Unmasked: The football hooligans behind last weekend's bloody protest against a Muslim war demo - 27/05/2009Source : dailymail.co.uk
Dave Smeeton agreed to meet us outside a Portsmouth pub. There was one condition. 'No photographers - I don't want my photograph taken,' he insisted when we contacted him on his mobile phone earlier this week.
Smeeton, 53, is a married father of two, who lives in a terrace house in the south coast town and works in the motor trade.
But he also has another career: as the leader of a group called March for England. Its motto? 'We are English and proud - not racist.'
The group, which has more than 400 members, has turned up in towns and cities for occasions such as Remembrance Day and the anniversary of the 7/7 bombings in London.
Its unofficial coat of arms is the flag of St George - which, Smeeton says, they are determined to 'reclaim' from the Far Right and hooligan element. A noble sentiment - but one which events last weekend would seem to undermine.
Smeeton and his supporters were in Luton for the Bank Holiday to lay wreaths at the war memorial. And to take part in a supposedly peaceful demonstration against Islamic fanatics who jeered and waved placards saying 'Butchers of Basra' during a homecoming parade for The 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment in March.
But the event on Sunday turned into mob violence. Asians - and Asian shops - were attacked, cars vandalised and stones hurled at police. At the centre of the mayhem, whipping up the 500-strong crowd, were skinheads and men in balaclavas with shirts bearing the Cross of St George.
I was very disappointed about what happened,' Smeeton claimed. 'Our members were not involved in the trouble. That sort of thing couldn't have been further from our minds.'
It would be easier to believe Dave Smeeton if it were not for his unsavoury past.
It is encapsulated in a spoof advert for Dr Martens on his Facebook page, in which three skinheads are kicking a man on the floor in the head. The caption reads: 'Kicking the f*** out of you since 1960.'
Smeeton has added, for good measure: 'Those were the days.' He is, after all, a former skinhead himself. He used to belong to the '6.57 Crew', one of the country's most notorious gangs of football hooligans.
They got their name from the train that took them to away games. Their arrival in a town or city - particularly during the Seventies and Eighties - usually resulted in mindless thuggery and bloodshed.
Some of the 6.57 Crew, according to anti-fascist campaigners, belonged to Combat 18, the armed wing of the British neo-Nazi movement. The '18' stands for the first and eighth letter of the alphabet - AH - for Adolf Hitler.
The men who formed Combat 18 used to handle security at British National Party events, but the BNP was too 'moderate' for them so they broke away. They were associated with acts of terrorism, arson attacks and assaults throughout the Nineties.
'I can understand why people might get the idea I'm a racist because of my past. I was involved with the 6.57 gang - at a low level - in the Seventies,' Smeeton admitted when challenged about his past.
'Some of the things we did were wrong. I've changed. I despise anyone who says they've never made a mistake.'
'Mistake'? Well, that's one way of putting it. The Facebook picture of those skinheads, however, to mark a reunion of the 'crew' two years ago suggests Smeeton still gets a 'kick' out of the old days.
He insists he is a changed man and that March for England comprises upstanding people from all walks of life. You will not be too surprised to learn, however, that many come from one walk of life in particular - the football terraces.
They include 'QPR Casual' ('casual' is slang for a member of a hooligan gang), 'Chester Casual' and 'Chester skin' (as in skinhead), to name but a few of the contributors on the March for England website.
Large numbers of the protesters who ran amok in Luton, of course, were wearing football shirts and chanting football songs. Just a coincidence, obviously.
Shortly before the protest started at about 5pm, Smeeton and 16 of his March for England associates were spotted in the Wheelwright pub in Luton town centre. Among their ranks was a skinhead in trademark Ben Sherman shirt, red braces and Dr Martens.
Smeeton had been due to address the demonstration, but witnesses say police confiscated his megaphone. By then, trouble was brewing and, presumably, officers feared he might inflame the situation further.
He did speak, but only briefly. We have a copy of the full text of what he intended to say. It ends with a passage from Winston Churchill's historic wartime speech made on June 4, 1940: 'We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender . . .'
Churchill, of course, would have been horrified to find his words being used by individuals such as Smeeton. But the British National Party employed the same strategy earlier this week when its leader, Nick Griffin, argued that modern Britain, with its record of welcoming immigrants, has betrayed the 'blood, sweat, toil and tears' of those who fought for freedom during the Second World War, cynically echoing Churchill's first speech to parliament as wartime prime minister.
Smeeton is adamant he has nothing against Muslims - only Muslim extremists. Few, however, will be convinced. He and his fellow 'patriots' are proof, if nothing else, that extremism breeds extremism on both sides.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Luton. Anger has been building for some time against the Muslim community - the vast majority of whom are decent, law-abiding citizens - because of the activities of a tiny and unrepresentative minority.
