EDL protest in Telford passes off with just handful of arrests

Aug 14 2011 by Mike Lockley, Sunday Mercury

THEY came in their hundreds, waving banners and clutching beer cans, spitting venom and warm lager on the deserted streets.

They found a chipboard protected ghost town where their chants competed with the baying packs of police dogs.

The English Defence League’s invasion of Wellington, a Telford market town with a large Asian population, was dubbed a potential powder keg.

Thanks to Operation Crown – a massive, multi-force initiative by police – it was reduced to a damp squib.

Hundreds of heavily tattooed card-carrying EDL members, restricted to a ‘static protest’ in the town centre, were reduced to doing what they do best: swilling lager and singing football songs.

They hung the day of action, which drew supporters nationwide, on their concern over the ongoing trial of seven local Asian men accused of luring under-age girls into prostitution.

By the end of the stand-off, those concerns were replaced by the boozed-up mobs’ anger over tight police controls on mobile loos placed a few feet from the protest.

By the time inebriated ‘militants’ were queuing impatiently to spend a penny, their message had gone down the pan.

As a gathering, it was a bizarre hybrid of political bile and partytime.

Leader Kevin Carroll conducted a minute’s silence for Tariq Jahan, whose son was killed along with two brothers during the height of Birmingham’s riots.