Militant rises - Hope not Hate & SutU incite wave of violence against UKIP

If there is one thing we will remember this election for when polling day is gone and the campaign is long forgotten by most, it will be the violence. Mostly unreported, mostly directed towards UKIP, we have seen reports flood in from around the country. Billboards destroyed. Shops and offices vandalised. Activists assaulted. Vehicles damaged. Candidates intimidated. The scale of it has been unprecedented in the UK. And the source of it has been the hard left, even on the handful of occasions when the Labour Party has been the victim, getting called 'Red Tories' in Scotland.

Mark Smith, the Bournemouth UKIP activist assaulted by
5 men attempting to remove a UKIP sign from his garden

In the last 24 hours, we've seen a UKIP poster van in Eastbourne severely damaged in the third attack on the vehicle in 2 weeks. In Plymouth, council officials acting at the behest of foul-mouthed Labour councillor Tudor Evans have harassed UKIP candidates, removing placards and threatening council action. In Bournemouth, a UKIP activist was assaulted by a group of 5 men attempting to remove a UKIP placard from his garden.

These things are not isolated incidents; in fact, they have been brewing for some time. In July 2013 we blogged of a UKIP candidate in Swansea who stood down after his wife's career was threatened by a UNISON rep if he dared to stand for the party. Throughout 2014 and the European elections, we saw a rising tide of vandalism directed against UKIPs poster campaign and against campaign shops and offices. Nigel Farage was assaulted on several occasions - always by people with

UKIP MEP Gerard Batten's London home after it was
attacked with bricks

links to Stand up to UKIP and Hope not Hate - and other candidates and activists also came under violent attack. This included UKIP MEP Gerard Batten, who had a brick thrown through his window at home.

This year, the violence and hate has been even greater. As of 2 weeks ago, over 30 UKIP shops and campaign offices had been attacked, some several times. Ramsgate, Blythe, Folkestone, Kidderminster, Southport, Herne Bay, Wrexham, Penarth - the list goes on, across the country from North to South and East to West.

It is not just UKIP premises which have been targeted. Householders in Lincoln who displayed 'Vote UKIP' banners found their windows put through. People unconnected with UKIP who signed UKIP nomination papers have been harassed and threatened. Potential candidates have been physically intimidated into not standing. A UKIP candidate was forced to withdraw from a local hustings after receiving death threats from Stand up to UKIP. Nigel Farage was harassed by Green Party and Labour activists while eating Sunday lunch in a pub with his family.

What has been the official response to this? Beyond local newspapers, it may as well not be happening. None of the national media has seen fit to report on this wave of political violence, while the police can barely stir themselves to take statements. There have been few if any arrests.

So what is the cause of this?

Hope not Hate and their allies in the equally union-funded, SWP-run 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign must take a significant share of the blame. Neither are 'grass-roots' organisations in the sense that UKIP is - the vast majority of Hope not Hate's funding comes from the big unions: Unison and Unite. They also were in receipt of a significant slice of public funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Hope not Hate claim they do not take part in violence. This may be technically true. But what we have seen on repeated occasions is Hope not Hate activists attending rallies by the far-right, and using their Twitter account to direct the hard-left thugs of UAF towards a confrontation by giving precise

Weyman Bennett of Stand up to UKIP, having his collar
felt once again, but not at an anti-UKIP event

locations of far-right activists in a running commentary. When the inevitable violent clashes occur, HnH stand back and hold their hands up in mock horror. Add to that their hate-filled rhetoric, their demonisation of insignificant UKIP members who have said something they regard as politically incorrect. Labour and Tory candidates invariably have many years of sucking at the public tit before being selected as a candidate for a Parliamentary election during which time they learn the language of empty words and politician-speak. UKIP candidates are builders, housewives, truck drivers and nurses, unused to talking the foreign language used to disguise the true meaning of words so beloved of our professional political class. They say what they think - sometimes in colourful language, sometimes in intemperate language, and rarely in the sort of doublespeak used by those with an elected position to protect. This relentless focus on pensioners who say 'coloured' or 'black' instead of the currently preferred 'BME' (Black & Minority Ethnic, in case you wondered) is not because they have said anything particularly terrible, nor even that they have expressed racist sentiments. It is because the media outcry will deter others from sticking their head above the parapet. It is part of a long-running campaign of intimidation.

