What to Wear to an EDL Demo?

On May 25th the EDL held a demonstration in Newcastle. As I work for The Tab and there were no other volunteers I was the lucky person who got to go along and try to speak to them about what (on earth they thought) they were doing.

What does one wear for such an occasion? It shouldn't take this long, but it does. As you may realise I look a bit 'out there' on occasion. I have a ring in my nose, a tonne of piercings, my sunglasses are bright orange circles, more than one pair of my shoes have faces on them and I love my flowery wide leg trousers more than I probably should. I didn't think this image would be conductive to people actually speaking to me.

Once I'd flipped my nose ring, pinned back my fringe, tracked down a pair of jeans and added a Tab shirt and hoody it seemed a bit more likely that I'd get somewhere.

I'm glad I went along, but purely because of the experience. I got involved in a few photography scrums with other reporters, conducted interviews and edited the video (it's a bit wibbly, but oh well). At the same time, it distressed me a lot. I cannot believe that people hold these views. It's all well and good to say you're not a racist, but you can't follow that up with "but people are just expressing themselves" or "they're scared." It doesn't make it okay, racism is never okay, nor is anti-religion vitriol. The best defence was "well they do it too" but that's not much of an excuse really.

Here's some photos from the day, and article with video attached.