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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.
For 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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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.
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Pingback: English Defence League steps up campaign against garden fences in England » Alternative News Network
paul8ar said:
Reblogged this on paul8ar.
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gingerfightback said:
Creosote is foreign sounding as well – this should be banned too
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bobchewie said:
Ive been counting how many news items are depicting benefit claimants as terrorists Now… im.adding more to the list as i see them. Its weird as in the indie Its written that army veterans eg afghanistan troops who have lost limbs in combat are having benefits removed After being assessed fit for work by atos…so theres a surreal moment for you. Benefit claimants who are terrorists while being on active duty abroad fighting against terrorists.
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bobchewie said:
Its creosotic creating creosoticsm
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Aynuck said:
The fence extremists are despised by the absolutely and completely unbiased BBC who recently proved their impartiality by fawning over a rotten council estate verge which has been funded by the DWP to justify the actions of rogue gardeners who publicly cut down one of England’s best flowers on a London street.
The much derided fence extremists are accused of being northern, working for a living, and daring to have an opinion which differs to that of the Stasi commissariat.
The northern anti freeze drinker can be easily identified by tattoos which are not the amusingly fashionable type sported by the extremely intelligent London unemployables and lady-boys, but are the very rough uncultured type which are favoured exclusively by the beastly unshaven shaven headed brutes who want to ‘get the bummers off our streets’.
A spokesman for UKIP is laughing his bollocks off.
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3am said:
Reblogged this on 3am.
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overburdenddonkey said:
the anglo-saxon de-fenceless 5.6 kilometers…(since we have now gone metric)
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overburdenddonkey said:
or the neo-anglo-saxon levellers…armed with their kent poles…on command, lifting up in one single thrust, taking out 5.6 kilometers (a league), of fencing at a time….
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yunusislam said:
Trust the English Defence League to get it wrong! They turned up at a fencing tournament yesterday, intent on throwing glasses at the rapiers, thinking they were rapists. Apparently, it was down to the fact that ‘fencing’ and ‘fencing’ should be spelled differently – or so the EDL claimed before they were run through.
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gingerfightback said:
On a industrial scale
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peter said:
A female spokeswoman for Wigan EDL said: “One dorn’t wanta ‘edge one’s bets, cus at end of ‘day this is a strictly privet matter…”
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Aynuck said:
Did the Wigan kunckledragginmuchtattooinloudshoutinnfascistbastardin EDL spokesthingy who was a woman of the opposite sex come from Dorset by any chance?
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gogwit said:
Reblogged this on Gogwit's Blog.
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John Derwent said:
This has got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read ahahaha, when will the EDL stop making themselves looking like idiots?
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