Portsmouth antiracists take over square against EDL
Last Updated on Tuesday, 19 July 2011 12:02 Tuesday, 19 July 2011 11:57
More than 250 local people occupied Portsmouth’s main Guildhall Square in protest against the English Defence League on 
Saturday 16 July.
The EDL racists and fascists wanted to lay a wreath at the war memorial in the square, provoking local outrage.
Instead, Guildhall Square was filled with local antifascists who staged a buoyant rally despite pouring rain.
Trade unions
Representatives of six local trade union branches – including Unison, the NUT teachers’ union and the civil servants’ PCS – all spoke. The lively turnout included trade unionists, local residents, students and young people who had been to a Love Music Hate Racism gig in Portsmouth the previous weekend.
A group of EDL thugs, whose march had been diverted away from the Guildhall, made a failed attempt to enter the square, galvanising the antifascist protesters into even louder chanting.
The EDL was unable to get anywhere near the memorial, which the council had fenced off as a precautionary measure.
Unlike the EDL, which bussed in supporters from as far away as Essex and Blackburn, the antifascist protest was overwhelmingly made up of Pompey residents, with a delegation coming from Brighton to show support.
Speakers urged the antifascist protestors to come to the national demo against the EDL in Tower Hamlets, east London on 3 September – a call that drew cheers from the crowd.