This in an extract from our weekly newsletter written by Tom Seaward bringing you the inside scoop of the latest crime stories. To sign up for the full version, click here.
WHAT'S THE EDL GOT TO DO WITH LTNs?
In hindsight, I think I was probably already coming down with man flu when I spoke to the self-claimed white nationalist football hooligan.
As it happens, Joe Marsh (or Jeff Marsh) was not the first football hooligan I’ve spoken to.
As a cub reporter, I once thought it would be a great idea to interview a group of Aquascutum-clad Newport County ultras, who were less than thrilled by the prospect of speaking to the young man from the Swindon Advertiser.
Like the Newport fans, Marsh also hails from South Wales and has been pictured wearing an Aquascutum scarf.
Unlike the Newport fans, Marsh supported the team a few stops down the west coast main line – a former member of the notorious Cardiff City Soul Crew.
And he's now a senior figure in a political group described by one campaign group as 'the largest and most active fascist movement operating in the UK today'.
In the 2000s, Marsh was instrumental in the setting up of Casuals United – a motley crew of football hooligans from firms across the country that was set up to ‘fight jihadists’.
The group had links to the English Defence League.
And now, he’s involved in far-right group Patriotic Alternative – set up in 2019 by former BNP youth leader Mark Collett, who in 2002 appeared on Channel 4 documentary Young, Nazi and Proud.
Last week, he appeared in at least two videos being shared on social media or chat threads, encouraging members of Patriotic Alternative to go to Oxford on Saturday for the anti-LTN march.
He claimed ‘PA’ would have a ‘big presence’ to protest traffic filter plans in the city, saying: “They’re trying to take our freedom away.”
READ MORE: Anti-LTN and 'climate lockdown' protest brings thousands to Oxford
(Oxfordshire County Council would say their traffic filter plans have been grossly misrepresented, and any suggestion they are locking people in their ‘neighbourhoods’ in a ‘climate lockdown’ is completely false).
In the end, Patriotic Alternative’s presence in the town was significantly smaller than perhaps they – or the ‘anti-fascist’ campaigners who called a counter-demonstration – expected, although an estimated 2,000 people of all stripes attended the main march.
Marsh was there, holding a cardboard sign that claimed he was ‘not far right just right so far’.
Joe Marsh of Patriotic Alternative responds to the criticism of him. @TheOxfordMail pic.twitter.com/1nOBukNRO9
— Tom Seaward (@t_seaward) February 18, 2023
When I asked him about his response to the shouts of ‘racist’ coming from the ‘anti-fascist’ demonstrators, who had marched down Queen Street to confront a group around a stall set up by the right-wing Heritage Party, he volunteered that ‘we’re a white nationalist group’.
He added: “But we’re not protesting about anything to do with race or immigration today.”
Why, someone from Oxford might ask, was a ‘white nationalist’ from south Wales in Oxford to protest against traffic calming measures?
For Marsh – and many others on the march – the plans in Oxford, which will make it harder to drive across the city, are part of an agenda of greater control by the authorities.
In one video, shared to the ‘Patriotic Alternative Official’ page on WhatsApp-style social media site Telegram on February 15, Marsh compared the council’s supposed 15-minute neighbourhoods policy to ‘something off the Hunger Games’.
Marsh claimed of the supposed plan: “Zone one, zone two, zone three. And you’re not allowed to drive from one zone to another and they call it Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.”
However, speak to researchers from HOPE not hate - an anti-fascist group - and they will give you a different answer.
Citing recent violent disorder in Merseyside, where it is claimed a member of Patriotic Alternative distributed flyers about asylum seeker accommodation days before a flare up of violence outside a hotel in Knowsley, they say the group tries to ‘hijack’ local concerns in to boost its relevance.
TAKE OFF YOUR MASK
The only person to spend any great length of time in a police cell following Saturday’s protests was a 25-year-old woman who was part of the anti-fascist demonstration.
She was arrested under Section 60AA of the Criminal Justice and Public Disorder Act, which gives police the power to compel anyone to remove ‘disguises’ in certain circumstances – and arrest them if they don’t. The law was introduced in 2001, as part of New Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
The woman, arrested on Ship Street on Saturday, spent two nights in a police station cell before she was put before the magistrates’ court on Monday.
She was given an absolute discharge by the magistrates, who recognised that the punishment of losing your liberty for two nights more than exceeded the crime.
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