Yesterday, a British soldier was murdered in Woolwich, South London. Early reports suggested that the two men who had attacked the soldier were Islamic extremists, with one man telling a bystander that he’d carried out the attack because British soldiers kill Muslims every day.
Those reports were later confirmed, but far-right Islamophobes the English Defence League didn’t need confirmation, just speculation, to spur them into descending onto Woolwich in their frenzied, drunken hordes. What exactly they were hoping to achieve is unclear—the two alleged killers had already been shot by police and taken to hospital—but it seems they were there to exploit a soldier’s death and make wild generalizations about British Muslims all being extremists who want to behead people in public.
Videos by VICE
The fascist mob gathered at a local pub, where they listened to some rambling hate rhetoric from their leader Tommy Robinson, before trying to march through the streets, being stopped by police, throwing bottles at the police, being kettled by the police, then sent home having accomplished absolutely nothing.
I was there to take photographs of 60 to a hundred angry, confused men.
Find full coverage of yesterday’s events in Woolwich here.