BIRMINGHAM police have a responsibility to safeguard the security of the city’s residents and visitors, not to act as the social secretary of the racist and Islamophobic English Defence League.

It beggars belief that police have again approached the city’s Bar Risa to ask it to open up specially tomorrow to provide a watering hole for drunken and violent EDL bigots.

What pressure was put on Bar Risa management to offer hospitality to its unwelcome guests?

Bar Risa told the Redbrick student publication last year that it was opposed to the EDL and had initially refused the police request before knuckling under in the face of renewed demands.

The police may believe that their job of shepherding a gang of drunken racists is made easier by having them all under one roof, but they can’t coerce a local business into providing that roof.

The EDL is not, despite its bizarre claims, a defence organisation.

English people have nothing to be defended against in England’s second city and the idea of a population of 50-odd million people in their own country requiring the protection of this gaggle of hate-filled thugs is preposterous.

Their sole aim is to stoke resentment and prejudice against Britain’s Muslim communities and to vent their phobia through physical assaults.

The EDL record shows that, if Muslim sacrificial lambs are not available, Hindus, Sikhs or anyone else who looks different will do.

The police should not be treating the EDL as a normal political organisation holding a demonstration to put forward its policies.

They should see the group for what it is — a violent conspiracy against our citizens’ right to go about their business without being abused, harassed or assaulted.

Yet even the Bar Risa staff, who reflect Birmingham’s joyously multiracial and multicultural population, are being prevented from working as normal because of the collaboration of their employer with the police in the service of the EDL.

Advising that only white staff should be on duty when the EDL come to town tomorrow is not a one-off, consequence-free decision.

It splits the workforce down the middle and risks friction between staff from different backgrounds.

When Bar Risa advertises for staff, it doesn’t tell applicants that work schedules may be conditioned by the colour of their skin. Nor could it because this would contravene our laws against racial discrimination.

So why is this employer perpetrating unequal treatment?

Is this another example of guidance from West Midlands Police, retreating from their responsibility to tackle racism and accommodating the bigotry of alcohol-fuelled boot-boys in the quest for a quiet life?

Bar Risa may well believe that it lacks the power to tell the police that it doesn’t wish to play along with this unprincipled ploy.

If so, it is wrong. This is not yet a police state and no officer, no matter how high-ranking, has the power to order a business to snub its regular clientele by opening up specially to provide the EDL with Dutch courage.

Bar Risa should, even at this late stage, reverse its wrong decision. No amount of donations to charity can make it right.

The company should tell the police that it is not playing ball. Police not local businesses are responsible for monitoring likely breaches of the peace.

If they don’t have the resources to manage a couple of hundred drunks looking for trouble, they should have had the provocative stunt banned.