BBC Documentary on Welsh Defence League

BBC Wales’ Week in Week Out strand carried a documentary on Monday on the Welsh Defence League, the sister organisation of the English Defence League. There were few surprises for those who have been following developments: the programme explained that the WDL’s founder, Jeff Marsh, has a background in violent football hooliganism (see my blog entries here and here), and a voice recognition expert was consulted to confirm that Marsh is the same person as the aliases “Arrylad”, “Joe Cardiff”, and “Mike Smith”. We were also treated to extracts from his balaclava-clad Arrylad discourses.

Predictably, the programme also provided overwhelming evidence that, despite disavowals of racism, the WDL has attracted supporters who are indeed racist, including against black people and Jews. A trawl through Facebook and some undercover recording showed WDL members chanting “If you all hate Pakis clap your hands” and (in the case of a certain “Euge Owa” and Carwyn Wood) boasting of threats and acts of violence.

The programme also highlighted links between some members and hardcore neo-Nazism: present at demos have been Trevor Hannington (currently in jail) of the Aryan Strike Force, and a certain Bryan Powell of Combat 18. He and his brother David Powell, we were told, now run a breakaway “True Welsh Defence League”, based in Swansea. The BBC journalist, Graham Thomas, tried doorstepping both brothers; neither answered their door, although Thomas managed to confront another neo-Nazi, Luke Pippin, while Pippin was out walking his dog. Thomas explained that Pippin had run the WDL website and organised transport, but Pippin insisted that his involvement with the WDL had been “minuscule”.

Marsh apparently declined to be interviewed, while the EDL’s “Tommy Robinson” failed to show up for a meeting with the BBC. However, the programme did make clear that Marsh had denounced racism and the neo-Nazi “idiots” in Swansea. Almost as an afterthought, Thomas explained that Marsh has now disbanded the WDL (which Marsh declared had been “murdered by Nazis”), setting up “Welsh Casuals” in its place. Thomas also listed the “Cymru Defence League” and “Active Welsh Nationalists” as successor organisations, although he gave no details.

Somewhat curiously, an interview with a spokesman from the Muslim Council of Wales was introduced with Tuvan throat singing.

12 Responses

  1. Rather than just complain about the EDL and similar movements all across Europe, why don’t you try and analyse why they’re springing up?

    “Not surprisingly, the multicultural program these elites promote is, by its very nature, profoundly undemocratic, in that it imposes changes on society that citizens most assuredly do not want and which they resist when given the opportunity to do so. Hence the extraordinary repression of dissent in the immigration debate and the totalitarian imposition of political correctness wherever elites have power, such as in American universities and in most European political parties. Nobel Prize winning novelist Doris Lessing, no enemy of the left, argued in a 1992 article that political correctness is ‘immediately evident as a legacy of Communism… a continuation of that old bully, the Party line.’ She argues: ‘millions of people, the rug of Communism pulled out from under them, are searching frantically, and perhaps not even knowing it, for another dogma.’ They are rabble-rousers are using the ‘most dirty and often cruel tactics’ and are ‘no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.’ It is difficult to disagree with Lessing that the totalitarian methods and utopian ambitions of multiculturalism clearly have their roots in Communist ideology. The multicultural program is, to be sure, spectacularly utopian.”

    That’s an excerpt ( page 52) from a new book , “The Perils of Diversity”, by a chap named Byron M. Roth.

    You have an EDL because Europe’s elites are arrogant, rancid and intellectually bankrupt. They are also totalitarian and fascist, not to mention doomed.

    Here is another from page 53 of the same book:

    Many today call the tactics of European multiculturalists a ‘soft’ totalitarianism. However, the willingness of governments to put people in jail or deprive them of their livelihoods for disagreeing with government policies ( Geert Wilders anyone?) can hardly be characterized as soft. It should be recalled that in its last years, the Soviet Union rarely murdered opponents, but used tactics similar to the ones being used today in Europe. A world without borders would be one without refuge from despotic rule. Despotic governance was the rule throughout most of recorded history, and it is still the rule for the majority of the world’s citizens… Whether people would be better off without independent nation states, living under the rule of a world government, or in large supernational blocs such as the EU is by no means clear. In fact, history and reason suggest that just the opposite would be the case. Most utopian dreams when implemented have, in fact, been real-life nightmares for the vast majority. One is hard-pressed to think of an exception

    When French police first started refusing to patrol “les banlieux” about ten years ago, the gov’t decided to give them a danger-pay bonus for doing so.

    Nowadays even with the bonus, they refuse to do so.

    You don’t seem to grasp what’s happening in England, so why not hop onto the Eurostar and take a promenade in a banlieu, ou deux,

  2. Go and take your pills, June.

    That sentence contains sIx words.

    That’s more than five words.

    Glad you’re learning to elaborate.

    • It also contains a comma and a full stop.

      Elaboration complete with no disruption from Muslims. How goes it with you? Checked under your bed today?

  3. I can see this is going to be another illuminating discussion.

  4. […] League. There were few surprises for those who have been following developments: the … Make sure to check out the original source Cancel […]

  5. I can see this is going to be another illuminating discussion.

    It certainly started off on the right foot.

  6. I dont think it is very nice that you are posting offensive comments about mr wood ! have u seen the other side of the story it could be very very different maybe someone hacked into his account maybe you wrote the comments ! evryone innocent until pproven guilty !!!!!! :@
    p.s i like what youv don wid your hair ! xxx

    Lots of love Teifi

  7. […] Defence League with Chris Knowles (CLA) and others present whose names I have, Jeff Marsh [see here  -RB] aka Joe Cardiff from Wales was due to attend the meeting but Chris Renton EDL alias John […]

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