he is opposed to the EDL. In which case you can only conclude that the explanation for his behaviour is that he is a total idiot. Because his misrepresentation of Macleod's case has played directly into the EDL's hands, providing this gang of racist thugs with an excuse to rerun their paranoid nonsense about the so-called "two-tier" justice system in the UK.

You can read a selection of the comments from the EDL's Facebook page here.

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His name is Rob Sims and he's the man wearing the black EDL t‑shirt in the centre of the picture. (It is taken from his Facebook page, as is this photo which gives a clearer view of his face – and Zionist sympathies – and this one which illustrates his disturbing paramilitary inclinations.)

As we pointed out last week, Sims was responsible for posting the following comment on the EDL's official Facebook page in response to the trial of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik:

"We should be supporting this guy, The lot he killed where a bunch of Anti-Semite scum, These left wing idiots and muslims are making europe resemble Germany under NSDAP rule, Whats it gonna take for people to realise that we need more people like Breivik who are willing to actually fight for what he believes in."

That was posted last Wednesday and the EDL admins still haven't seen fit to remove it, even though it clearly comes into the category of soliciting to murder.

Who is "Rob Heldane Sims"? It isn't difficult to discover his personal and political details. He lives in Newton Aycliffe in County Durham, his date of birth is 13 September 1987, and – after failing to build a career as a singer in a black metal band – he is now employed by the outdoor power products company Husqvarna which has its headquarters in Aycliffe. He is a longtime active supporter of the EDL.

Back in June 2010 Sims set up a Facebook group to win backing for his "sponsered [sic] walk to Newcastle for the Dudley 2" – i.e. for the two EDL members, Leon McCreery and John "Snowy" Shaw, who had been charged with burglary and inciting religious hatred after staging a rooftop protest at a site where Dudley Muslim Association proposed to build a mosque.

A few months earlier Sims had launched a blog called Heldane EDL to which he contributed a single post, titled "Islam – the religion of peace?", where he outlined the views that have now resulted in his public support for Breivik's terrorist killings:

"The muslims claim that we interfered with 'Adolf Hitlers glorious work of exterminating the Zionist scum from the world' and that 'Allah demands the destruction of the Jewish race'. Are we expected to tolerate these people immigrating into our lands, with their beliefs of mass genocide in the name of their so called god!"

Sims' Facebook page shows that he is also a supporter of a group called Task Force Europa Ultras, which describes itself as "a Militant counter Jihadist movement which stands firm against the rapid Islamization of the European continent. We are strongly in support of Israel and many of the anti-Islamic movements and politicians in Europe today".

Unsurprisingly, given his sympathies for militant counterjihadism and extremist Zionism, Sims is a strong supporter of Roberta Moore's EDL Jewish Division and its parallel organisation the Jewish Defence League UK. Indeed he has borrowed the J‑Div/JDL's logo for his profile picture on his Facebook page. He shares Moore's Kahanist views, and last month posted an appeal on Facebook for help in distributing EDL Jewish Division leaflets in Gateshead.

Moore's wing of J‑Div is officially no longer part of the EDL. However, as her appearance alongside EDL leader Stephen Lennon at the Tower Hamlets demonstration last September indicated, this formal separation, while allowing the EDL leadership to distance itself from Moore's politically embarrassing views, doesn't necessarily mean much on the ground. As for Sims, his Facebook page shows that he manages to combine his involvement in Moore's outfit with support for the EDL and its Gateshead Division.

Moore's decision to separate from the EDL arose from a dispute over her links with the Jewish Task Force, an extremist US group headed by a convicted terrorist. She has described the Breivik trial as a "kangaroo court" and announced that she has no sympathy for his victims. So it is hardly surprising that one of her followers has gone a step further and become an advocate of Breivik's position on terrorist violence.

When you bear in mind that the JDL UK website currently features a long post declaring that Respect leader Salma Yaqoob is "a Jew hating, intolerable Islamofascist fanatic who preaches violence and incites hatred against Israelis and Jews" – in other words, that she is exactly the sort of "Anti-Semite scum" who Sims believes deserves to die – this begins to look seriously worrying.

In the past Islamophobia Watch has sharply criticised the failure of the police to take action against EDL supporters who incite hatred and violence online. However, the recent arrests of members of the EDL splinter group the Infidels indicate a welcome change of policy. Hopefully Durham Constabulary can be persuaded to give Sims' incitement to murder the urgent attention it deserves.

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An English Defence League member was arrested last night for assault and being in possession of racially inflammatory material after posts were made on Facebook allegedly threatening the Muslim community with a bomb attack "Oslo style".

In the week where far right extremist, Anders Behring Breivik is on trial for the murder of 77 young people, the English Defence League have been very quiet on the subject.

There is plenty of evidence out there that Breivik was partly inspired by the English Defence League, in fact before he went on his murderous campaign, he emailed his manifesto to a large number of EDL members who he had been in contact with.

Leadership claim time and time again that their far right organisation does not breed extremism.  South Shield's Division member, Kenny Holden, seems to prove the opposite when he states his intention to set a pipe bomb off in Ocean Road, a predominantly Asian area in the City.

Holden, states that he has a pipe bomb ready for Ocean Road and he is going to do it "Oslo style".

A spokesman for Northumbria Police said "a 29 year old man was arrested on Saturday night on suspicion of assault and possessing racially inflammatory material. He is currently in custody and is helping police with their enquiries."

EDL News, 21 April 2012

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