‘Hipster cop’ picture taken as police watched as tensions rose at EDL protest in Walthamstow

Police were criticised for protecting the far right group at the expense of locals, but despite tensions EDL march was largely safe

(Andrew Griffin)

On Saturday, 50 to 100 members of the far-right English Defence League marched through Walthamstow, one of the most diverse parts of London, leading to tensions and fourteen arrests.

It was there that the “hipster cop” photo — showing a man with a large, waxed beard who was mocked for being part of a largely mythical subculture — was taken.

At the time, the policeman was standing on Walthamstow’s Forest Road, just outside the lawn of the town hall and magistrate’s court. The man — now identified as Peter Swinger, an ex-soldier who loves motorbikes, according to the Daily Mail — was keeping apart the EDL contingent and a group of local people who had come to oppose the far-right group’s march.

Behind Swinger stood the EDL, who had walked up one of the area’s main roads to stand in a pen that formed the main site of the protest. At the time, they had been standing in that pen and listening to speeches and rock music, carrying cards that referenced the child grooming cases in Rotherham and elsewhere. In front were local residents, apparently unconnected from the main counter-protest, who repeatedly told the EDL to go home and that they were disturbing the largely peaceful nature of the diverse area.

As seen in video of the event, many locals criticised the police's response for protecting the EDL at the expense of locals. Police had established a special metal pen for the far-right protestors to stand in, around which police formed a number of protective cordons.

Still at least two people were injured, including one woman who appeared to have been hit by an object thrown by a member of the EDL. She had been stood on the balconies that can clearly be seen in the now-viral hipster cop photo.

Other members of the local community criticised the EDL for having largely come from outside to protest in the area. While flags and shirts from a range of the EDL's various "divisions" could be seen — including those from Sheffield, Walsall and Staffordshire — none of the group appeared to have come from Walthamstow or anywhere else in the surrounding East London.

Though the EDL’s number has been depleted in recent years, turnout was still fairly high. Their number was matched only by the huge amount of police that followed them through the streets — as well as scores of police officers on foot and wearing riot gear, the EDL needed to be protected by dozens of vans and horses.

The EDL had said long before the march that it was being held in memory of Lee Rigby, and that it had been moved to Walthamstow after objections to the group marching in Woolwich, the site of his murder. But it may also have been an attempt to reclaim their pride in the area after local residents and Unite Against Fascism stopped the group from marching through Walthamstow in 2012.

The photographer who took the original picture of hipster cop appeared unimpressed by the attention given to him. “Several 100k of our money wasted protecting 65 racists & everyone is talking about 1 plod's beard,” he tweeted the afternoon after the protest.