We then move on to UAF and their Stand up to UKIP front campaign. Relying on the same funding sources as HnH - the large unions - much of the overt violence has been caused by them. The intolerance of activists such as Bunny La Roche in Thanet South (who now also works for Hope not Hate) has positively incited a core of hard-left activists drawn from an assortment of hard left groups ranging from the Greens to the SWP via International Socialists to take violent action against UKIP. Is there any condemnation from their organisation? From the Labour Party? None. That La Roche is a defender of a racist sexual practise is of no interest to the anti-UKIP brigade.

Thanet South is particularly interesting. After a spate of violent attacks against UKIP activists and properties, there were claims of UKIP activists attacking Labour campaigners while simultaneously claiming they were National Front. A more convenient state of affairs is difficult to imagine, ticking all the right boxes for them to claim victim status. A few blurry photographs and a couple of quotes from professional politician and Labour candidate, the 12 year old Will Scobie, was enough to send the Daily Mirror close to orgasm over 'UKIP violence' with no actual proof whatsoever.

This victimhood was continued in Grimsby, where a Hope not Hate day of action which had already been called into question over claims of 'treating' ended as a damp squib after a mere handful of HnH activists arrived. To cover their embarrassment, claims were made of assaults and intimidation by UKIP supporters to the local newspaper, who ran a story pointing out that despite these claims, Hope

Thanet Green councillor & candidate Ian Driver being
'non-violent' at an anti-UKIP demonstration

not Hate had failed to provide any evidence, and were unable to provide the paper with a crime number despite them claiming the police were investigating.

We should also mention the active participation of the Green Party in this. Those peace-loving bunny huggers have not found themselves averse to a bit of violence against UKIP, as we reported on a few months ago in Penarth where the Green-run 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign refused to take action against a member who threatened to burn down a UKIP shop.

But what responsibility do Labour bear for this? It is ironic that the only violence suffered by Labour has been at the hands of hard-left activists links to the SNP in Scotland, where they label Labour as 'Red Tories'. Across England and Wales, we have not found a single story of a vandalised Labour shop or vehicle. The same applies to the Green Party. The truth is that both parties are quite happy to tacitly condone this: after all, it is their activists who play a large part in it. It is not by accident that

Labour MP Liam Byrne delivering Hope not Hate literature

Hope not Hate's leaflets are in the same colours and style as the Labour Party's, nor that Labour activists frequently double as Hope not Hate ones: their aims and objectives are similar, if not identical. They seek to prevent discussion of the topics which ordinary people outside of the Westminster bubble care about: immigration, Europe, crime, benefits. A visitor from another planet who listened to any Labour Party speech would be forgiven for thinking there was nothing else in the UK apart from a 'weaponised' National Health Service.

Labour and the hard-left are desperate to avoid some difficult questions, and not just for obvious reasons. Unlimited immigration has driven down wages - anyone who gets paid on an hourly basis can tell you that. The problem for Labour is that this has proved of limited benefit even for the migrants, who eventually end up relying on state assistance in some form just to get by. The only people it has proved good for are the large corporates who ultimately fund the Labour Party, and for the Unions, who see a pool of labour from which to draw more members (and who also fund Labour). The hypocrisy of their position on this is quite breath-taking: can anyone recall when the Labour Party and the Unions were supposed to support the British worker rather than consistently undermine him or her?

What is the answer? Some fair, balanced media coverage would be a start, exposing those who would subvert our democratic process in order to silence views they don't like. There appears little chance of that, with the BBC preferring to focus on UKIP trivia and the stupid comments of a handful of individuals rather than report on the 2 Labour candidates convicted of fraud last week.

It is difficult to know where it will end. Chaiman Mao said that 'political power grows from the barrel of a gun', and the hard left, lead by Hope not Hate, the SWP, Labour and the Greens, seem to have taken this to heart. Until they take responsibility for their actions and cease trying to howl down valid political arguments, there seems little chance of a retreat from the violence. None of them seem in any danger of choking on their own hypocrisy, from Bunny La Roche's race play sex to Labour's acceptance of former BNP councillors.

