Established in London, the EDL coalesced around several football hooligan firms protesting the public presence of the small Salafi group Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah in Luton, Bedfordshire.

The EDL's reputation was damaged in 2011 after supporters were convicted of plotting to bomb mosques and links were revealed with Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

The EDL's broader ideology featured nationalism, nativism, and populism, blaming a perceived decline in English culture on high immigration rates and an uncaring political elite.

[18] On 10 March 2009, the small, extreme British Salafi Islamist group Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah demonstrated in the town to protest against the Royal Anglian Regiment's homecoming parade following the latter's posting in Afghanistan.

[21] After local anti-Islamist blogger Paul "Lionheart" Ray publicised Yeomans' event online, various self-described "anti-jihadist" far-right groups that had emerged from the football hooligan firm scene—including the Welsh Defence League (WDL) and the March for England (MfE)—announced their intention to attend.

[32] Its first major public appearance to attract attention was in August, when the EDL and Casuals United held a joint protest in Birmingham, prompted by Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah's conversion of an eleven-year-old white boy in that city.

[38] According to the political scientist Joel Busher, Robinson was "a high-energy, fast-talking, all action character whose combination of swagger, self-deprecation and derring-do helped make him a popular figurehead within the movement.

[26] It claimed that Englishness had been marginalised throughout England, citing the fact that some local authorities had ceased flying the flag of St George and that some state schools only supplied halal meat and had stopped celebrating Nativity plays at Christmas time.

[57] Several northern groups expressed support for a former EDL regional organiser, John "Snowy" Shaw, who had accused Robinson and Carroll of financial impropriety.

[63] The revelation of links to Norwegian far-right activist Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of bombing and shooting attacks that killed 77 people in July 2011, further damaged the EDL.

[74] The BFP wanted to move closer to mainstream politics by disassociating itself from the BNP's emphasis on biological racism and imitating continental European right-wing groups such as the Dutch Party for Freedom.

[78] The BFP did poorly at a series of local elections, failing to gain sufficient votes to have its deposits returned; its failure to register correctly led the Electoral Commission to remove its registration.

[81] Some of these, such as the North West Infidels and South East Alliance, adopted more extreme perspectives, cooperating with the fascist National Front and making reference to the white supremacist Fourteen Words slogan on their social media.

[101][102][103][104] Following far-right violence at London's Cenotaph on Armistice Day 2023, an event at which Robinson was present, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak condemned those involved as "EDL thugs".

[152] Many placed this hatred in relation to local issues and personal experiences; for instance, EDL members regarded being poorly treated by an Asian shopkeeper as evidence that Muslims intrinsically hate the white working class.

[198] In 2011, the head of the EDL's Jewish Division, Roberta Moore, left the organisation because of it;[201] Robinson also cited the difficulty in dealing with these neo-Nazis as a reason for stepping down from his leadership position.

[250] In October 2010, West Yorkshire Police successfully requested a government ban on the EDL holding a rally in Bradford, fearing that it would spark violent racial tensions akin to those which had taken place in 2001.

[251] After inebriated Somali women racially assaulted a white woman in Leicester in June 2010, the EDL organised a protest rally there, attributing the attack to the supremacist attitude that Islam supposedly cultivated among its followers.

[252] When a white man was assaulted by Asian youths in the Hyde area of Greater Manchester, the EDL again organised a demonstration, blaming the attack on Muslims, although police had not ascertained the perpetrators' religious background.

[286] EDL members attended a Berlin rally organised by the Citizens' Movement Pax Europa in April 2010 in support of Geert Wilders, a right-wing, populist politician who had been charged for comparing Islam to Nazism.

[298] Pilkington argued that the EDL's active membership, meaning those who attended its rallies and events, peaked between January and April 2010, when national demonstrations could accrue 2000 people, but by the end of that year this had declined to between 800 and 1000.

[309] Once they hit their rhetorical stride, it was common for activists to reach beyond complaints ostensibly focused on Islam and Muslims to a more general lament that ranged across themes including immigration, overcrowded social housing, benefit fraud and, in the months after the English riots of August 2011, the supposed links between 'black culture' and a decline in law and order.

[335] Most EDL members whom Busher encountered "had a highly binary interpretation of the world, seeing themselves as engaged in a millennial struggle between good and evil – an existential fight for the future of their country and culture.

[343] Meadowcroft and Morrow suggested that the EDL overcame the collective action problem by offering its members "access to violent conflict, increased self-worth and group solidarity".

[344] They argued that for many working-class young men with "little meaning or cause for pride" in their lives, EDL membership allowed them to "reimagine" themselves as "heroic freedom fighters" battling to save their nation from its fundamental enemy, Islam, "thereby bolstering their sense of self-worth.

[345] Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell argued that the EDL's growth among the white working-class reflected how this sector of society—which had predominantly aligned with the political left during the 20th century—was increasingly shifting to the far-right in the early 21st.

[346] These sociologists attributed this to changes within the mainstream British left since the 1990s: following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Britain's mainstream left had ceased talking about regulating capitalism,[346] Tony Blair's New Labour project had shifted Labour's focus from its traditional working-class base towards middle-class swing voters,[347] and middle-class leftist politicians were increasingly regarding white working-class cultural values as an embarrassment.

[351] According to Winlow, Hall and Treadwell, it was the resulting "background of broadly felt anger and frustration" among the white working class, a "sense of disempowerment, abandonment and growing irrelevance", from which the EDL developed.

[364][365][366] The government regarded the EDL as a major threat to societal cohesion and integration,[261] and there were fears that the group sought to spark racially aggravated urban disturbances similar to those of 2001.

[57] It argued that anti-fascists should adapt their tactics to the wishes of local community members in a given area,[374] and emphasised bringing together different religious and ethnic groups in peaceful protest.