Pegida's 'costly hate rallies' have no place in Birmingham, says MP
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Version 0 of 5. “Costly hate rallies” have no place in Birmingham, MP Jess Phillips has said, after the founder of the anti-Islam group Pegida UK pledged to stage a protest in the city on the first Saturday of every month. Approximately 200 demonstrators gathered for the inaugural Pegida rally at Birmingham International rail station on Saturday – half as many as police expected. Dozens of riot police kept the Pegida supporters away from 60 anti-fascist activists who turned up to oppose the group’s message. West Midlands police said they made one arrest for a public order offence at the counter demonstration. Tommy Robinson, former spokesman and leader of the English Defence League and founder of Pegida UK, announced that the group would stage further demonstrations in Birmingham on the first Saturday of every month starting in April. Related: 'Like a poison': how anti-immigrant Pegida is dividing Dresden Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, said Robinson “should get the message from the gross overestimation of attendance at his rally this week” and the relative strength of the anti-fascist movement. “People in Birmingham chose hope,” said Phillips. “His costly hate rallies have no place in our city. If anyone should go home from Birmingham it is Tommy Robinson. The public should be made aware of the cost of these rallies in police time.” Pegida UK, named after the German anti-Islam group that emerged in Dresden two years ago, was founded by Robinson in January this year. Its official leader is former Ukip parliamentary candidate Paul Weston, who said on Saturday that he wanted to get 100,000 people out on the streets by the end of the year. The Birmingham rally was one of a coordinated series of Pegida events across European cities, which saw about 2,000 protesters attend a rally in Dresden. French police fired teargas at about 150 anti-migrant protesters in Calais, while in central Amsterdam a square that had been earmarked for the demonstration had to be closed off after a “suspect package” was found. The 200 Pegida supporters in the Dutch city were outnumbered by police and leftwing demonstrators who shouted: “Refugees are welcome, fascists are not.” Rallies also took place in Warsaw, Bratislava and Graz in southern Austria. |