For the Tories, who seem eager to jump into bed with Hope not Hate in their desperation to retain
Thanet South, they should remember one thing: if the hard left succeed, you're next. Be careful what you wish for. MacKinlay's desperation to come first in anything other than a safe ward handed to him as a prize for defecting from UKIP should not blind the Tories to the dangers welling on the hard-left.

'Scum' mob lead by Green Party member and PCS NEC member with links to Diane Abbott and Chukka Umunna

The mob which attacked UKIP leader Nigel Farage in a Kent pub was lead by Green Party member and 'Stand up to UKIP' activist Dan Glass and PCS Union NEC member and Hope not Hate activist Zita Holbourne, it can be revealed.

Holbourne was recently pictured at the House of Commons with Labour MPs Chukka Umunna and Diane Abbott (not really a surprise, is it?). She appeared on a platform at the TUC conference with PCS Deputy President Kevin McHugh vowing to 'develop campaigns with Hope not Hate and Unite Against Fascism' to stop UKIP. Is this the sort of action they had in mind, attacking a family while they ate lunch? Intimidating a couple of teenage girls?

Holbourne is a co-chair of BARAC (black activists rising against cuts) with Lee Jasper. Regular readers may remember Jasper as a former deputy mayor of London until leaving under a financial cloud after being accused of using the public's money to make unauthorised grants to an organisation run by a woman he was banging. He also regularly appears on platforms with Green Party leader Natalie Bennett and with Jasna Badzak, the fraudster currently awaiting trial on harassment charges following her conviction for stealing from UKIP MEP Gerard Batten a year or so ago.

Glass meanwhile is a professional campaigner against, well, everything. From airport runways to NHS cuts, he's a typical middle-class Green Party watermelon - green on the outside, red on the inside. A member of the 'Green Left' movement - it's far enough left to make Josef Stalin look like a liberal - he is also an activist with the union funded 'Stand up to UKIP' movement. His Facebook page is a web of organisations which protest against things, but its rather harder to find something that he's for besides a lot of protesting. He does write for the Guardian periodically, and says of himself:

 

So far, we have involvement in this from the Labour Party, the big unions, Stand up to UKIP, UAF, the Green Party, Hope not Hate and the SWP. Anyone care to take a bet on how many will apologise?

 

So far, there is apparent silence from Hope not Hate on the attack, which is rather surprising as they normally post anything to do with UKIP within minutes of it hitting the news. Its not as if they're not posting, as they continue to post UKIP related stories, but for some reason when Hope not Hate activists attack the leader of UKIP during a family lunch, they don't think its newsworthy. Strange, huh?



Wave of hard-left violence directed at UKIP premises

 

The UKIP shops pictured are (Left to Right) Newark, Plymouth, Thanet and Penarth.

Merthyr Green PPC defends association with would be arsonist; Labour councillor resigns as admin

Elspeth Parris, the Green PPC for Merthyr Tydfil, commented on our earlier blog posting which pointed out that her group contained people who were advocating the burning down of UKIP's campaign office in Merthyr. She wrote:

We have reproduced this in full lest she consider it 'defamation of character', but to address her points in order:



"I didn't found this group" - perhaps, but you're certainly an admin of it. And fellow watermelon Harriet claims to support the Greens and Natalie Bennett, the UK's least inspiring political leader. And Elspeth (who is a personal FB friend of Harriet) certainly played a leading role in setting it up, explaining to members of the Facebook page which preceded the group the reason why it had switched to group format, with lots of 'we' and no 'Harriet said'.

"Harriet is a Merthyr resident who happens to be at university in Scotland" - if it were true, this

Elspeth says Harriet lives in Merthyr
Harriet says she lives in Edinburgh.
Is Elspeth lying, or does Harriet not
know where she lives?

rather begs the question as to why she is involved with the Radical Independence Campaign in Scotland when she wouldn't have a vote there, but the easiest way to deal with this is a screen grab from the achingly middle class Ms Protheroe-Davis' profile. On her own Facebook profile, she states that she lives in Edinburgh.

