An anti-Islam demo which ended in a mass brawl where 13 people were arrested cost taxpayers almost £1million.
The far-right English Defence League picked Bradford for Saturday’s rally, insisting it would be peaceful.
But the day ended in violent clashes, with bricks and bottles hurled at anti-racism campaigners as the demo reached boiling point.
Police used riot shields to keep the two warring sides back. But yesterday it emerged it cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to control them.
West Yorkshire Police used 2,000 officers and spent £600,000 during the operation.
Bradford Council also forked out £100,000 on concrete reinforcements around the EDL’s Urban Gardens demo site.
And the cost to local trade is estimated to have been £100,000, without taking into account damage to tourism. Once everything is factored in, including clearing up, the demo could turn out to have cost almost £1m. The area is one of
Britain’s “tinderbox cities” and was targeted because of the racial tensions there.
Police said 13 men were arrested for public order offences and violence offences during Saturday’s demo, most of them from Bradford.
They also confirmed 100 of the 1,000 taking part climbed over a temporary 8ft barricade to throw missiles at opponents.
The EDL had wanted to march through the city but a 10,000-signature protest saw it banned by Home Secretary Theresa May.
Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison said: “The ban of the march seems to have worked. No officers were seriously injured and there was no damage to property. The containment of trouble comes at a cost but it has been money well spent.”
The EDL has held several protests in the past couple of years, including one at Newcastle in May which saw 1,000 members mass in the city without incident.
But 12 people were arrested at an EDL protest in Aylesbury, Bucks, also in May.
Daily Star
Monday, 30 August 2010
Teenage girl killed in skinhead rampage at Russian festival
Over 100 men attack at Tornado festival in Miass, injuring up to 100 people in latest ultra-nationalist attack to hit country.
A 14-year-old girl was killed and dozens of revellers injured yesterday when more than 100 bare-chested skinheads rampaged through a rock concert in central Russia attacking people with iron clubs.
The teenager was among a crowd of around 3,000 people at the Tornado festival in Miass, 900 miles east of Moscow, when the attack happened.
Many visitors were left bloodied and dazed after being hit with iron clubs and sticks, television and news agencies reported. One report, quoting a police source, suggested the teenage girl had suffered multiple stab wounds.
State-owned Rossiya-24 TV saidup to 100 people were injured and 14 ambulances were called to the scene.
Images on the local news website Chelnovosti.ru showed battered revellers and scores of skinheads congregating at the event, which featured Russia's top rock acts.
The motive for the assault was not known, and the ITAR-Tass news agency said local police had refused to comment.
Witnesses told Russian journalists that the skinheads burst through security cordons, pushing police aside and in some cases grabbing their truncheons to attack visitors.
The Ekho Moskvy radio station reported that around 15 attackers were detained, but the majority fled.
Russia has an ingrained neo-Nazi skinhead movement and attacks on foreigners in Moscow and St Petersburg have been relatively common in recent years. The January 2009 murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasiya Baburova prompted a Kremlin crackdown on ultra-nationalists, who were blamed for the killings.
In April, a Moscow court banned the far-right Slavic Union, whose Russian acronym SS intentionally mimicked that used by the Nazis' infamous paramilitaries. The group was declared extremist and shut down, but the group's leader, Dmitry Demushkin, complained that it had tried to promote its far-right agenda legally and warned that the ban would enrage and embolden Russia's most radical ultra-nationalists.
Neo-Nazi and other ultra-nationalist groups thrived in Russia after the Soviet collapse in 1991. The influx of immigrant workers and two wars with Chechen separatists triggered xenophobia and a surge in hate crimes.
Racially motivated attacks, often targeting people from Caucasus and Central Asia, peaked in 2008, when 110 people were killed and 487 wounded, an independent watchdog, Sova, said. The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights estimated that some 70,000 neo-Nazis were active in Russia compared with a just few thousand in the early 1990s.
The Guardian
A 14-year-old girl was killed and dozens of revellers injured yesterday when more than 100 bare-chested skinheads rampaged through a rock concert in central Russia attacking people with iron clubs.
The teenager was among a crowd of around 3,000 people at the Tornado festival in Miass, 900 miles east of Moscow, when the attack happened.
Many visitors were left bloodied and dazed after being hit with iron clubs and sticks, television and news agencies reported. One report, quoting a police source, suggested the teenage girl had suffered multiple stab wounds.
State-owned Rossiya-24 TV saidup to 100 people were injured and 14 ambulances were called to the scene.
Images on the local news website Chelnovosti.ru showed battered revellers and scores of skinheads congregating at the event, which featured Russia's top rock acts.
The motive for the assault was not known, and the ITAR-Tass news agency said local police had refused to comment.
Witnesses told Russian journalists that the skinheads burst through security cordons, pushing police aside and in some cases grabbing their truncheons to attack visitors.
The Ekho Moskvy radio station reported that around 15 attackers were detained, but the majority fled.
Russia has an ingrained neo-Nazi skinhead movement and attacks on foreigners in Moscow and St Petersburg have been relatively common in recent years. The January 2009 murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasiya Baburova prompted a Kremlin crackdown on ultra-nationalists, who were blamed for the killings.
In April, a Moscow court banned the far-right Slavic Union, whose Russian acronym SS intentionally mimicked that used by the Nazis' infamous paramilitaries. The group was declared extremist and shut down, but the group's leader, Dmitry Demushkin, complained that it had tried to promote its far-right agenda legally and warned that the ban would enrage and embolden Russia's most radical ultra-nationalists.
