Who’s letting the EDL dog out?

Clare Arrowsmith

Saturday sees the splintered remains of the EDL visiting Preston to complain about no-go areas which, as one local amusingly pointed out in a video that went very much viral, don’t exist.

Reality of course rarely intrudes on the minds of the far right and so their dwindling band of misfits will meet in a pub before shuffling some 300 metres to their static protest point. The journey should take a total of 180 seconds, leading one Facebook wag to paraphrase The Selecter and dub them “three minute zeroes.”

Among those sad shufflers will be Blackpool’s Clare Arrowsmith and her Staffordshire Bull Terrier whose identity we have hidden to protect his reputation. Clare claims to be grooming the poor dog to become an “EDL bitch” which – and our O level Biology comes in handy here – may require a little more than Barbara Woodhouse’s Dog Training My Way. We also don’t think Barbara trained her cuddly canines to “eat the f*****s”, Claire’s phraseology for those whose politics fall to the left of David Lane, the man with a 14 word dictionary.

Dog X

It’s impossible to remain jocular about this though when considering that the dog Claire owns and disciplines, savaged her young son last year. The poor boy was left with a nasty injury to his left cheek which required several stitches. How the Staffie might react within the febrile atmosphere of an EDL demo is anyone’s guess.

As Woodhouse and countless other dog trainers and animal behavioural specialists have pointed out, there is no such thing as a bad domestic dog, just bad owners. That’s a point validated by Arrowsmith who last August was found guilty of religiously aggravated threatening behaviour having hurled racist abuse at a North West Infidels demo in Blackburn.

Meanwhile it remains to be seen which members of the EDL leadership will attend Preston. At least one may be unavoidably detained elsewhere.