Yesterday (Friday 28^th May) this blog published an extremely worrying story about how Bedfordshire Police had issued a warning that Jews should not be around the Bury Park area of Luton. This story, one which a number of people have reported on and commented on, went absolutely viral, as it should have done. After all, it’s a measure of how bad things have become in the UK that we have a police force telling Jews to stay out of part of a town whilst facilitating a demonstration by Muslims, a demonstration that is likely to contain all the usual Jew hatred and Israel hatred that we’ve come to expect from such demonstrations.

The giving out of such security advice has most certainly ended up biting Bedfordshire police firmly on the arse as their ‘cohesion’ unit has crawled out of the woodwork to ‘clarify’ matters. The police said, and the local synagogue concurred, that the demonstration was NOT organised by the Luton Council of Mosques but by some ‘outside’ group. Whilst I’m quite happy to state that this may well be the case, it’s likely to equally be likely that this demonstration was organised and may well be attended by people a lot worse than those associated with the Luton Council of Mosques, who Luton synagogue say have good relations with them. The Police also stated that contrary to the advice that they and the local synagogue gave out previously, this would be a static demonstration and not one that is either mobile or involving a similar ‘convoy’ of the sort that we saw going around North London recently harassing Jews.

Something has changed here. Either the local synagogue got the wrong end of the stick or the police gave out wrong advice or the police have felt the full force of public opinion and have done what they should have done in the first place, which is to tone down the Muslim demo? The police have also said that they will deal with via arrest anybody promoting Jew hatred, something I will believe when I see it.

Whatever has happened, the police are now backtracking and telling people that they did not tell Jews to stay away from parts of the town. Luton United Synagogue has also engaged in damage limitation over the mistake about the involvement of the Luton Council of Mosques. Luton United also seems to have been caught out by how quickly this story has spread and how it has contributed to hostility to Islamic Jew hatred among the general non Jewish public. You can see their clarification below.

It has struck various commentators that this response looks a little vacillating even if you do take into account that Luton United has good relations with the Luton Council of Mosques. There was no need for example for the synagogue to make the statement about disavowing ‘the far right’ or ‘Islamophobia’. First of all ‘Islamophobia’ doesn’t exist. A phobia is an irrational fear and there are good reasons to be wary of Islam (but not I need to emphasise, individual Muslims) which is why I prefer the term ‘Islamosceptic’ or ‘Islamocritical’. Secondly, I know, because I’ve marched against these bastards, what the real far right looks like and feels like and what they are and are not into. What I do know is the real far right are certainly not into protecting Jews. The vast majority of comment’s I’ve seen on social media that have been made regarding this matter have been extremely concerned with the safety of Britain’s Jews and the danger that extremist Islam places British Jews under. It’s not ‘far right’ to be concerned with Jewish security, even though there are some on the Left who would like that to be the case.

I’m incredibly curious as to what has happened here? Did the synagogue repeat verbatim a warning from the police? Did the synagogue get the message wrong? Did the police indeed issue a warning for Jews to stay out of Bury Park but backtrack once there was a major public reaction to the information getting out? Did Jewish communal organs, not ones that are that known for being ‘muscular’ in their defence of Jews lean on the synagogue to get the later letter and the statements about the ‘far right’ and ‘Islamophobia’ put out? In any event it will be interesting to see how this pans out and what emerges over the coming weeks. Whatever the truth of the matter it seems that the police are taking a closer interest in the Muslim demonstration, something that they may not have been willing to do had there not been such an outcry about the alleged warning.