Ed UsoB:

Nothing could be more different from one week to the next. Luton today is practically deserted. What shoppers there are look nervous. Security guards lounge expectantly outside the empty shops. It resembled nothing so much as the set for Romero's Dawn Of The Dead.

 This is what happens when the EDL come to town.

 Outside the shops are boarded up. Luton looks like a town that's preparing for a hurricane. The UAF demo is in full swing before the EDL arrive: Bob Marley is pumping out of their sound system, there's very few police and the protesters look happy. The atmosphere is jovial and good-natured.

 At the other end of town the police have erected 3 metre high movable metal barriers that block the exits to St George's Square. We have to walk round the back of the Town Hall to get to the demo site. There's plenty of activity before the EDL arrive: all the major media companies are here, as well as what I think are French and German news outfits. There are police here and there on the ground, overhead the police helicopter. We're told that most of the police are still being held in reserve and will be deployed when the EDL arrive. Paramedics in body armour pass by. There's a sense of nervous expectation in the air from the few non-police around, a febrility that was entirely absent from the UAF demo. 

 At 1.20 Nazia and Aoife are asked by the police to leave the square for their own safety. Nazia because she's an obviously Muslim woman wearing a hijab, Aoife because she's in a wheelchair. Jane and I remain. The EDL are on their way. Now the police are everywhere, lines forming across and beside the route of the march. All have body armour on, over or under their uniforms. They look like extras from some dystopian sci-fi film.

 At 1.30, led by mounted cops, the EDL arrive. 'Muslim bombers off our streets!' is being chanted, along with 'E-E-EDL!' They file slowly past our position, gurning and playing up for the cameras. Many are drunk and staggering, holding on to their mates. I see Kevin Smith walk past, probably taking some time out from putting pigs' heads on mosques. I think to myself: "somewhere some village is missing its idiot". EDL Abdul is also in the march, the EDL's very own (and only visible) token 'Muslim'. The crowd is 99.3% white. Abdul and a black guy I see later on are the only brown faces there. One of the EDL's slogans might be Black and White Unite, but only white people seem to have got the message. 

As the EDL march finally gathers in the square the police seal them in with the moveable barriers. Now there's only one exit from the square: towards the train station/coach park. There is, literally, a ring of steel around the area, with a ring of coppers guarding the cordon. Jane and I are between the cordon and the coppers. It's difficult to see what's happening in the demo, and the sound is intermittent because of the wind blowing. We can make out Yaxley-Lennon spouting some nonsense or other. I can't see him, though. He's far too small and too far away.

The crowd, not big to begin with, gets progressively smaller and smaller. At 2.30 it has shrunk by a quarter. The atmosphere is non-existent. Apart from the occasional E-E-EDL  they are very subdued, very quiet. It's more like some bizarre wake than anything else. Many of the protesters are looking around them, perhaps looking for something to do to relieve the boredom. A couple of them take it upon themselves to have a scuffle, which is quickly broken up by the police. A woman is stretchered out. We later learn it's because of a pre-existing back injury. By 3.05 the demo has finished. The crowd - which started with around 1500 people - has thinned out dramatically. There are perhaps half the number left. As the main set protesters leave they strike up with "I'm England til I die", apart from a group who stand in front of Jane and I and sing "Mohammed is a paedo". I feel like saying to them: "smile for the video camera, lads." as we film away.

So, The Big One? Not big, that's for sure. 1500 protesters, 1700 at the absolute maximum. A dismal failure for the EDL, who like to speak of themselves as 'the largest street movement in Europe'. Despite their boasts of 70,000 supporters on Facebook, this doesn't translate at all into feet on the street. All that was achieved by the EDL on Saturday was to bore a lot of its supporters senseless, land taxpayers with a hefty bill, give some coppers some overtime and cause a lot of businesses to lose money. What a pointless, pointless organisation.