"the group has no connection with any suggestion that the shop should be 'burnt down', the person who the article suggests has made such a suggestion has only joined the group very recently" - which is true so far as it goes: the group was only set up last week, so everybody in it only joined the group 'very recently'. Previously, it was a Facebook page under the same name, and Malik Furreed was a member of that group as well. Conveniently for Elspeth, all posts have been deleted from that page, but its alright, we screen grabbed them in case you didn't. So horrified is Elspeth by Malik's suggestion that she has responded instantly by taking no action whatsoever and allowing him to remain a member of the group. Why would any respectable political group want someone who incites political violence as a member, and why would they go to such lengths to defend such views?

'Speeches made were made by UKIP representatives' - We will concede that we have not been able to find video evidence of any speeches, so we'll give Elspeth that one. Although we find it difficult to believe that you can get 40 members of the hard left together without there being several hour long speeches. Perhaps the red flag waving militants were too busy making plans for future arson at the premises they were protesting outside?

Malik Furreed, member of 'Merthyr says NO to UKIP'

What is quite interesting is that somebody seems to have had a word with Cllr David Davies, Labour councillor for Town ward in Merthyr. He is not longer an Admin of Harriet and Elspeth's page, we assume because he's not a complete idiot or at least someone in the Labour Party who isn't a complete idiot phoned him up and told him that his continued role as an admin was associating him with people who wanted to burn down a political opponent's shop and all the people inside it. Clearly this is a lesson Elspeth hasn't learned, as Malik Furreed remains a member of the group, despite the Green's Merthyr PPC knowing he was seeking volunteers to 'fuck up' the shop.

We already knew that the Green Party would consort with criminals in its quest for power. Natalie Bennett, the Green leader, shared a platform with a convicted fraudster and forger so desperate is she to damage UKIP. Thanet Green councillor Ian Driver - himself the proud holder of a criminal record - helped organise the demonstration which saw Nigel Farage assaulted in Thanet by one of his friends.

Elspeth complains that our original article is defamatory, something she repeats on Twitter. The truth is much simpler. We said that a group that she is behind contains people who threatened to burn down the UKIP shop in Merthyr and those inside it. That was and is the absolute truth, and the rest of her protestations are just fluff. If you lie with dogs, you get fleas, Elspeth. The time when the Green Party should be called to account for its association with political violence is long overdue.

PS incidentally, getting your little gang of Welsh communists to flood the comments doesn't address the problems. And you wonder why we're attacking you? We're sure you'd like to think its because you're a political threat to the UKIP vote, but it's not, because you're not. It's because you're condoning the actions of someone who threatened to burn the UKIP shop and those inside it. We don't see what is so difficult to grasp about this - your Labour councillor obviously got it.




Calls to burn down UKIP shop by members of group run by Green PPC & Labour Councillor

A Facebook group run by a Green Parliamentary Candidate, a Welsh Scottish Nationalist and a Labour councillor has members who advocated burning down the UKIP shop in Merthyr Tydfil.

Elspeth Parris, Green Party 'watermelon'
who is happy to associate her group
with instigators of political violence and
intimidation

The group - Merthyr says NO to UKIP - was founded by Elspeth Parris, Green PPC for Merthyr Tydfil. Other admins were David Davies, a Labour councillor in Merthyr and Harriet Protheroe-Davis, a student activist who will apparently join any campaign so long as it features a red star.

Also members of the group are two other Labour councillors from Merthyr, Darren Roberts and Rhonda Braithwaite, a Plaid Cymru PPC, Freddy Greaves, and UNISON managers Dawn Bowden and Dan Beard.

The member we are interested in though is part time musician Malik Furreed. Furreed was so incensed by the operation of democracy that he called for volunteers to 'fuck up' the UKIP shop in Merthyr which was due to open a couple of days later.




Malik Furreed's barely literate call to violence

His friend Jake Morgan was quite enthusiastic about it, suggesting that they 'burn whatever cunt goes in there as well', an idea that Malik was quite happy with. Similar comments appeared on his Facebook page. Clearly someone has been in touch, as young Malik has deleted the comments. Luckily we have the screen grabs (right).

Had it been a UKIP supporter who'd said such things about a political opponent, UKIP would have expelled them and/or cut all links to them. No such scruples in 'Merthyr says NO to UKIP' though. Although the tweets and Facebook posts have been deleted, Malik remains a member. As do the Labour councillors, the Green PPC, the Welsh Scottish Nationalist and the Plaid PPC.

