Try as he might to feign anger as he announces that his planned march in Whitechapel this coming weekend has been banned, you can almost sense the relief in Nick Tenconi’s voice that he doesn’t have to go through with it after all.
And that in Sir Mark Rowley and “two-tier policing” he has someone to dump the blame on.
The UKIP march – later billed as a rally – was due to take place at Whitechapel tube on Saturday. This is in the heart of a huge local Muslim community and only yards from the East London mosque, one of the biggest in western Europe.
It was plainly designed from day one to be a huge provocation.
But let’s not forget: Nick Tenconi is a puny specimen, both politically and personally. He is no Oswald Mosley. And he is no John Tyndall. The forces that they could assemble to attempt similarly provocative marches in Cable St and Lewisham were forces that he can only dream of in his most fevered moments.
This rally was a provocation on a similar scale, but led by a clown with only a few dozen supporters he can reliably call upon.
His recent national annual conference was attended by only eight members.
On this occasion, his UKIP troops would certainly have been augmented by significant numbers of Tommy Robinson supporters relishing a punch up with Muslims defending their area but, even so, they would have had a very hard time of it had they turned up in Whitechapel as planned.
And Tenconi himself, for all the bluster, is a physical coward. Whenever things have gotten at all frisky on previous recent UKIP demonstrations he has hurriedly melted away behind his squad of rather elderly bodyguards.
In Manchester last April he actually did a runner, leading his supporters in full-scale retreat through the city centre from a modest counter-demonstration.
Criminal conviction
Tenconi’s character is perhaps revealed in his criminal conviction, incurred after a fight in a night club: he was convicted for kicking someone in the head when they were already on the ground.
He would have cut a pretty terrified figure in Whitechapel.
The Met Police are absolutely right to ban this provocation. Tenconi is whining that UKIP’s democratic rights have been breached.
But he is being allowed to march elsewhere, so the only thing he has left to complain about is that he wasn’t allowed to lead a highly inflammatory anti-Muslim march on a major mosque.
Tenconi’s character is perhaps revealed in his criminal conviction, incurred after a fight in a night club: he was convicted for kicking someone in the head when they were already on the ground
Now, because of “two-tier policing”, they will be marching at 1.00pm from the London Oratory on Brompton Rd, to Speakers Corner where they will “reclaim Marble Arch from the Islamists”.
The police decision to ban the event in Whitechapel and anywhere else in Tower Hamlets, is believed to have followed representations from the local community as well as the police’s own professional assessment of the likelihood of disorder.
But it might also have been informed at least in part by a dossier presented to the Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley by a disaffected group of former senior officers of UKIP itself.
Criminal intent
In it they detailed a series of recent statements from Tenconi which they claimed showed criminal intent, amongst other things to provoke physical violence in east London.
They are, they say, “appalled at Ukip’s descent into being nothing save a gang of greedy grifters, convicted criminals, violent hoodlums, halfwits and naifs”
Couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
