EDL Cambridge 2013: why I'll be marching

The Cambridge News has published an article on how the so-called Unite Against Fascism plans to oppose an English Defence League march in Cambridge on 23 February. The photo shows them with a banner ridiculing EDL leader Tommy Robinson’s imprisonment for travelling to the US with somebody else’s passport.

They seem not to have reflected on, say, Abu Qatada, who entered the UK on forged papers in 1993 and has been here ever since. Or indeed the Afghan hijackers who were given permanent leave to stay.

Personally, I’ll be marching with the EDL in Cambridge, because I object to a two-tier system where people who have never contributed to this country and even conspire to destroy it get to reap its full benefits, while Tommy Robinson was kept in solitary confinement as a category A prisoner before being convicted.

I’ll be marching because no City or County councillor ever consulted the public about the Mill Road supermosque, while plans for another Synagogue and a meeting room for Sikhs encounter obstacles constantly, and changes in bus routes to outlying villages often ignore Christians who wish to attend worship on Sundays.

And I’ll be marching because people who came here to escape oppressive regimes and ideologies don’t want to see their sons radicalised and their daughters mutilated and imprisoned in burqas, but face being ostracised and worse by their communities if they speak out themselves.

One of the groups opposing us is Cambridgeshire Race Equality and Diversity Service, an extraordinary title implying race is real, instead of a malicious fiction constructed to justify slavery, eugenics and prejudice. I’ll be marching with the EDL as one multiculturalist with many, because in this city that has already produced a terror attack we need to leave the two-tiered system to the two-faced, and get on with living side-by-side with each other as equals under the law of the land.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words