Thursday 13 February 2014

Of frauds and forgeries

Prominent on Hope not Hate's website today - although yet to make it to their Facebook page - is their "100 days to stop UKIP" campaign, complete with a plea for funds from Nick Lowles. We're not convinced that using a slogan already used by Nick Clegg will prove to be an asset, but Hope not Hate have never been strong on originality: most of their methods have already been tried and tested by Josef Goebbels after all.

Still, Lowles can barely contain his excitement at it all. He breathlessly gushes about how 'just £15 will pay for 1,000 anti-UKIP leaflets', and '£100 will pay for 500,000 online ads' - remember boys and girls, if you ever see an online ad for HnH, be sure to click it to help them spend their budget!

Lowles also talks about their planned 'Campus Call Outs at dozens of universities where we'll register and mobilise student voters". Given their links with the Labour Party, we're sure that such registrations will in common with the TULO/Unions Together efforts be diverted via the Labour Party national communications centre in Newcastle.

The vast majority of HnH's funds come not from the public,
but from the Union barons
The question which really needs to be asked is why Lowles bothers with such campaigns at all. A
quick check through the Electoral Commission's records of regulated donations to Hope not Hate shows that in fact, of the £542,893 reported since 2004, a mere £88,618 has come from members of the general public - less than 17%. The remainder - £454,275 - has come from the trades unions and bodies such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust.

It is of course rhetorical to ask why. Hope not Hate's own 'about us' section still states "HOPE not hate mobilises everyone opposed to the British National Party’s (BNP) and English Defence League’s (EDL) politics of hate" - no mention of UKIP - and likes to give the impression that it is a grassroots campaign. Needless to say, that is not the case - it relies heavily on the unions, the Labour Party and political charities to fund its cause. If it relied solely upon private donations, it would have gone bust many years ago.

The old saying does however remain true - he who pays the piper calls the tune. As we have said before, with recent newspaper polls showing UKIP to be the best regarded party amongst the general public, Labour and their Union paymasters are desperate to head off the challenge in what Labour regard as 'their' heartlands. As we discussed in our last posting, there are no depths to which they will not stoop in order to achieve this end, and Hope not Hate are increasingly becoming the front organisation they hope to use to do it.

For Hope not Hate to be credible, it is necessary that they continue to present themselves as a grassroots campaign and not as they really are, a tool of the unions and Labour and powered by multinational consultants in Blue State Digital.

What does that mean for the whole "100 days to stop UKIP" fundraising campaign? It is nothing more than a charade. The union barons will pick up the tab for a sophisticated on-line, anti-UKIP campaign, while the rank and file are viewed as little more than an irritant except when there is violence against UKIP to be incited.

Although Hope not Hate's entire campaign is based on a lie, one question remains: would they be prepared to pay for UKIP infiltrators to spill the beans? A letter has been doing the rounds which purports to come from Simon Cressy promising payment for UKIP 'secrets'. For a whole host of reasons - not least that Simon Cressy doesn't exist, but is a nom de plume for HnH employee Carl Morphett - we are forced to conclude that the letter is a forgery. In a fast growing party such as UKIP, it is far easier to get their own supporters to sign up and attend UKIP meetings than it is to pay for information, and we are forced to conclude that the continued circulation of this letter is likely to be counter-productive.

Why so? Because unlike Hope not Hate, UKIP is a genuinely grassroots organisation. We are well regarded by the voting public, and are not in the pockets of anybody. While Hope not Hate, Labour and the trades unions are quite happy to lie, cheat and steal in order to blunt the force of our message, we have no need to descend to such depths. The British public are increasingly behind us, and we are happy to stand on our own beliefs: the use of forged documents will not help us in this.

Lies, damn lies and Labour

The three 'non-political' members of the public who just
happen to have close links to the Labour Party
Hope not Hate have been busy circulating the Manchester Evening News story from yesterday in which three innocent, non-political members of the public were used in a UKIP leaflet. As was revealed on another blog late last night, these three innocents - Bernard Caine, Irene Lawrence and her daughter Rachel - are in fact Labour Party activists. UKIP has confirmed that all three gave their permission for their image to be used, while sources tell us that pretty much everybody involved with the story also knew that it was fundamentally a lie, although that did not stop the Manchester Evening News running it.

