Islam4UK’s plan to march through Wootton Bassett was met with outrage. On Sunday, rumours of the march’s imminence filled the quiet Wiltshire town, now a symbol of British military commemoration, with activists vowing to defend it. The march has been cancelled and the group banned, but campaigners, many from the BNP and English Defence League, continue to rally around Wootton Bassett, and have adopted a logo bearing the town’s name. Unfortunately, they haven’t managed to spell it right.

Since they began marking repatriations, the people of Wootton Bassett have been highly respected for representing the British people in dignified remembrance. They have been, according to Gordon Brown, “loyal and dedicated and patriotic in the way they have served this country”, and he has appealed to rid the town of politics so its population can do what they do best; stand in dignified silence as the coffins pass, a “quiet, pragmatic people” commemorating our fallen heroes.

To view the commemorations as gestures of the town’s solidarity with the country is completely different from seeing them as a recognition of tragedy, but this is just how the town has been recreated in the media, and the fact that Bassett is a small, semi-rural market town seals the deal. According to the newspapers, the people of Wootton Bassett are dignified, defiant and loyal, and most of all they are British.

So Anjem Choudary’s march becomes an insult to Britain, and, for many, a symbol of an unstoppable Islamist takeover in which white Christian ‘natives’, have lost all voice and rights. Wootton Bassett is an offensive venue not just because to march through it ‘sullies the sacrifice’ of the soldiers themselves, but because the town has become symbolic of the British people’s respect for their country and those who represent it. It’s very easy for these kinds of sentiments to escalate into vitriol.

A march in Bassett would be crass and attention-seeking, but it doesn’t have to be received with the hostility of nationalistic xenophobia. The town’s media profile has allowed this reaction to happen; ‘apolitical’ Wootton Bassett has become a tool wielded by reactionaries as a symbol of the nostalgic idea of Britain, under attack from those who ‘undermine’ its culture.

I’ve lived in Wootton Bassett for twenty years, and seen several repatriations. Many residents do not attend, but those that do might do so out of patriotism, in respect, or out of curiosity. I, and many of my peers, believe that Islam4UK members have the right to march regardless of how repulsive their ideas are. Preventing them from doing so does not take politics out of the town, but rather recognises its political symbolism. The town has reached the point where it cannot be removed from politics. Wootton Bassett is a typical English town; my home is a place of interesting people, dodgy politics, and tacky high streets, not a benign embodiment of little England. We cannot succumb to this lie; if it becomes entrenched in national consciousness, it threatens to breed a destructive and sinister hatred.