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(satire?)

Forged in suburban English gardens and targeting what they see as divisive horticultural barriers separating communities, back-yard fence extremists and anti-plastic railing splinter groups are returning to the streets in an increasingly violent form.

In the back room of a sparsely decorated pub in Bolton a man with a bald head and a petunia tattoo poking out above his shirt collar is giving a speech. It is just after 11am but behind him the pub is already packed with middle-aged, mainly white, men and women.

Suddenly it erupts.

“We are being swamped by a wave of artificial fencing from Asia and elsewhere. Bring back our hedges … down with PVC-covered chain link fences and wood plastic composite lattice-fence panels. We will de-fence England or die trying!” The chants ring out as tables are thumped and wine glasses are thrust into the air.

“It is going to be a good ‘un today,” says the bald-headed man, leaning across the table towards me to make himself heard. “We’re going to get to twat some slotted fencing – I can feel it.”

The pub, a few hundred yards from Bolton railway station, is the latest gathering point for the most significant anti-horticulturalism and radical garden barrier street movement the UK has seen since the heyday of the Balustrade Front in the 1970s – the English Defence League.

EDL fence flagFor the past four months the Guardian has joined English Defence League demonstrations, witnessing its growing popularity, from protests attracting just a few hundred hardcore garden border activists at the end of last year to rallies and marches which are bringing thousands of gardeners onto the street – and into direct conflict with the police and local horticultural product and landscape gardening supply communities.

Growing unrest

The English Defence League plans to step up its campaign against what it sees as a huge rising number of “un-English” plastic fencing ‘invading’ English gardens in coming weeks, culminating in marches through some of the UK’s most high-profile horticultural communities, raising the spectre of widespread unrest between neighbours with adjoining gardens which back onto each other.

For Morris Godwin, an academic who specialises in horticultural tensions at Salford University, there is a crucial difference between the EDL and previous anti-fence movements.

The point for your average voter is that if they see the EDL marching through their streets shouting about how the neighbourhood is about to be swamped by plastic fencing or how the UK is going to be more and more divided by cheap garden panelling by 2040, it is not difficult to find support for the idea that Britain is being swamped by mass-produced panels and PVC coated railings in the mainstream media.

However, strong anti-garden fencing is not new amongst the political Right in England.

Files released recently from the National Archives show that soon after becoming prime minister, Lady Thatcher privately complained that too many wood plastic composite garden panels were being allowed into Britain and that she sympathised with fears that Britain was being “swamped” by foreign garden barriers, after she reacted sharply to ministers’ suggestions that thousands of Asian lightcast PVC wood effect slotted mesh panels should be welcomed into the UK.

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Related articles by Tom Pride:

EDL to BNP – our members are bigger and thicker than yours

BNP leader Nick Griffin investigated after tweeting address of Bob the Builder

Scientific study reveals up to 95% of Tory DNA is Neanderthal

AK 47s and swastika flags. The face of today’s Conservative Party?

Leader Of EDL Apologises After Being Photographed With Controversial Ultra-Right-Wing TV Presenter

Nigel Farage, the Tea Party Godfather and the man who tried to trash the pound. Twice.

Italian fascist denies being Sunderland manager

Bananas, nuts and fruitcakes express outrage at being compared to UKIP members

Cameron must be balder to counter UKIP threat say senior Tory slapheads

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