Bernard Caine, the gentleman pictured, said he "has no party political affiliation but on this occasion has picked Labour candidate Mike Kane via
The 'non-political' Mr Caine not at all urging people to
vote Labour on his friend Mike Kane's behalf
postal vote, added: “It is diabolical.”".
His choice of Mike Kane was not entirely unexpected, as he was a fellow director of the multi-million pound Parkway Green Housing Trust a few years ago, a position to which he was nominated by the local Labour Party. He was also pictured with Mike Kane and Harriet Harman - a photograph which appears on the latter's website - at the beginning of the Wythenshawe & Sale East by-election attending a Labour Party meeting. He also appears to have forgotten his presence amongst a carefully selected audience of Labour supporters who got to meet Ed Milliband during the campaign.
The non-political Bernard Caine not listening to
Labour leader Ed Milliband

Irene Lawrence - who "only went to the meeting because her housing association asked her to go" - has a similarly short memory. She was the chairwoman of the multi-million pound Willow Park Housing Trust for 11 years and also worked closely with Mike Kane and the Labour administration who nominated her.

And for Ms Lawrence's daughter Rachel? Well, she also appears to have got to meet Ed Milliband as one of the carefully pre-selected audience members when the Labour leader 'meets the public, although as it is difficult to be certain, we have not reproduced the photograph here. 

It is worth asking whether with former directors of two of the largest local housing trusts in Wythenshawe being prepared to lie about their association with the Labour Party if this is the source of local resident's complaints that they were told to take down UKIP posters and placards from their social housing? Were Labour tacitly supporting threats to the security of working class people in housing association properties?

UKIP will face many more of these set-ups over the coming months. We should not underestimate the depths to which the Labour Party will sink, or the lies which will be told by otherwise ordinary people. It is no wonder that Hope not Hate are pushing the story so hard. Increasingly though HnH are finding that even their supporters are seeing through their lies:




Wednesday 12 February 2014

What is the point of an anti-fascist organisation if there are no fascists?

Our attention was recently drawn to yet another anti-UKIP campaign ahead of the European Elections in May of this year.

This one would appear to be another UAF/SWP/HnH front. Carefully hosted overseas and using privacy to hide the true owners behind anonymous hosting companies in California it trots out pretty much the rubbish you'd expect.

One phrase which was interesting was this:

"Such a climate of racist and reactionary ideas also creates a fertile breeding ground for fascist organisations, such as the British National Party and the English Defence League."

Which rather flies in the face of experience. In fact, since the rise of UKIP began, we have seen the collapse of both the BNP and the EDL. UKIP have achieved more in the past year than Hope not Hate, Unite Against Fascism and the Socialist Worker's Party have in a decade in combatting the far-right by proving themselves a moderate, non-racist party which still stands up for Britain.

This of course is the reason UKIP now faces such ire from the hard left, and explains the increasingly violent methods they are using to combat UKIP. For Nick Lowles, Martin Smith, Weyman Bennett and the rest, their opposition to fascism was only skin deep and nothing more than a vehicle for their own wider political views which were no more or less fascist than those of their opponents. All of them occupy that strange position where the extremes of political right and left meet and onlookers can no longer tell the difference between the pigs and the men.

The real problem - and the reason for setting up UKIP as a party of the hard right when it is clearly nothing of the sort - is that there is little point in having an anti-fascist organisation if there is no fascism to fight. Hope not Hate is not a campaign, it is a multi-million pound business masquerading as one. The SWP is not a political movement, it is a shelter for rapists and a natural home for those who would destroy that which they can not possess. In both cases, it lends to people who would otherwise be non-entities a feeling of empowerment, of strutting self-importance which far exceeds their true abilities. Nick Lowles, a failed journalist. Ruth Smeeth, who lost a safe Labour seat and can't get voted onto the Labour NEC despite repeated attempts. Martin Smith, a rabble-rousing rapist who has been temporarily shunted out of sight. Weyman Bennett, who has multiple criminal convictions. These are not people who would otherwise be destined for stellar careers, these are the also-rans who cling to the prominence their failing organisations have given them.

