"A March 2011 report in Searchlight claimed that Alan Lake, who was at that time involved with the EDL (he’s since fallen out with the group) “boasts of his links with Batten”, although details are scarce and so far as I can see unproven. Searchlight also speculates that Lake may have come across Solomon previously – Lake formerly attended Kensington Temple, a large neo-Pentecostal church in London where Solomon has given at least one sermon."
Update October 2012:
Batten’s statement re. his meetings with Lake was published on twitter by an ex-UKIP employee, Jasna Badzak:
Final tweet tonight-#UKIP MEP Spokesman admits meeting #EDL deputy Lake,connected to Breivik,questioned by Norwaypolice twitter.com/JasnaBadzak/st…
— Jasna Badzak (@JasnaBadzak) October 24, 2012
7th March 2011: Statement from Gerard Batten UKIP MEP about his meeting with Alan Lake and subsequent phone calls:
"In the Autumn of 2010 I was asked to meet with a Mr Alan Lake, who I was informed had some association with the English Defence League. I was informed he wished to explain to me the position of the English Defence League.
Being aware of the phenomenon of the EDL, I wished to establish my own independent assessment of them. I decided therefore, on my own initiative, to meet with Mr Lake. We met in full public view in a cafe in Liverpool St Station for about an hour or more.
Mr Lake gave me his assurances that the EDL were a non-racist, non-violent organisation and that is only concerned with combating the ideology of extremist and fundamentalist Islamism and had no prejudice against Muslims as such.
I decided that no further meetings were either necessary or appropriate.
Since then Mr Lake has made two unsolicited phone calls to me; and a third call today to say that his reported comments in the Searchlight article had been misrepresented from an interview he gave to the Daily Star."
