The arrest of over 53 people in the United Kingdom is the beginning of the end for once-great Britain.  The leaders of the English Defence League (EDL), Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, were among those arrested, as well as Paul Weston of the British Freedom Party (BFP).  I spoke with Kevin Carroll about his recent arrest and that of Robinson and Weston, and he told me the appalling details.

Carroll told me that British authorities tried everything in the book to stop him from running for police and crime commissioner (PCC) for the Bedfordshire Police Authority.  Nonetheless, he officially won the right to run for PCC last Friday.  But then, the very next day, British authorities carried out these mass arrests of EDL and BFP members, stripping them and forcing them to wear white paper overalls like those given to incarcerated terrorists.  They were allowed no phone calls.

Meanwhile, British police raided the homes of Carroll, Robinson, and three others who had been arrested.  "They absolutely ransacked mine," Carroll told me.  "They smashed the door off and wrecked my home.  They took my only vehicle, with all the tools of my trade inside, and impounded it, as well as Tommy's car."  The police, the bomb squad, forensics teams, and sniffer dogs spent seven and a half hours stripping Carroll's van to the bone.  "When they finished," he said, "they found nothing!  They loaded it up with bugs and GPS monitors and threw everything in the back; it looks like it's been in a blender."

After smashing the door to Carroll's home off its hinges, police officials repaired it, got a locksmith to put on a new lock, and left with the new keys, leaving Carroll locked out of his own home.  When Carroll was released, still wearing his white paper prison suit, it was dark and raining; true to form, police officials offered him no transportation, even though it was late at night on a Sunday.

Robinson is being held in Wandsworth prison, an old and antiquated structure with a large population of Muslim prisoners.  Weston was arrested and later released without charge for refusing to leave a reception area without information about Robinson.  And it is clear why officials would not want that information to get out: not only has Robinson been placed with the general prison population instead of segregated for his own protection, but prison officials have even put him in a cell with hostile Muslims.  He was allowed to call his wife Jenna, and he told her that he knew it was going to be "lively" in the cell.  That was an understatement: prison officials have deliberately put Robinson in physical danger and even imperiled his life.  Carroll contacted a high-ranking police official to request that Robinson be segregated, and she received a promise that he would be, but it hasn't happened yet -- and Robinson has even been denied bail.

"They are really coming at us with everything," Carroll told me.  "I'm even on police bail at the moment for 'conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.'"  This is a politically motivated and trumped up charge, but in Britain it can carry a life sentence.