I have just discovered that the English Defence League will be allowed to march through our streets before assembling for a rally in All Saints Square in a week’s time.
The EDL is to hold a national demonstration in our town on Saturday 10 May…the day that Rotherham United could be at home in front of a full house in the play off semi final. It seems that South Yorkshire Police are bending over backwards to welcome the EDL.
The decision to allow them to congregate in the centre of town on a Saturday afternoon when 12,000 football fans could be in town as well as shoppers is baffling to say the least.
The last time the EDL visited Rotherham they spent a couple of hours getting tanked up outside the County Borough and Angel pubs; hurling abuse at passers by and chanting racist comments before marching through town to assemble outside the Town Hall. Afterwards there were scuffles with police on Main Street and Bridge Street.
Our fragile local economy can ill afford the impact of an EDL gathering smack bang in the middle of town. All Saints Square is the main thoroughfare for shoppers and the EDL’s presence will cut the town in two.
Other towns and cities are much less accommodating than South Yorkshire Police and many choose only to allow the EDL to congregate away from shoppers and town centres. In Rotherham we might as well give them the freedom of the borough. I have no doubt that they will return time and again if they are given such a warm welcome by the boys and girls in blue.
The decision is crazy!
Robin Symonds
Rotherham Politics 
I am sure it is on order to hype multiculturalism and stand up against those who want to devide our community. I am sure this is in order to stir people up against uKIP
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Traders, shoppers and members of the public are paying the price for the cover up of the years of child abuse in the town.
The blame for this is with the RMBC and those Cllr`s who turned a blind eye to the abuse.
The march should be banned; Rotherham needs this kind of event like a hole in the head.
Thank you Labour controlled RMBC for creating the reasons far right groups are targeting the town, you should hang your heads in shame!
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You should hang your head in shame for wanting to deny the right to demonstrate from a group of people that you don’t agree with! Perhaps the police should check with you first that anyone demonstrating in Rotherham is acceptable to you!
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I promise this will be my final post on this subject. Frankly I find it depressing that people on here seek to defend the rights of a bunch of overtly racist, violent thugs. Please have a look at this link. It is a video of some of the 300 EDL who assembled in Rotherham in 2012. They are drinking in the Angel pub on Bridgegate and chanting an extremely offensive song, which I believe any decent human being would be offended by, not just Muslims. I defy anyone to defend the actions of these thugs after watching this video. Why anyone would defend their right to demonstrate in such a vile manner is beyond me.
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Dear Robin,
So its alright for the Unions to march through our Town but not anyone you disagree with. Everyone in this Country has a democratic right to peaceful protest, including sadly, the likes of the EDL. Strange that no one seems to criticise the Anti- Nazi league when they march and get arrested for disturbance/ breach of the peace. If any EDL supporter breaks the Law ( which includes Racial incitement) then they should be immediately arrested. The only way to stop extremism, is to allow them to have their say and then shoot them down with reasoned arguments. It seems to be working with the BMP.
The right to peaceful protest is one of our greatest freedoms, and the world envy`s us for being able to allow those we disagree with, to walk the streets.
When the Police are used to prevent political marches then it becomes the Police state of Russia, some thing no one wants. The Police should be praise for making such a difficult decision. I am quite sure they did not do it lightly
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Of course it is perfectly alright for unions to march through town. It would be perfectly alright for UKIP to march through town if they liked. The reason being that they are legitimate organisations and I would expect them to do so peacefully and without disrupting the lives of local people going about their everyday business and local shops and businesses would not lose trade as a result. In fact I would wager that whenever there is a trade union march the local economy receives a healthy boost as the law-abiding people who take part spend their money in local shops and cafes and do not put others off attending.
The EDL on the other hand is made up largely of football hooligans looking for something to do when their team is not playing. They are not a political party and consequently this is not a political march as you say. They get drunk and cause trouble wherever they go hence the £800,000 cost to the public purse the last time 300 of them turned up in Rotherham. If they must come to Rotherham then why not put them out of the way as happens in many other places?
To blame Rotherham’s historic CSE problems is a spurious argument. The EDL has held marches in many towns and cities that do not have such a history. Last year they gathered in Sheffield to protest because a pub was being turned into a mosque. The only problem was that it was actually being converted into a fast food outlet but that didn’t stop the EDL assembling outside the soon to be fast food takeaway. There was a massive police operation for that one too but at least it didn’t cause the disruption that they will surely cause in our town centre.
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Robin Symonds. The only people that cause trouble at EDL rallies are the left wing facists who attend to cause as much trouble as possible. The EDL have a valid point to make and should be able to make that point peacefully. I have sympathy for the cause of the EDL. It isn’t really about skin culture, but the culture people try to force on us. I believe that when you go to live in another country, you go there to dissolve into their culture, not to force your own on it. Rather than creating ghetto’s in specific parts of cities or turning cities into country within a country, we should look at better integration. Why go to another country, if you only want to live with other Indian’s or Pakistani’s etc. We now have the same issue with white Eastern Europeans The racist attitudes can be just as bad if not worse from other cultures. I believe immigration to the UK needs to be stopped for 10 year and the quality and quantity controlled. I don’t believe in discrimination on colour or ability, but what benefit you will be to the UK.
Cheers
Tim
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Tim, what are you basing your statement on that it is the left that cause trouble at EDL rallies? How many EDL rallies have you attended? Are you a member? You are talking nonsense. Please follow the link to read about the EDL attacking police in Walsall in “some of the worst violence West Midlands police have ever faced.” http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/coventry-edl-thug-jailed-after-6437601
I also wonder where your experience of ghettos and refusal to integrate comes from. I’m assuming you live in Anston, where I believe there is very little cultural diversity. I, on the other hand, live in an area that benefits from a rich diversity of cultures. My next door neighbours are Asian and there are Latvians, Lithuanians and Slovakians on my street. There are probably other nationalities too. Everyone gets along fine and it is far from a ghetto.
