Passers-by on Broughton Road at the weekend may at first glance have felt rather encouraged by what looked like a well-intentioned demonstration near the entrance to Tesco.
Around 5–6 men were present, some bearing a flag with the words ‘LOCALS AGAINST RAPISTS’ on a Scottish-saltire background. Their placard deplored sexual crimes against women and children, demanded more police patrols, and an extension of relevant CCTV coverage.
‘Women and children,’ it concluded, ‘are not bits of meat’.
What was not so apparent at first glance was that those running the demonstration were members of a far-Right political group and not local residents here at all.
They seem to have chosen Broughton Road for its proximity to Eyre Place where a very serious sexual assault occurred on 8 October (Breaking news, 8.10.14).
Police attending that incident afterwards said they were looking for a smartly dressed man of Asian appearance (a man was arrested and charged last week and was due to appear in court on Friday), and it is this supposed racial angle which appears to have captured the demonstrators’ interest.
A Spurtle reader alerted us to the event after his friend’s partner was picked on by some of those who do not see women as pieces of meat. ‘Her skin doesn't have an unhealthy Scottish pallor, which [these people] seem to prefer, and this may have been why she was singled out for verbal abuse.’
The group’s Twitter feed captions one photo from Saturday’s stunt as follows: ‘Members & a local resident talking to public great response & also found out about a high risk peado hostel aswel’.
Elsewhere, it continued jovially, ‘Yesterday in Edinburgh welcomed by all but one local and she was Italian lol’.
Delightful. Spurtle advises anyone receiving any sort of hateful abuse from these people in future to report it promptly to the police.
[The image top-right is an accurate re-creation based on a photograph we do not have permission to reproduce.]
Got a view? Tell us about it at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle and Facebook
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"@theSpurtle: Far-Right targets Broughton after sexual assault: http://www.broughtonspurtle.org.uk/news/farright-targets-broughton …" I did wonder about these w*****s <Expletive deleted by Spurtle>
Fergus Smith If your reproduction of the sign is accurate, then the lack of orthographical and grammatical skills are indicative of the far-right. It's a classic NF/BNP/Britain First tactic.
@theSpurtle Nasty stuff, thanks for spreading the word.
UPDATE
Spurtle was contacted today (4 November) by Graham Walker, a participant in the group whose demonstration we reported above. He was keen to correct what he considers inaccuracies in our coverage.
Mr Walker told us that the group to which he belongs – and which he named – attended after being contacted by four locals in Broughton/Powderhall who told them that local women no longer feel safe here. He said the police's description of the attacker's physical appearance was not sufficiently specific.
Seven or eight people attended the demonstration (not five or six as we reported), including three women. Over a period of more than an hour they handed out around 80 leaflets drawing attention to the 'huge rise in attacks against women'.
The public’s response was positive, he says, apart from one couple who reacted angrily and snatched at a placard. He claims to have video evidence of an attempted assault on one of the demonstrators in response to an alleged 'insulting remark'.
Those who attended were pressing in particular for CCTV to be installed at the Rodney Street end of Broughton Road. This area, he says, is poorly lit, a known troublespot, and feels menacing to women.
Mr Walker told us of two other occasions on which the group has responded to community concerns. One related to a convicted paedophile released from prison and resettled in Dalkeith, the other to a new mosque in Bonnyrigg.
It does not have far-Right political opinions, he says, nor is it a party. He describes it as a ‘street movement’ which has thousands of Likes on its various Facebook pages.