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.