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Robin Symonds: If you think the EDL march will have an adverse effect on the economy of the shops in the town, just wait until the giant Tesco opens up. Another fine decision by our wonderful council!
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robin , i take it you dont live in eastwood , last night gangs of slovak youths on the st’s again, running wild .police called again , another window smashed in a empty house .
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Robin Symonds I have never attended a rally, however I saw the videos from what happened outside the city hall in Sheffield. The left attend these demonstrations to incite and attack from the evidence I have seen. I actually went on three peace marches in Sheffield during the Iraq war, but refrained from going on the third due the the way the left were starting to behave and kept away from further ones. I have experience of Page Hall, Darnall (I find it unacceptable that people walk around with niqabs on) where my family come from and Attercliffe. The last time I went through page hall the place was on edge and my dad and brother feel very uncomfortable due to 100′s of Eastern Europeans hanging around, as they make that trip every other Saturday. I don’t believe in importing people to do our dirty work, I call that slavery and it has caused wage compression for most, when you have about 5 million more fighting for work than the country has work for. Whether people vote UKIP or http://www.no2eu.com, we need to leave the EU and control our own borders. The people will speak on the 22nd May. Cheers Tim
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Dear Robin, you seem to conveniently forget that the last time the EDL marched in Rotherham It was our thieving scumbag of an MP, McShame who was filmed shouting obscene language at the marchers. You certainly do have a one sided view which would ban anyone who does not carry your communistic arguments. It is their democratic right to march!
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I think the new Tesco store will have a positive effect on town centre trade. It will give people a reason to come to town and being so close to the market it should benefit market traders. Also it will create jobs for local people.
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HA HA HA OHHH HA HA HA HA HA Benefit market traders ..HA HA more jobs ..HA HA HA OHH can I buy tickets to one of your shows ?…… WHAT A COMEDIAN.
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Do you dispute that it will create jobs?
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Has Robin’s email account been hacked and is someone using it for fake posts? A full time union official cheerleading for Tesco? That can’t be right.
Let’s just hope those jobs aren’t like these:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/forward-march-zero-hours-contracts-must-be-halted
And that new employees are treated better than these:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/05/tescos-treatment-its-workers-shows-why-we-must-stop-subsidising-it
And that all those disputes with USDAW has finally shown Tesco that it’s better to be nice than exploitative. We can only hope.
Still, at least those children’s centres staff to be discarded by the scoundrels in the town hall will have somewhere to apply. Maybe that’s the point.
PS: Does anyone know if the Socialist Labour Party is standing a candidate in the Euros? I like the idea of a left wing party that’s demanding an exit from Europe. If the EU upsets Ricky Tomlinson, then maybe I’m not a ‘traitor to the left’ after all for wanting out. Maybe I could even prevent just a few votes going to UKIP by pointing out that not all the left sold their souls to the EU. The (very) few kippers that I know just despise the EU. They’re not racist, just angry, and I believe that most would prefer an anti-EU option on the left than the right.
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You seem to be unaware that Tesco are losing market share and when the new store opens they will fight like hell to regain it and this will surely mean a loss of custom for the market which is presently struggling (as is the new Sheffield market on the Moor) and has quite a few empty stalls now. Supermarkets can have loss leaders, market stalls can’t!
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Warren, I think you know I wasn’t “cheerleading” for Tesco. I replied to some absurd post that Tesco will have a more detrimental impact on town centre shops than the EDL’s march. I am no fan of Tesco (or any other multinational giant for that matter). However, it is a fact that town centres rely on national stores choosing to locate there and cannot survive just with small independent shops. The negative effect of national chains moving out of town is all too apparent in Rotherham (M&S, BHS, Next etc). I have not commented on Tesco’s employment practices or the state of its industrial relations because it would have been irrelevant to the post to which I replied.
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As a tax payer I resent my money being wasted on the EDL. If they want to protest then they should pay the policing bill!
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A refreshing change to see a senior officer from UNISON promoting the values of Tesco, the very same Tesco so well connected to Dame Shirley Porter with her permanent home in Israel.
Whatever next, can we expect that the soon to be crowned Leader Akhtar will be made to join LFI?
I wonder how many voters in Rotherham West would be placing the cross in the box for a potential supporter of the LFI?
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Akhtar can’t be crowned anything if the electorate vote him out next Thursday. Why are you so sure the Asian postal vote will return him. Respect are standing and they will attract some of their vote. This election is expected to be scrutinized very closely indeed and you can be sure Akhtar’s vote will be!
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It’s a done deal, Akhtar will be returned, UKIP have made a limp attempt to win this ward, no real effort to take on Akhtar, poor on the door step canvassing, Labour hitting UKIP when and ever they want, a UNISON supported campaign, and the list of failures goes on and on.
UKIP will need to ask themselves why they failed to win this ward, was it because the Tory opposition decided to spike the guns of UKIP and have a candidate stand in the ward just to spilt the right wing vote?
UKIP have only themselves to blame for a rubbish performance, no coordination and messages that mean absolutely nothing to the vast majority of Rotherham West voters.
Yes there may be a review into how postal voting influenced the outcome, that will not make a blind bit of difference; Akhtar is now even at this early stage strutting around with his chest puffed out gloating over his predicted re-election win on 22nd May.
And this victory from a Landlord Cllr who profits from immigration into the town.
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Don’t count your chickens. I notice you’ve made no mention of Respect and their lack lustre campaign. I saw Akhtar after the EDL protest and he certainly wasn’t strutting. In fact the only time I’ve seen this taxi driver strut is when he’s going in the bank.
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