Dogwash

... for people we don't agree with. 'Cos the normal rules don't apply to them, innit?

From Corporate Watch via Lancaster Unity.

Silverdale Tours has been revealed to be the latest company prepared to profit from transporting the English Defence League (EDL).

Revealed to be? As in having the name Silverdale written in big letters on the side of the coach along with the local EDL's own confirmation that the coach came from Nottingham. Intrepid sleuthing there lads. Award yourself a couple of gold stars.

The EDL had planned a march through Tower Hamlets to the East London Mosque on 3rd September 2011. The planned demonstration was in the vein of loyalist Orange marches in Northern Ireland.

A heavy police presence kept groups separate throughout the day but, at around 6pm, a group of EDL supporters, travelling in a vehicle hired from Silverdale coaches, drove past the East London mosque hurling insults. The coach was pursued and set upon by a crowd who broke windows and hurled street furniture. As the news spread around Whitechapel, hundreds of local people poured onto the streets and confronted police who had moved in to protect the EDL.

Confronted police who moved in to protect the EDL? What, to protect them from a mob of overexcited violent savages who might well have committed murder? Naughty policemen, hindering the righteous revenge of the oppressed like that. As to whether the EDL contingent "hurled insults" from inside their coach, with its sealed tinted windows, I can't say. I wasn't there, was I? (Or should that be, "innit?") At least Corporate Watch refrains from propagating the meme about the EDLers breaking the windows themselves, from inside the coach.

In February 2011 Andrews of Tideswell, another company used by the EDL in Bradford, made a statement that it would not carry the EDL (or other protesters) again after several of its coaches had their tyres slashed by anti-fascists prior to the EDL's Luton demo.

Ah yes, this little incident. Nice!

Silverdale Tours are based in Nottingham at Little Tennis Street South, Nottingham,NG2 4EU.Tel: 0115 912 1000(0115) 912 1000, Fax: (0115) 912 1558, Email: info@silverdaletours.co.uk.

That's very detailed. And what, perchance, are readers expected to do with this information? Send them a Christmas card? Recommend them to the students' union for getting to the next UK Uncut gig?

The article ends with:

Companies that have provided services to the EDL in the past and have not pledged not to do it again include:

[List of coach hire companies follows, with detailed contact info]

You might like to read that sentence again. I certainly missed the double negative first time round. This is a list of companies which have not yet given in to threats from "anti-fascists".

Now it's just possible that a number of irresponsible antifascists might be so enraged that they might pop round and relieve their frustration with a spot of impromptu tyre-slashing. Not that we'd condone such behaviour of course. Heaven forfend. We're just saying, like.

As a friendly warning, if you get my meaning. I mean, nice little business you've got here. Wouldn't want anything to happen to it, would we?

The most depressing thing is that these people don't see the contradiction.