After Nick Lowles self-congratulatory - not to mention revisionist and distorted - missive about how effective Hope not Hate has been over the last ten years, he follows it up with the following message:
One of the consequences of the Lobbying Act is that the Electoral Commission will only accept that HOPE not hate has a supporter network if it can prove a financial transaction, otherwise any email, telephone call or meeting we hold will have to go down as an election expense.
As a consequence, we are asking people who back our campaign to officially become a HOPE not hate supporter for just £1.
All the money raised will go directly to our 2015 campaign fund.
If you like what we do, think we make a difference and want to help us going forward, then please become a HOPE not hate supporter for just £1.
What this is in reality is a massive attempt to hoodwink the Electoral Commission into believing that they are a grassroots organisation when they are not: the message is little more than an admission that they are perpetrating an electoral fraud, and they are now asking for members of the public to become an accessory to that fraud to save Nick's bacon.
We'd be interested in seeing any e-mails that readers might come across from the Labour Party, trade unions or any other organisation encouraging their members to cough up a quid to help Hope not Hate pretend they have mass support outside their own offices. As we have discussed previously, only 17% of their funds came from the general public at the last election, with a massive 83% coming from trades unions and political charities such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust.
It must be terrible to have to try and account for the cost of every e-mail, telephone call and meeting they have. It may be worth sending him an e-mail or giving them a call to commiserate. Its such a shame they'd have to account for them. Apart from giving Nick and his friends a call, it may be worth passing on to likely supporters details of how he was so happy that UKIP didn't gain one particular seat in Bradford, that he tweeted his support for the narrow victor, a former BNP councillor who remains a close friend of Nick Griffin. We're pretty sure this is not the sort of thing their supporters would sanctions.
There is of course no 'boots on the ground' Hope not Hate network of activists. As we saw repeatedly in the run up to the European Elections with the failure of repeated Hope not Hate leafleting campaigns - Transport Tuesday, various 'days of action' - there were no stand-alone HnH events. All relied on Labour and Green Party members, who took the opportunity to deliver leaflets their own parties would never have sanctioned because even for them the lies were too extravagant.
UPDATE - please see our latest post - their £1 donation system is deliberately soliciting donations from donors who are impermissible under UK electoral law. We know, because we've already made a series of donations from impermissible donors! http://nopenothope.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/lowles-attempt-to-evade-lobbying-act.html
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