UKIP Official Expresses Sympathy For EDL

Stand For Peace reports that evidence has emerged that a senior UK Independence Party (UKIP) figure, the Chairman of UKIP Hillingdon, Cliff Dixon has “links to the English Defence League (EDL), a far-right group with a long history of attacking Muslims.”

The group says that Mr Dixon boasted on his blog in 2011, that he had “joined my friends from March for England to tag along on the EDL Tower Hamlets demonstration.”

One photo shows Dixon posing with EDL leader Kevin Caroll and other EDL figures.

Mr Dixon on the far-right. Photo: Stand For Peace

It is also alleged by the group that Mr Dixon’s blog also records his attendance at a number of nationalist marches, mainly through the relatively small ‘March for England’ group. One event was co-organised by the British Patriots Society, which is described by Hope Not Hate as “a tiny splinter of the EDL”.

Dixon is not the only UKIP official to take a somewhat uncritical view of the EDL.

Stand For Peace states that UKIP Bedfordshire Councillor Stuart Parr complained to the BBC, claiming that the EDL “has no political ideology at all and campaigns only against Islamification and unfettered immigration.”

However, EDL Deputy Kevin Carroll told attendees in America during a ‘Global Counter Jihad Meeting’ (recorded) on August 4th 2012:

Quote: “The English Defence League has gone political...”

Further reading:

1. UKIP officials expresses sympathy for far-Right EDL