There was peace on the streets of Luton on Saturday. Loads of police and mounted police were at hand. The streets were relatively deserted - the good old English April showers and hail helped with that. There were clearly a good number around who would have joined a demo had there been people there to lead it, but they didn't show up. A notice had gone out on some right wing sites on the web on Friday evening that it was postponed, so clearly the ringleaders knew not to come. Without them the mob were quiet and probably headed for the pub. There was an uneasy silence over lunchtime and the early afternoon as people eyed each other. A few "Luton Unite Against Facism" people handed out flyers - God bless them. By five oclock, courage fired by a few hours in the pub, a group had gathered who were shouting at the police and against the Polish - whose team playing Northern Ireland. We have had trouble on that score before. Ironically they were gathered at the Wetherspoons Pub in the town centre - and it was a Wetherspoons that was trashed in Belfast by the Polish supporters.
We are grateful. Prayer was answered.
Yet the notice on the web on Friday said they planned to march on St George's Day. Makes sense - a day that reason says cannot be denied them, and six weeks before the June European elections.
So we have just over three weeks to come up with a peaceable response, that will build unity rather than allow it to be shattered. There is a problem though. Many of us find it hard to engage positively with St George as our patron saint. The Daily Mail captured some of that ambivalence this morning in an article: Only five of England's 44 bishops want the bells to ring out on St George's Day
Only five out of the church's 44 bishops enthusiastically back the plan - and several are hostile, claiming it could be 'dangerous' and cause a backlash from other religious groups.
The lack of interest among senior clerics in England's patron saint stands in sharp contrast to London Mayor Boris Johnson's plan to hold a week-long celebration of St George in London, with traditional English music and poetry readings.
Among those who supported Mr Johnson's initiative was Mail on Sunday reader and regular churchgoer Libby Alexander. In fact, she is so keen to celebrate St George's Day that she wrote to all Church of England bishops in February, urging them to take a lead by issuing a decree to churches to ring their bells on April 23.
One of the reasons church attendances had fallen, she told them, was 'the lack of assertiveness or confidence emanating from the top' and the 'strangulations of political correctness'.
I understand, and have shied from St George's Day, and so much of what is identified with our patron saint. But I am not sure we can continue to do that. It is to abandon the day and all it stands for to those of a nationalist persuasion. To let them continue to be the ones defining Englishness, our English identity. To allow them to be the guardians of Christian Britain.
We need to think seriously. And act soon. More promised.
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