He wore a hooded top, with a black mask obscuring his face. Little wonder, for today there are many people who would wish him harm.

Simon is leader of the English Defence League, the organisation which has organised a string of anti-Muslim marches, culminating yesterday in the largest so far, in Manchester, at which 40 people were arrested.

The Sunday Herald met him at a Bolton pub before he and other league members set off for yesterday’s protest.

He spelled out in detail the views which have brought thousands of anti-far right protesters out on the streets to show their opposition to his organisation.

“Extremists are inciting and recruiting terrorists to fight against this country and we’ve had enough,” said Simon, who claims to be the voice of an increasingly angry British working class which has fundamentalist Islam in its sights.

“We want to wake up the government, who are treating Muslims like a master race and bending over backwards to appease them.”

Scotland will see for itself the Defence League tactics when it stages a protest in Glasgow at the beginning of November. It will be bolstered by activists from across England, who will travel to Scotland to show support.

The organisation’s Scottish leader, nicknamed Don and refusing to give his full identity, gave his first newspaper interview to the Sunday Herald.

Even though Muslim immigrants in Scotland are widely regarded to have integrated well, Don sees only parallel societies. “We are against fragmented communities living side by side, divided by hatred and distrust. It’s time to take action because there will be bloodshed if we do nothing,” he said.

These are familiar and discredited arguments to those who have mounted protests against the Defence League, which they brand fascist.

The organisation has been called many things: racist by its opponents, and MI5 collaborators by the party you would imagine to be closest to its own views – the British National Party. The BNP reportedly believes the Defence League was set up by the state to encourage violence and whip up anti-right wing feelings.

Around 2000 people from around the country converged in Manchester yesterday. Police said there were angry scenes and some people were detained on suspicion of racially-aggravated offences or for possession of weapons or drugs.

Police largely succeeded in keeping the two sides apart, bisecting Piccadilly Gardens, a square at the centre of Manchester, with a luminous line of reflective jackets.

Penned into the square, the two sides were divided by only a few yards, with mostly white-faced, short-haired football casuals from the Defence League and its regional allies facing off against a cosmopolitan, youthful mass of anti-fascists.

“We will protest outside every council building, police station and school that tries to erode the voice of the working class majority in Britain,” said Simon.

“This is only the beginning of our struggle. The Scottish Defence League has already been set up, but this will sweep Europe too. We’ve been in contact with groups from several major European cities who have the same goals.”

The first Defence League was formed in Luton after a controversial protest by Muslims at a homecoming parade for soldiers returning from Iraq.

The United People of Luton, which became the English Defence League, converged with a Welsh group called Casuals United. Using Facebook, the two groups found other like-minded people and held protests in Harrow and Birmingham, which both ended in violence.

The Scottish Defence League claims to have 180 members and says a further 500 people have contacted the group to express an interest in joining.

The defence leagues are keen to distance themselves from the BNP, which they depict as white only. The leagues say they have black and even Sikh members, although the Sunday Herald saw just two Afro-Caribbean faces joining the league at Manchester yesterday.

The anti-league protests yesterday were organised by Unite Against Fascism, whose joint national secretary Weyman Bennett said: ‘‘These people are street soldiers for the BNP, drawn from groups of football hooligans. The BNP have a voice and an electoral presence, but no storm-troopers, so the defence leagues serve that role.

“We need to recognise that the recession will throw up fascist groups just like the 1930s, but instead of anti-Semitism, these new groups promote Islamophobia. We cannot let history repeat itself.

‘‘In the 1930s fascists marched against Jewish people and then marched against society. These defence leagues will march against Islam and then turn on us all.”