EDL leader Stephen Lennon convicted of assault

What more will it take for the British media to wake to the fact that everything about the English Defence League (EDL) is consumed with race and religious hatred and thuggery.

Yesterday we wrote about four of its supporters being jailed for smashing up a Mosque and trying to injure the local Imam with a brick. Today, we learn its leader, Stephen Lennon, headbutted a fellow member during an EDL rally in Blackburn.

Lennon, the self-proclaimed leader of the EDL, was convicted earlier this year for inciting violence at a football match. This time his thuggery was aimed at one of his own EDL supporters, who he head butted after launching a verbal attack on his victim.

The victim, Alan McKee, 33, from Gateshead, was pulled from the crowd by stewards for his own safety and taken away by police officers.

Lennon, from Luton, Bedfordshire, launched a tirade against the man who was accused of putting messages on the internet about police informers and "grasses", before trouble broke out in the crowd among EDL members, Preston Magistrates' Court heard.

We can only hope that this latest conviction will be the death nail in an organisation that has used the cloak of democracy to incite racial and religious hatred.

Simon Woolley