Neo-Nazi and other ultra-nationalist groups thrived in Russia after the Soviet collapse in 1991. The influx of immigrant workers and two wars with Chechen separatists triggered xenophobia and a surge in hate crimes.
Racially motivated attacks, often targeting people from Caucasus and Central Asia, peaked in 2008, when 110 people were killed and 487 wounded, an independent watchdog, Sova, said. The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights estimated that some 70,000 neo-Nazis were active in Russia compared with a just few thousand in the early 1990s.
The Guardian
Australia's first Aboriginal MP shrugs off racist taunts
The first Aborigine to be elected to Australia's Parliament on Monday said he was unworried by racist taunts that have followed his win, saying they were outweighed by messages of support.
Ken Wyatt won the seat of Hasluck in Western Australia for the conservative Liberal Party in August 21 polls, rising above childhood poverty to become the first indigenous person ever elected to the lower House of Representatives.
Since then, he has received at least 50 racist emails and phone calls from angry voters, with some saying they would not have voted for him had they known he was indigenous.
"They don't perturb me," 58-year-old Wyatt told Sky News of the jibes.
"Throughout my life I have experienced the sharp edge of some of the racist taunts that have come my way, but when I outweigh these by the hundreds and hundreds of emails and calls I've had, they are only miniscule in the bigger picture."
Wyatt rose from an impoverished childhood, during which he trapped rabbits and picked fruit for cash to help put food on the table for his family, to become a school teacher and later work in Aboriginal health and education.
When he recently attended the 70th birthday of his former primary school teacher, he brought her a gift that he would never have been able to afford as a child -- an apple.
In claiming the seat on Sunday after a protracted vote count, he said he owed his success to his education which was made possible by a local charity that early on recognised his ability.
"I have come from a life of poverty and through my own individual efforts I stand now within the national arena," he said.
Wyatt said he was naturally inclined towards the right-leaning Liberal Party, despite the fact that this placed him at odds with his father.
But he said his first speech to parliament would pay tribute to the former leader of the centre-left Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, who made an historic apology to the nation's indigenous people in 2008.
"I think people really appreciate the fact that an apology was given," he said Monday, adding that his mother and her siblings were members of the so-called 'Stolen Generations' -- indigenous children removed from their families at a young age to be brought up by white people and in institutions.
"What made me extremely proud was the fact that her life, her experiences were recognised and the pain that she went through was acknowledged."
Wyatt said he wanted to improve the lot of Aborigines, who have a lower life expectancy and generally poorer health than other Australians, with thousands living in poverty in remote Outback settlements where alcoholism is rife.
The United Nations last week warned that Australia faced a problem with "embedded" discrimination, citing the "unacceptably high level of disadvantage and social dislocation" for Aborigines in the Northern Territory.
Indigenous Australians have previously served in the Senate -- with Neville Bonner appointed to the upper house in 1971 and Aden Ridgeway elected to the Senate in 1998 -- but Wyatt will be the first to serve in the more powerful lower house.
Indigenous people were for decades denied the vote by officials, and until 1967 were not even included in the national census.
Times of India
Ken Wyatt won the seat of Hasluck in Western Australia for the conservative Liberal Party in August 21 polls, rising above childhood poverty to become the first indigenous person ever elected to the lower House of Representatives.
Since then, he has received at least 50 racist emails and phone calls from angry voters, with some saying they would not have voted for him had they known he was indigenous.
"They don't perturb me," 58-year-old Wyatt told Sky News of the jibes.
"Throughout my life I have experienced the sharp edge of some of the racist taunts that have come my way, but when I outweigh these by the hundreds and hundreds of emails and calls I've had, they are only miniscule in the bigger picture."
Wyatt rose from an impoverished childhood, during which he trapped rabbits and picked fruit for cash to help put food on the table for his family, to become a school teacher and later work in Aboriginal health and education.
When he recently attended the 70th birthday of his former primary school teacher, he brought her a gift that he would never have been able to afford as a child -- an apple.
In claiming the seat on Sunday after a protracted vote count, he said he owed his success to his education which was made possible by a local charity that early on recognised his ability.
"I have come from a life of poverty and through my own individual efforts I stand now within the national arena," he said.
Wyatt said he was naturally inclined towards the right-leaning Liberal Party, despite the fact that this placed him at odds with his father.
But he said his first speech to parliament would pay tribute to the former leader of the centre-left Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, who made an historic apology to the nation's indigenous people in 2008.
"I think people really appreciate the fact that an apology was given," he said Monday, adding that his mother and her siblings were members of the so-called 'Stolen Generations' -- indigenous children removed from their families at a young age to be brought up by white people and in institutions.
"What made me extremely proud was the fact that her life, her experiences were recognised and the pain that she went through was acknowledged."
Wyatt said he wanted to improve the lot of Aborigines, who have a lower life expectancy and generally poorer health than other Australians, with thousands living in poverty in remote Outback settlements where alcoholism is rife.
The United Nations last week warned that Australia faced a problem with "embedded" discrimination, citing the "unacceptably high level of disadvantage and social dislocation" for Aborigines in the Northern Territory.
Indigenous Australians have previously served in the Senate -- with Neville Bonner appointed to the upper house in 1971 and Aden Ridgeway elected to the Senate in 1998 -- but Wyatt will be the first to serve in the more powerful lower house.
Indigenous people were for decades denied the vote by officials, and until 1967 were not even included in the national census.
Times of India
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