Pegida's 'costly hate rallies' have no place in Birmingham, says MP
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Version 2 of 5. “Costly hate rallies” have no place in Birmingham, MPs from the city have 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 Jess 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. Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr said the plans to stage monthly rallies could result in violence and that he would be calling on the chief executive of Birmingham city council, Mark Rogers, to look into whether the protests threatened the safety of families using the city centre for weekend shopping. He suggested the group should be forced to pay for a venue for their meetings, like other religious or community groups have to. “If they want to come, I’m sure we can make a reasonable sized venue available for them at the NEC [National Exhibition Centre], so they can say what they want to say and they can pay for the venue. Why should they be given a free facility in the centre of Birmingham?” Gisela Stuart, MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, said the group had failed to “get the measure” of the city. “In terms of the dynamics of this city, what [Robinson] will do is unify Brummies from all ethnic groups and all ages and all backgrounds into saying: ‘That’s not what this city is all about. You’re not wanted here’,” she said. 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. Rallies also took place in Warsaw, Bratislava and Graz in southern Austria. Muhammad Afzal, chairman of Birmingham central mosque and a Labour councillor, said: “Years ago they protested against the Jews, then the Irish, then black people and now against Muslims. We condemn these extremists no matter where they come from. “Islam is a very peaceful religion. We are quite happy to have a dialogue with them, but just spending public sector money [on policing the rallies], when there are a lot of cuts is not fair,” he said. |