Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tackling the far right

The English Defence League marches are heinous, but tolerated by the English authorities. Not so in my homeland, where the Scottish Defence League have been told by Edinburgh council that they cannot hold a march where they’d hoped to be joined by 200. Part of me welcomes this news: Scotland has its social ills (mainly sectarianism) but racial tension has never really flared. As Alex Salmond says, there are many colours in the tartan.

Then again, banning the march may serve to give credibility and a cause to the crackpots who call themselves the Scottish Defence League. Their march would probably have been a tragicomic affair, and they’d have disappeared into the black hole of public ridicule. But a ban is just what these agitators want. The BNP thrives on the idea of being the voice of the people, gagged by the politically-correct elite.

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