World Refugee Day – Reclaim the Streets

On Thursday we raised questions about the police tactics in failing to prevent British unionist fascists dominating George Square Glasgow, and the highly political of a police statement by David Hamilton, Chairman of the Scottish Police Federation Scotland ‘Myths of False Equivalence’.

Now further information has come to light which makes Hamilton’s views seem even more absurd.

A source contacted Bella with the following information:

A group calling itself the ‘National Defence League’ was responsible for calling gatherings in George Square Glasgow on the 13th, 14th and 17th of June 2020. There have been numerous reports of violence in connection to these gatherings. The group uses a Facebook page to advertise its message.  It also has a private ‘group’ on Facebook.

At approximately 3pm on 19th June 2020 the page shared a Youtube video entitled ‘The Truth’, a video on ‘murder’, ‘killing’, and Muslims. The page ‘liked’ a comment endorsing the Youtube message that stated “Well said sir” regarding its content.

The content of the video contained explicit, violent, threatening, and racially abusive content. It is a 15 minute monologue by an account and individual identifying as Billy or William Johnston.

Following a long, detailed series of attacks on Muslims, the speaker turns to justifying killing on the basis of ‘defending’ his religion and nationality.

From 9:05 he states: “Killing is lawful even in the eyes of God because if you don’t defend yourself and allow someone to kill you I think you’re not worthy of having any, you’re not worthy of being called a British citizen. You’re not worthy of being called good.”

“I am a Christian who will defend my faith, and my family, and my nation to the glory of God and the United Kingdom. I will kill if I have to. If it takes killing 1 or 10,000, I’ll do it. I wont have any loss of sleep over it. I won’t regret it. I won’t feel guilty about it. Because this is my country. It doesn’t belong to Islam. It doesn’t belong to Muslim (sic). Not as far as I’m concerned, nor will it be as long as I’m alive.

“So we say to you, what are you doing about it? Because the government’s not going to do anything about it they’re not. Their justice system is corrupt and full of evil. And our police is corrupt.”

The video is introduced with the speaker stating “Our present trouble: Islam. Let’s talk a wee bit about that.” (1:24).

After distinguishing between “killing” and “murder”, he states (2:35): “Murder is when it’s pre-meditated, when it’s evil in your heart to take a life – whether you kill them by poison, strangling, stabbing, shooting, hanging, electrocuting. It doesn’t matter. Setting them on fire. That’s murder. That’s evil. And that’s what these people do, these Muslims – who are very, very evil. Their Koran, the Devil’s book, teaches them to do this. Even their own pedophile false Prophet Muhammad cut off the heads of 600 Jews in one day.”

At 3.05 he adds: “It teaches in the Koran, and if you don’t believe me read it cause I have, that they can even have sex with new born babies…it’s full of pedophiles.” He then claims that Muslims in Saudi Arabia put make-up on young boys to rape them.

Describing Muslims, he adds: “They’re pedophiles. They’re homosexuals. They’re pedophile homosexuals. They lie, cheat and steal. They drink alcohol, take drugs….Their evil ideology is evil. It teaches them to murder, behead. It teaches them to rape, molest women and children.”

At 5.30 he states on the issue of Muslim communities in the UK: “They should send in the troops. It’s an invasion. British land. Send the troops in, take it back off these evil people. Just get rid of them. It’s like cancer. If you don’t cut cancer out completely, they’ll just grow back again. So you got to cut them out and get rid of them. Deport them all. Just get rid of them out our country and get a bit of peace.”

He concludes the video (15.10) with the statement: “I’m ready. I have no doubt about that. I’m ready. As I said, I’m not a murder. I don’t want to be unlawful, but I’m ready to defend till death my Christian faith, my family, women and children, the old, the weak, the disabled, and my nation.”

World Refugee Day – Reclaim the Streets

This puts this organisation into a league nearer the proscribed National Action as a right-wing terrorist group. In this context Hamilton’s comments that “there is no difference between “statue wrecker or statue protector” is more obscene that we first thought.

Today, on World Refugee Day a socially distant group peacefully assembled in George Square “united against racism and fascism”. Speakers talked of a line in the sand and the need to reclaim public space for ordinary people.

The protest passed by without incident and the police seemed more prepared in numbers and action against the small group of far-right people intent on disrupting and attacking the event.

After what seemed to be an attempt to remove the press from the area. the police then kettled a large group of protestors.

 

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The actions of the Police in Glasgow face further scrutiny after kettling a peaceful demonstration in the middle of a respiratory pandemic thereby denying people their ability to socially distant.
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Serious questions also arise over the Sec. 60 order being placed on the Greater Glasgow area rather than the vicinity of protests which need urgent answers.
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The Police issued a statement saying: “In relation to protests in #George Square today Police Scotland has imposed an Order under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. This allows police to search any individual or vehicle within the Greater Glasgow area until 23:59 tonight.”
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In effect the police have let a few hundred violent loyalists riot and attack people for several days but their response to a peaceful anti-racist gathering is to issue a city-wide stop and search order and kettle peaceful protestors. There are significant civil liberty issues at play here and Police Scotland have big questions to answer. Within a few days they have swung from being completely ineffective against violent right-wing thugs to a complete over-reach against peaceful protestors. Once again the impartiality of the police in Scotland is called into question.

Comments (5)

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  1. Liz Summerfield says:

    I sometimes worry that evolution is reversing in humankind. The capacity for rational thought seems to be diminishing.

  2. Kevin Hattie says:

    Worrying times ahead.

  3. aayawa says:

    Hmmm…

    1. Strictly neither group should have been out. To that extent the two groups are equivalent – but there the similarity ends.

    2. Whichever group first resorted to violence should have been removed first. Especially if the violence is against the police.

  4. James Mills says:

    The ”kettling ” issue is particularly illuminating . That the police DIDN’T see the need to use this tactic on the earlier , violent ”statue protectors” but rather deemed it apposite for the peaceful demonstrators is troubling .
    Who made these decisions ? Is he/she to be trusted to make the correct judgements in future ?

    And: Have the police hierarchy distanced themselves from the crass comments of the chair of the Police Federation , which seemingly make no distinction between demonstrators and violent thugs ?

  5. Nick Kempe says:

    The Health Protection (Coronavirus( Restrictions) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 effectively removed our rights to protest, however physically distanced, by making gatherings of two or more people a criminal offence. That was probably the biggest infringement on civil liberties we have ever seen in the country and effectively meant that if health workers had tried to gather outside of hospitals to protest about the lack of PPE they would have been criminals. Almost no-one seems to have protested. Those laws have now been relaxed slightly so 8 people can gather from three households. Effectively therefore all protests are still illegal, whoever organises them. I think that is wrong and the Scottish Government needs to change the law to make physically distanced protest legal again. But until then, criticising the police for trying to stop “gatherings” is pointing the finger at the wrong place. What Mr Hamilton was saying that expecting the police to enforce some of the Restriction Regulations but not others is wrong.
    Whether and how the Police then enforce the law in a non-discriminatory, fair and sensible manner is a separate issue. Given the importance of physical distancing for stopping the spread of Covid-19, kettling protesters and forcing them into cells together, is clearly very stupid. If physically distanced demonstrations were legal, however, the police could work with organisers to manage them safely instead of creating more risks by trying to enforce the current law.

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