Membership and support of the English Defence League
[6] On the basis of her research with the group, Pilkington suggested that there was a "high turnover in the movement",[7] while Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell observed that members "drift in and out of its activities".
[2] Researchers found many individuals in white working-class areas who supported the EDL's views but did not want to attend its demonstrations, fearing violence, arrest, and the potential loss of their jobs.
[17] 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.
Moreover, in contrast to the decisive entrances and exits into and from classic far right movements, activism in the EDL resembles rather a 'hokey kokey' in which activists repeatedly engage and 'step-back' as they marry the costs and consequences of participation with their wider lives.
"[19] The EDL brought together three main constituencies; football hooligans, longstanding far-right activists, and a range of socio-economically marginalised people, the majority of whom were young men.
[28] 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".
[29] They argued that for many working-class young men who have "little meaning or cause for pride" in their lives, membership of the EDL allows 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.
"[30] In addition, they argued that EDL membership gave individuals a sense of group identity and community which they might otherwise be lacking, citing various examples of members who described their local division as being like a family.
[45] 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.
[4] At the time, 81% of the EDL's Facebook supporters were male, to 19% female; among those surveyed by Bartlett and Littler most were young, with only 28% being over the age of thirty, and only 30% had attended either college or university.
[52] Additional research was carried out by Matthew Goodwin, David Cutts, and Laurence Janta-Lupinski, who drew upon the data gathered by YouGov in an October 2012 survey.
[55] These members were found to be "extremely pessimistic about intergroup relationships, strongly xenophobic and considerably more likely than others to endorse the use of violence when defending their in-group from perceived threats".
[64] EDL members frequently referenced incidents of racist abuse, bullying, violence, and murder against white British people which they felt went under-reported or inappropriately punished.
[67] Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell similarly found EDL supporters repeatedly claiming the existence of "a creeping prejudice against the white heterosexual working class", with said members regarding themselves as "victims of a new systemic cultural injustice".
[71] Busher felt that most of the EDL members he 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.
[79] Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell noted that members placed great importance on their working-class identity and class interests, and that many displayed clear bonds with their local communities.
[88] Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell also engaged in fieldwork among EDL members, noting that it "draws the overwhelming majority of its support from Britain's old white working class".
[89] They argued that many white working-class Britons—who had predominantly aligned with the political left during the twentieth century—had shifted to the far-right in the early twenty-first century because mainstream left-wing politicians had increasingly abandoned them.
[92] At the same time, in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the mainstream British left ceased talking about regulating capitalism and there had been a narrowing in economic policy between Labour and the Conservatives.
[90] As a result, Winlow, Hall and Treadwell found that few of the EDL members they contacted were aware that the British left had historically dedicated itself to improving the economic prospects of the working class.
[94] EDL supporters expressed the view that mainstream politicians of both the centre-left and centre-right had been "seduced by the image of 'the exotic'", wanting to "embrace 'diversity' and cultural novelty" while presenting themselves as "cutting-edge, forward-looking, open, cosmopolitan and progressive".
[96] EDL supporters believed that the heterosexual white working class were left as the only cultural group in the UK that lacked vocal political representation.
[98] 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 was able to develop.
[99] The EDL provided these working-class individuals with "a very basic means of understanding their frustrations", pointing the finger of blame for their economic insecurity and sense of cultural marginalisation at Muslims and recently arrived migrants.