One of the militants convicted of plotting to blow up the Bluewater shopping centre in Essex in 2007 came from the town and the 7/7 London bombers congregated at Luton station before heading to King's Cross.
Luton, according to a leaked intelligence report, remains a focus for concern for anti-terror police. But, more than anything else, it was the 'reception' given to soldiers that caused so much outrage here. Many local families have fathers, sons and brothers in the regiment.
The backlash has been violent and indiscriminate. Already one of the young Muslims who jeered the returning soldiers has had the windows of his home smashed, his car set alight, and the words 'Scum' and 'Get out' daubed on his walls. The man, in his 20s, had to be given round-theclock police protection, along with his sister and parents.
Just after midnight on May 5, Luton's Islamic Centre was torched; a firebomb hurled through a window.
For the record, those who run the centre have utterly - and publicly - condemned the Islamic fanatics, such as Sayful Islam, the so-called Sword of Islam, who, among others, barracked the soldiers returning from Iraq.
Islam, one-time leader of the town's branch of extremist Islamic group Al-Muhajiroun, was 'roughed up' recently and warned to stop his vile activities - by moderate Muslims, it should be pointed out, who blame him for bringing their community into disrepute.
The mob - and racists - don't distinguish between 'innocent' and 'guilty', moderate and militant Muslims.
Shortly before the Islamic Centre, which houses a mosque and school, was set alight, staff received a string of threatening anonymous letters. One warned: 'We know who you are ... we have plenty of pictures of you ... we are watching you ... we will certainly have you for what you did this week' [a reference to the homecoming parade].
A second was littered with references to the crusades, including the name of Reynold de Chatillon, whose brutality towards Muslims in the holy land was infamous.
'Saladdin once preached Jihad against the Christian kingdom, so now we preach our Jihad against Islam!!', ranted the letter, which described Muslims as 'parasites' and 'Allah's vomit'.
A similar coat of arms and Crusader imagery is featured in a notorious anti-Islamic website penned by someone calling himself Lionheart.
Lionheart, we discovered, is Paul Ray, 32. Ray used to run a computer repair shop in nearby Dunstable, but is now unemployed. Last year, he was arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred and is still on bail.
Asked if he sent the poisonous letter to the Islamic Centre weeks before it was torched, Ray replied: 'This is the first I've heard about the letter. The Muslims must be trying to pin the firebombing on me.'
Guess which organisation Paul Ray belongs to? Yes, that's right, March for England. He took part in Sunday's demonstration, but says he was not involved in any of the trouble. Ray calls Smeeton a 'very good friend.'
Another link between the men is Glen Jenvey, accused by several newspapers of fabricating stories about Islamic extremism. Jenvey has eight 'friends' on his Facebook site; two of them are Ray and Smeeton.
Smeeton has made much of the fact that March for England pulled out of organising last weekend's protest a few weeks ago because the council was being uncooperative.
But, on May 11, the day the group officially dissociated itself from the event, Smeeton was on the internet posting this rallying call: 'We will not be putting their name to this march. There's no reason not to go. As far as I know of up till today this will go ahead but not official.'
Another site, run by 'associates' of Smeeton, advertised the event with crude insults designed to whip up the mob. Among the vile postings was this: 'Who do you think you are kidding Mr Muslim, when you think the English will back down? Take your beard and that stupid f****** dress you wear, and f*** off out of England.'
Is it any wonder that a supposedly peaceful protest became a riot? The thugs were organised, peeling off into groups, each rampaging through the town centre, making it almost impossible for police to contain them.
One group of about 40 or 50 protesters tried to storm an Asian-run fast-food outlet, Pepe's Piri Piri fried chicken shop in Chapel Street. Staff and customers trapped inside locked the door, but the mob began banging on the glass with sticks.
Then they unfurled the flag of St George and pressed it against the window. A young Asian man trapped outside was beaten up and left covered in blood - in a scene not unlike the one depicted in Dave Smeeton's 'skinhead' advert.
The toll so far: nine arrests - more could follow once police have finished analysing CCTV footage - thousands of pounds' worth of damage, not to mention the bill for the police operation, and community relations at breaking point.
You might think the protesters had made their point, but no. We understand another demonstration is planned for Luton in August.
'It's time to unite against everything that is ruining our country,' declares Dave Smeeton on the March for England website.
'It's time to remove that notion that the St George flag is racist ... to claim back our flag which should never have been associated with racism in the first place.'
Patriotism or stirring up trouble? Either way, it would be better coming from someone who was not a (former) football hooligan.
Today at 8:27 am by UFW Maltchickers
