By Luke MacGregor/Reuters
LONDON — A radical Islamic group planning a protest march through the streets of a town that has achieved iconic status in Britain for honoring the passing hearses of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan ran into a stiff rebuff from the British government on Monday.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a statement saying he was “personally appalled” by the group’s plan to march through the streets of Wootton Bassett
, 70 miles west of London, where townspeople have lined the sidewalks since April 2007 to mourn the passing cortges of British military casualties flown home to the nearby military airbase at Lyneham.
“Wootton Bassett has a special significance for us all at this time, as it has been the scene of the repatriation of many members of our armed forces who have tragically fallen,” Mr. Brown said. “Any attempt to use this location to cause further distress and suffering to those who have lost loved ones would be abhorrent and offensive.”
Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who is responsible for the police, said in a separate statement that he would support any request from the police or local government officials to ban the march. “I find it particularly offensive that the town, which has acted in such a moving and dignified way in paying tribute to our troops who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country should be targeted in this manner,” he said.
Plans for staging the march were laid out in an open letter to the families of the 246 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the toppling of the Taliban in 2001 that was posted by Anjem Choudary, leader of a group called Islam4UK, on the group’s Web site. The organization describes itself as a “platform” for promoting the views of an extremist Islamic group, Al Muhajiroun, which praised the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States as heroes, but disbanded in 2005 in response to a British government order banning it.
A statement on the organization’s Web site said the march would be held “not in memory of the occupying and merciless British military, but rather the real war dead who have been shunned by the Western media and general public as they were and continue to be horrifically murdered in the name of democracy and freedom, the innocent Muslim men, women and children.”
Mr. Choudary, a 42-year-old lawyer and the British-born son of a Pakistani immigrant, did not say when the march would take place, but in his letter to the families of the dead soldiers, he spelled out his reasons for proposing it.
“It is worth reminding those who are still not blinded by the media propaganda that Afghanistan is not a British town near Wootton Bassett but rather Muslim land which no one has the right to occupy, with a Muslim population who do not deserve their innocent men, women and children to be killed for political mileage and for the greedy interests of the oppressive U.S. and U.K. regimes,” he said.
The townspeople’s practice of honoring the hearses on their journey to a mortuary in the nearby city of Oxford began spontaneously, with two British veterans stood in silent vigil at the roadside as a cortge carrying dead soldiers passed. But it developed rapidly into a local, and quickly a national, institution. Week after week, television newscasts have broadcast images of hundreds of townspeople, and mourners from across the country, lining the main street, now renamed the Highway for Heroes, honoring every dead soldier, or group of soldiers, passing through the town.
The images have galvanized support across the country — crowds standing with their heads bowed, some throwing flowers atop the hearses, family members of the fallen weeping as the hearses pass. With a majority of people in Britain saying in opinion polls that they would favor an early military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the ritualized mourning has provided an occasion on which opponents and supporters of the war can find a fitful reconciliation.
In Wootton Bassett, reaction to the proposed march was vehement.
“We don’t do what we do at Wootton Bassett for any political reason at all,” said Chris Wannell, a former mayor of the town. “We are a Christian country and traditional English market town who honor very much our queen and country. We obey the law and pay respects to our servicemen who protect our freedom. If this man has any decency about him he will not hold a march through Wootton Bassett.”
Three Facebook groups opposing the march have drawn more than half a million supporters. One anonymous contributor made his point bluntly. “I want my England back,” he said.
Susan commented, “Someone ought to ask those who believe that this march ought to be protected by some basic right to free speech just where they draw the line. Is it OK to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater? Is it OK to utter speeches urging others to violence? Is it OK to rally to protest free speech?
This rally is all about decrying the exercise of free speech by the citizens of this little town. If this group of British Muslims were all about calling attention to dead Muslims in Afghanistan they could find some other place to do this. The whole point of this exercise is to shut down the exercise of free speech. This is one more example of the Muslim community failing to control the radicals in its midst. Where are the denunciations about this planned event from CAIR and other organized Islamic groups?”
Dan wrote, “If after 9-11 the US had given Al-Qaida $10 Billon to use in building schools, medical clinics and senior citizens’ housing, does any one of you believe they would have given up jihad and begun the process of rebuilding Afghanistan? Do you believe that they would have elevated the status of women and stopped encouraging honor killings? No?”
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