English Defence League. London
Billy Briggs and I met, after a lot of wrangling and false starts, with members of the EDL at a secret location in Luton.Tommy Robinson aka Stephen Christopher Yaxley - Lennon in 2009. The year he co-founded the far-right group.
The EDL's primary activity was street protests, which regularly attracted media attention.However, there was no coherent plan as to how these demonstrations would achieve the group's stated goals.
EDL protests came in three forms: national demonstrations attracting activists from across the country, local demonstrations featuring largely the local EDL division, and flash demonstrations held without giving the authorities prior warning of the event.
We followed EDL members, en route to a protest in Manchester, where they were kettled by police, kept seperate from anti fascist protestors.
Tommy Robinson has been a member of Advance UK since 2025.
Vienna, Austria.
Members of Vienna's 18 Burschenschaften groups gathered together on 6/11/08 for a private and formal meeting at a venue called the Grinzinger Keller in the Rathouse under the neo-Gothic Vienna City Hall. The Burschenschaften are secretive academic fraternities in Austria and Germany with a long tradition stretching back to the 19th century when students fought in the War of Liberation against the Napoleonic occupation of Germany. They are ostensibly benign brotherhoods similar to the Freemasons but some groups have a history of terrorism and have been linked to extremist far right groups in Austria.
Members wear different coloured hats to denote their loyalties to each fraternity and only males with a German heritage can join. Elected leaders from each group wear traditional outfits and carry swords on formal occasions.
