No Racists in Reading

EDL members manning illegal street stall

The English Defence League were in Broad Street today with an illegal street stall handing out leaflets. I was shocked, frustrated and disgusted that they were spreading their gospel of hate in my town.

Kath, my wife and I, saw the stand as we were walking through town after a very nice lunch together.She was so angry I had to hold her arm to stop her saying something.

So shocked was I, that I rang my colleagues in the Labour Party to see if anyone knew if the EDL had permission for their street stand in Broad Street, and discovered that they did not. I am pleased to say that after my intervention the Police were called and the stand was moved on.

EDL member handing out leaflets

I was on my own but had my camera with me. I asked very politely if they would pose for photographs which they were happy to do, they wer proud of the message of hate they were pedaling. As a result of the photos I had a long discussion with the fellow shown here and tried to persuade him that racism is not the answer for Reading.

The chap said some very frightening things like, " We are being outbred 6:1 soon the pakistanis will have taken over the country." He laughed when I pointed him out that if he was worried about the birth rate then he should be at home with his wife doing something about it not pushing racist policies on the streets of my town.

He told me that he was not from Reading but from a town between here and Slough, he though it was disgusting that English schools were being swamped with foreigners. When I asked him what sort of foreigners he meant, he clearly identified pakistanis as foreign. I was appalled  I tried to see what he thought of the Eastern Europeans he said they were different because they fitted in and were Christians.

It is interesting what him and his friends said about England being a Christian country, as I told him I was actually a Christian and what church they went to, strangely enough they didn't go to church.


So now we have racists trying to muscle in on our town. Maybe they feel they have been given permission to do this becuase the Council has withdrawn funding from the RCRE in Reading maybe they wanted to use the Mosque planing application in Park, I don't know what I do know is that right minded people in Reading, from whatever party, of what ever church or faith should stand up and say we don't want racists here.