The WATCHer. Josie Bowerman AM. A drizzling market day, the setting for
convenience that a connivance. I wonder
every Northern cliché: unemployment,
whether the EDL are here in the hope that
deprivation, resentment. It smells,
their cause, whatever it really is, hiding in
inevitably, of sausage rolls, thickly meaty
their heap of mangled official rhetoric, will
under a doughy sky smeared by dirty
be grabbed up by the people of Hexthorpe
hands. There’s a sour, chewed-over tang
and will win them a shout of support. I also
in the air. Everything is lumpy with the
wonder, then, where the ‘trouble’ will come
gristle of issues that can’t be swallowed
from and whose expectations for the day
away. Race, class, the economy, fear.
will end up most troubled.
Hexthorpe is the knot of sinew the town has been gnawing at lately, the tension in
PM. I drift towards Hexthorpe, a muffled
Doncaster’s mouth, and today the EDL are
shut-up shop for the occasion. Curtains
coming, to grind their angry teeth at it.
are firmly drawn over any expectations at all. I don’t know whether to find this a sign
Everyone is fuddled, pastry-wrapped.
of anxiety, or disinterest. Across the road
Whatever led to today, whatever started
from the station I see a lacklustre group
it, the EDL has come to finish it. No matter
of lager-swillers in neon EDL waistcoats.
how much glazed confusion there might be
It’s barely midday, and the swilling looked
about the why, how and who of this coming
vigorous. I edge towards anxiety. Still, it’s
march, no matter the baffling tumble of
listless and from a distance, a dull knock
words and words on the internet - yelping
in my chest. I’m not sure I understand all
Facebook pages and the prattle of the EDL
the factors leading up to this, and I’m not
website - everyone can nod their heads
sure that if I asked anyone from round here
and say one word with grey certainty:
they’d know whether the EDL’s presence
trouble. A butcher mutters about police
has anything to do with circumstances in
presence and looks more nervous than a
Hexthorpe. There aren’t too many anyones
man surrounded by knives should.
to ask; the streets are, for the most part, un-taken-to.
Nothing feels like it’s connected to
16
anything else by the usual grasp of
People amble, riot vans trundle by. There’s
causality and consequences. It would
still that savoury smell; a not-too-far-
be easy to see an industrial part of a
away pie. Perhaps there’ll be a storm - the
provincial town as the sort of place that
sky is congealing, gravy-like. Arriving
does bring in the EDL to menace away
at the site where the EDL are tipped to
its troubles, to see this as the response
halt, and do whatever chest beating they
to a call, but that doesn’t seem to be it
decide to do, the atmosphere is vague
at all. It’s hollow and random, more a
and disjointed. There are counter-protest