Saturday saw the much anticipated EDL march in Portsmouth. Organiser Mickey Bayliss was so desperate for travelling support he ended up pissing off the EDL leadership by inviting every nut job far right group going. With all this travelling support you wouldn’t blame them for expecting 400-500 to turn up. In the end the actual numbers were around 150. The good news is that from looking at the photos and doing the maths, they only managed to get about 50-60 locals out. Piss poor we’re sure you’ll agree!
The counter demo also got about 150 people, but was made up of about 90% local people and there was definitely more of an appetite to confront the scum than on previous occasions, with the crowd getting more vocal as we got close to the demo site.
The local EDL are blaming everyone but themselves for a shit day, most of it aimed at the local paper who reported what they saw.
All in all it seemed like a positive day for anti-fascists in Portsmouth – confidence seems to have grown, and street level agitation before the day had reached pretty unprecedented levels for our city as locals, pissed off with the prospect of an organised fascist march, voiced their anger with stickers and spray cans.
EDL/SDL also met resistance to their demonstrations in Edinburgh and Hull on Saturday.
In Edinburgh 350 anti-fascists saw off about 130 SDL marchers in what must be the least popular street entertainment of this year’s Edinburgh festival. A significant number of SDL were from such well-known Scottish locations as Sunderland and Blackburn.
In Hull the EDL appear to have got somewhere between 150-300 people on their march and were their usual charming selves, hospitalising a man for holding a banner promoting multiculturalism, and potentially being banned from holding any future protests in East Yorkshire.
Anti-Fascist Network 
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