The cameras are still rolling at Byker Grove. These days, though, they are set high above the security fence at the edge of the grounds, next to signs warning off intruders. When the children’s soap finished its run, in 2006, producers abandoned the Victorian mansion where it was filmed.
Children will soon be running around the grounds again. Not PJ and Duncan, the youth club teenagers played by Ant and Dec, but students of an Islamic academy that is planned for the site, Benwell Towers.
Not everyone is happy with the proposal, however. In fact, when the Bahr Academy bought the property two years ago, the English Defence League, a far-Right group that has often clashed with police, staged its biggest-ever demonstration. It claims 5,000 members marched through Newcastle that day.
As tensions rose, someone hung a pig’s head from the gates, a calculated attempt to offend. The protesters seemed to favour an empty shrine to Nineties television over a faith school. Work on the site has now begun but it remains controversial, hence the security cameras.
So it was not such a surprise to learn that another march was planned for the city, next weekend. That is, until Geordies discovered the identity of the group behind the demonstration: Pegida, a populist anti-Islam movement – in Germany. It only held its first march against the “Islamisation of the West” in the German city of Dresden last October; now, it seems, it is ready to spread its message internationally.
Branches have been set up in several other countries, including France and Spain, and the Newcastle demonstration next Saturday will be its first in Britain. If it is successful, more marches are planned, for Birmingham and London, as well as Bathgate in Scotland. Read on and comment » | Tom Rowley | Saturday, February 21, 2015
