During the course of the day, I overhear several conversations between UAF activists and inquisitive passers-by: "Yeah, they're the British National Party — fascists — and we're here to stop them." There is no doubt that a hardcore element of the UAF has given itself a two-fold mission: 1) to use any rhetoric possible to stir up in the attendant crowds a rage that as near as possible matches their own, and 2) to ensure that the protest doesn't pass peacefully. The question is, is the EDL so bad that it warrants a campaign of violent agitation and misinformation? The UAF idea is that these are Nazi racists who want to attack Muslims and whoever else after that, and so must be fought with any and all means necessary. But even if the EDL is a Nazi organisation, the police have it well under control. The effect of the aggressive UAF tactics is to keep everything ambiguous, shrouded in a fog of war, and make it difficult for the EDL to be conclusively identified as one thing or another. 

Last March, members of the most overtly extreme Islamist group in the country, Anjem Choudary's al-Muhajiroun, heckled a homecoming parade for soldiers of the Royal Anglian Regiment in Luton, holding up placards denouncing the troops as "Cowards, Killers, Extremists" and "The Butchers of Basra". The protest had its intended effect — it provoked outrage. A group called the United People of Luton was formed in response, to protest specifically against the longstanding and very open presence of al-Muhajiroun in the town. At around the same time, a pro-BNP blogger called Paul Ray had an application for a St George's Day parade in Luton turned down by the council. The United People of Luton, in some kind of collaboration with Paul Ray and perhaps with a pre-existing group called March for England, organised demonstrations in April and May. The first was prevented from going ahead, and in the second, the protesters broke loose from a police "kettle" (an anti-riot manoeuvre) and ran en masse through the town. An Asian man was struck in the face and several windows were smashed. The group was effectively shut down when a number of the organisers were charged with public order offences and banned from Luton town centre for three months. Their response to this was to start up a national organisation, the EDL. 

From the start, the EDL has been a thoroughly amateur operation, built on internet chatrooms and Facebook. It used the existing networks of groups like March for England, and also those of the football hooligan world, quickly to command a fairly large number of committed supporters. It held demonstrations in various British cities throughout the summer, and was met with counter-demonstrations in every one by UAF. Violence broke out each time, and each side blamed the other for setting it off. Local Muslims turned out for the demonstrations, and in many cases so did a small but significant Islamist element, from al-Muhajiroun or other local sources. Photographs and video footage emerged of shaven-headed white men giving Nazi salutes and chanting racist slurs, and of gangs of Asian youths snatching a Union flag from an old man and beating a white youth to the ground. In July, Paul Ray appeared on talkSPORT radio as a spokesperson for the "English and Welsh Defence Leagues", and rather than "beating around the bush", declared that his grievance was with "all devout Muslims".

The EDL has certainly arisen in the context of a successful period for the BNP, which won two seats in June's European parliamentary elections and more than six per cent of the national vote, and perhaps a somewhat active period for other types of far-Right extremists. In early May, in between the two United People of Luton protests, the Islamic Centre in Luton was gutted by an arson attack. In July, counter-terrorism detectives uncovered a far-Right terrorist network and, along with it, a weapons cache larger than any seized in this country since the early 1990s. It is a fact that Muslims have, for some time now, been the main preoccupation of the far-Right in all its forms.