Perpetrators of the violent attack on the UKIP shop in Penarth

That they would put up with such threatening behaviour is hardly surprising. On the 14th December, a group of youths - one of whom does not look dissimilar to Malik - attacked the UKIP shop in Penarth, a short distance away from Merthyr. On that occasion, a gang of 6 - 5 youths and one older man who stayed safely out of range of the CCTV cameras - urinated in the shop doorway and threw beer glasses and bottles at the shop frontage. This was just 4 days before Malik was appealing for volunteers to do the same to the UKIP shop in Merthyr Tydfil.

Such behaviour in this part of South Wales is hardly new, although it has stepped up a notch since UKIP finished a narrow second behind Labour in this year's European Elections. In July last year, we reported how a UKIP candidate in Llansamlet was forced to withdraw after his wife's UNISON rep at work warned her that if her husband stood as a UKIP candidate, her career would be at an end. It is not surprise then to see two UNISON reps as members of the 'Merthyr says NO to UKIP' group - UNISON's regional manager Dawn Bowden and University of Wales UNISON secretary Dan Beard.

Protheroe-Davis and Merthyr's homeless with a
rather confusing sign

There's plenty of other hate around in the group. David Davies, group admin and the Labour councillor for Town ward on Merthyr council is a Hope not Hate activist who 'likes' Socialist Worker, UAF and In Defence of Marxism among other hard left groups. Double-barrelled class warrior Harriet Protheroe-Davis, another admin, belongs to a veritable smorgasbord of radical, hard left groups including Radical Independence Campaign, the violent Scottish Nationalist group, although her only link to Scotland appears to be as a student at Edinburgh University.

To date, actions directed against the Merthyr shop have amounted to little more than a poorly thought out sign held briefly outside the door by Protheroe-Davis and a number of Merthyr's homeless to judge by their appearance. Some speeches were made, and a lot of people who pretended to be local turned up 'spontaneously', although a significant number went to some lengths to show their affiliation with the hard left of the Socialist Workers Party by staying out of camera shot and covering their faces. A number of 'Stand up to UKIP' signs were also present: the campaign is a strange mish-mash of activists which receives funding from both the trade unions and big business through the 'British Influence' group, but is run by the SWP front UAF. As we have seen elsewhere in the country, how long will it be before they tire of their tactics of intimidation in the face of UKIPs continued rise and resort to the sort of violence advocated by Furreed and seen elsewhere in the country?

HnH's 'intimidated' Bradford man is anti-UKIP Twitter troll

Finan's letter, which makes no mention of his foul-mouthed
Twitter rants on behalf of the hard left

Hope not Hate's latest feeble attack on UKIP accuses the party of 'intimidation' by presenting a professionally outraged, foul mouthed anti-UKIP Twitter troll as if he was an ordinary member of the public.

In brief, a bloke in Bradford by the name of Peter Finan wrote to the Bradford Telegraph and Argus. Despite his local UKIP MEP being Amjad Bashir, and despite the highly publicised recent defections from Labour to UKIP of a number of British Asians, Finan trots out the old 'UKIP is racist' line. As 'proof', he cites a Facebook posting from that master of probity Nick Griffin urging people to vote UKIP, and mentions that Britain First - who polled 54 votes - urged people to vote UKIP in the Rochester & Strood by-election. He goes on to assert that Bradford will reject UKIP, a statement not entirely born out by last year's local election results in the city which saw UKIP narrowly miss taking a significant number of seats from Labour. Regular readers may recall Nick Lowles personal support for former BNP councillor (and friend of Nick Griffin) Paul Cromie after he narrowly held his seat against a strong UKIP challenge, such is Lowles' commitment to anti-racism.

Finan goes on to complain of 'intimidation' because the following day there was a letter in the Argus from Jason Smith, UKIP's hard-working Bradford chairman, pointing out the idiocy of Finan's position. The day after that, there was a letter from a UKIPper of Bradford origin who now lives in Southampton also criticising Finan's tired arguments. On the same day as the second letter was published in the Argus, Finan received a letter from one of Bashir's staff, accompanied by a polite letter and a couple of UKIP leaflets and inviting him to a UKIP meeting to hear what UKIP is really about. And that's it. This is what Finan considers intimidation, and he is now 'seeking legal advice' because he was accused of a smear. Finan denies it is a smear when he talks of 'the sort of people UKIP attract', but he's not talking of Amjad Bashir, Winston MacKenzie, Mohammed Islam or Owais Rajput, is he?


