Ray's pro-BNP views meant that American conservatives such as Phyllis Chesler, who had initially championed him after his arrest last year, quickly dropped him (although Pamela Geller remains supportive). A bitter feud with Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs followed, with Ray accusing Johnson of being "the equivalent of a Second World War Nazi collaborator who would have been shot because of his treason". Ray has also appeared on an American radio station claiming that the word "Paki" is just a neutral term like "Brit" or "Aussie", and that only Islamic extremists claim otherwise; however, everyone in the UK knows it to be a very offensive term of racial abuse. Ray has since fallen out with other EDL leaders, and he is now detached from the movement.

Protests held by the EDL have tended to be ugly affairs; the wearing of balaclavas evokes unhappy memories of Northern Ireland, where swaggering hard men with the same head dress caused general misery for the general population. One of the EDL's founders describes it as "the most ruthless street army in the country"; chants are often coarse, and on one occasion included the phrase "Muslims Out". In May, a protest held by "United People of Luton", which overlaps with the EDL, included men in balaclavas, and an Asian-owned shop was attacked; a protest in Birmingham in July led to scuffles and arrests. A follow-up protest in the city a few weeks later - at which the EDL was more restrained in its rhetoric - was met with a violent reaction from some young local Asians, who reportedly also attacked some white passersby. Just last week, the EDL managed to get a reaction without even showing up: they cancelled a protest in Luton, but local Asians who had geared up for a fight took their frustrations out on the police.

In the interview with Mawyer (part one here), the main EDL speaker complains that his home town is being taken over by Muslims, who, he claims, have a birth rate of 10 children per family. He says that on occasions of one minute silences in the town "any Asians" will deliberately make noise, and that they yearly celebrate 9/11.  He also objects to Muslims "infiltrating" the local council and government, and suggests that they make decisions to close down churches and turn them into mosques, and to ban St. George's Day parades while allowing extremist events.

The speaker also describes the antics of a British Muslim extremist named Anjem Choudary; Choudary generates constant media attention from his various stunts and provocations -  most notoriously, he celebrates the 9/11 hijackers as the "Magnificent 19", and it was his protest against returning British soldiers in Luton in March which generated the heat that has led to the creation of the the EDL. Recently, a bewildered white 11-year-old passerby was "persuaded" to convert to Islam in a city centre, and the speaker refers to this incident. The speaker also believes Choudary should be arrested for incitement for having a banner which reads "Jesus was a Muslim".

However, while Mawyer is happy to chat with the EDL leaders, other British "anti-jihad" activists are wary of what they stand for; a comment left at Robert Spencer's blog tells us that "Tensions between some of the anti-jihadist factions who had all been kindly invited by Jason [Campbell] to a meal caused splitting of the groups and confusion"; perhaps this was EDL activists showing up at the restaurant?