Police on alert for a winter of race riots...

[Oscar Namechange]

POLICE chiefs up and down the country were last night warned to brace themselves for a winter of race riots.

Forces have been put on alert amid growing concerns about violent clashes between Muslims and far-Right thugs.

Trouble is expected today in central London when hundreds of supporters of the Right-wing English Defence League descend on Trafalgar Square.

More violence is expected when the organisation holds rallies in Manchester, Leeds and Bristol in coming weeks.

The EDL is an umbrella organisation which attracts far-Right activists, neo-Nazis and football hooligans with a shared hatred of "Islamic extremism".

The organisation sprang up in Luton, Bedfordshire, last March in response to the radical Muslims who held a protest denouncing soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment as "Butchers of Basra".

Within weeks the EDL had set up divisions in Luton, north London, Bristol, Portsmouth, Southampton, Derby, Cardiff and across the West Midlands. Four national police units, including experts on soccer hooliganism and terrorism, are investigating the group.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson was forced to issue a three-month ban of all marches in Luton to stop the group taking to the streets.

Nick Lowles, editor of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said: "What we are seeing is the formation of a street army, people who will travel to fight. The risk is what happens if they go into areas where there are existing tensions."

Yesterday John Denham, the secretary of state for communities and local government, warned that there were strong parallels between the group, which is planning protests in Muslim neighbourhoods, and Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, who sparked fighting when they marched through Jewish areas of London's East End in the Thirties.

Mr Denham said: "The English Defence League is not very big but have among them people who know exactly what they are doing.

"If you look at their demonstrations they've organised, it is clear that it's a tactic designed to provoke and to get a response and hopefully create violence."

On Friday night police in riot gear were attacked with bricks, bottles and fireworks during an anti-Islam demonstration in Harrow, west London.

Meanwhile Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary is fanning the flames. On the website Islam4UK he has posted a video message taunting the EDL, vowing that a Shariah flag will fly over 10 Downing Street. The site also shows a picture of an Islamic flag fluttering on top of Big Ben.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/126 ... ip-the-UK-