We should not mistake their continued attacks for continued success on their part. They themselves are well aware of how thin the rope is on which their survival depends. With recent polls showing that UKIP is the most favourably viewed party in the country the hard left campaigns are in a tail spin: the public no longer believe their shrill hysteria.

Make no mistake, the European Elections are probably more important to these hard left campaign groups than they are to UKIP. At the moment, the traditional political parties - Labour, Tories and Lib Dems - are pinning their hopes on HnH and the rest doing their dirty work for them. With the Lib/Lab/Cons having no clear idea about how to stop UKIP, they are happy to sub-contract the dirty work to the hard left and never mind the ideological differences: the violent intimidation of geriatric UKIP campaigners, the assault of elected UKIP members, the graffiti-ing and theft from UKIP offices.

The real problems for Lowles, Smith, Smeeth and Bennett begin if UKIP garners a large percentage of the vote on the 22nd May. If 30% of the country support UKIP, will the political establishment continue to fund and tacitly support their organisations, or will they realise such campaigns to be counter-productive? You can not after all ask for 30% of the population to vote for you if you have spent the last year telling those same people that they're extremist racists, even if you have done it by proxy.

Naturally, such groups have other purposes. So far they have constrained debate on a wide range of subjects. Doubt whether global warming theories have a sound scientific basis? Heretic. Wonder whether mass immigration is good for the working class? Fascist. Think increased benefit payments may encourage indolence? Capitalist pig-dog lackey.

Be prepared over the coming months to have everything including the kitchen sink thrown at UKIP by these unaccountable rich-man's toys. For the traditional parties, the stakes are high, but for HnH/SWP/UAF it is their very existence which is at stake: if UKIP polls well, they will be discarded without a second thought. Lowles, Smeeth, Bennett and Smith will be queuing up next to Griffin, Brons, Robinson and Carroll at the jobcentre.

Saturday 1 February 2014

It'll be all white - where to buy your 2014 calendars now it's 1st February

As we roll into February 2014, spare a thought for poor Hope not Hate. After being exposed for their fraudulent VAT regime yesterday, we notice that they are still desperately trying to sell copies of
their 2014 fundraising calendar on their website.

We know very few people who think 'Look, it's February the 1st, time to buy a calendar', but there may be some. Would they pay full price now that 1/12th of the year has passed? Probably not, as there are plenty of calendars at reduced prices now in the shops. Never ones to believe in market forces however, poor Mr Lowles and his staff must spend most of their time stepping around unopened boxes unless they have followed their own green beliefs and hung multiple copies in the toilet to save on the use of other paper there.

It is such a shame that more members of the general public won't get to see the achingly politically correct front cover, featuring random faces chosen strictly by race to ensure they are what HnH
It'll be all white - Hope not Hate's achingly white and middle
class training sessions
defines as a 'representative' sample. Had anybody else dared to do such a thing, it would have been decried as tokenism. And let's not forget the wonderful pictures of Nick Lowles and others on their freebie junket to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, paid for by taxpayers.

The reality of Hope not Hate meetings is a rather more solidly middle class, white affair. As has been mentioned elsewhere, pictures of Hope not Hate's recent training seminars to mobilise support against UKIP's supposed 'racism' show a marked lack of anybody who is not white. Contrast this with pictures of UKIP meetings, where there are a significant number of activists representing immigrant communities.


How depressing it must be for Hope not Hate to remain so stubbornly white and relatively well off. It's enough to make racists of them. Perhaps Matthew Collins could be persuaded to go and  threaten to beat up a few old ladies of Asian heritage if they don't attend more Hope not Hate meetings?
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