Peter Finan

So who is Finan? To read his complaint which is lovingly reproduced on Hope not Hate's website, you'd be forgiven for thinking that he was just a political innocent who was strangely horrified by people disagreeing with him. In fact, Finan is a well known anti-UKIP twitter user as Chemical Punnage - @uncleskinny -  noted for his foul mouthed tirades against UKIP and his close association with the watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) tendency of the Green Party. His exchanges with hard left anti-UKIP campaigners, his intimidatory tweets towards any who dare support UKIP, his ready use of epithets like 'racist' & 'fascist', his unquestioning support for convicted forger and fraudster Jasna Badzak's increasingly insane campaign against UKIP are all a matter of public record for any who care to look at his Twitter. Or you would be able to, except he's suddenly locked down his Twitter account (it's alright, we'd saved the worst already) presumably to hide the more shameful of his tweets and to maintain the fiction that his complaint is genuine and he is the wronged innocent persecuted by two letters disagreeing with him in a local newspaper and a polite letter. 

Do Hope not Hate know who Finan is? Of course they do. Its just another of the increasingly clumsy set-ups Lowles organisation has been reduced to in the face of UKIPs rise. Its a pretty sad day when an organisation which is supposed to be anti-racist supports the sort of white, middle class 'class warrior' who would allegedly call Amjad Bashir and his fellow British Asians 'coconuts' for supporting UKIP. But then there's a lot of that around Hope not Hate's offices.

A final twist of irony. Finan appeared on Mastermind a in 2003, making it through to the quarter-finals. His specialist subject was Indie band 'The Smiths', describing frontman Morrissey as 'superb' in an article in the Argus. We wonder if he is still as enthusiastic nowadays. In Morrissey's words last May, "I nearly voted for Ukip. I like Nigel Farage a great deal. His views are quite logical – especially where Europe is concerned". Bloody racist. That's the sort of people UKIP attract.

Portsmouth anti-UKIP coalition run by SWP & UAF member with links to rapist & terrorist

Jon Woods, Portsmouth SWP & UAF member

In today's news round-up on our Facebook page and Twitter feed, we mentioned the creation of an anti-UKIP coalition in Portsmouth comprising Labour, Lib Dem, SWP, Greens, UAF and Hope not Hate. The linked story contains a video made by the ' President of Portsmouth Trades Council' Jon Woods.

While it is interesting to see varying shades of left wing thought come together not in the interests of the people of Portsmouth but to save their own crumbling voter base, it was even more interesting to see what other hats Mr Woods wears. In a news report from last year, Mr Woods was describing himself as 'a member of Unite Against Fascism' when he was so terrified by 'threats' made against him by the local EDL ahead of a march that the first thing he did after reporting them to the police was to go to the local press.

From the SWP's 'branch meeting' guide, 2010

He has lots of other hats though. Apart from being president of Portsmouth trades council and a member of UAF, he is also variously listed as 'Portsmouth City UNISON branch chair', North Portsmouth PPC for TUSC and as a member of Portsmouth SWP, but nowhere can we find any information about any proper job he may ever have held. He is also a frequent correspondent to SWP internal rag 'Socialist Worker', and is listed in their 2010 meeting guide (for early 2011) as speaking at the SWP Branch Meeting in Portsmouth on the subject of 'Strikes and Struggles for Revolution'.

He has some form on the anti-UKIP front. His part in organising the UAF's 'Stand Up to UKIP'

Portsmouth's LMHR concert on behalf of
rapist Martin Smith's organisation

campaign last May helped get 6 UKIP councillors elected to Portsmouth City Council, so we look forwards to him having similar success this year.

Labour Portsmouth South candidate Sue Castillon attended the meeting, and spoke of "women in this city who fear walking outside their front doors". Although this rather pointless barb was directed towards UKIP, it might have been better directed towards Jon Woods' associates. His continued involvement with UAF lead to a 'Love Music, Hate Racism' concert in the city in July. Love Music Hate Racism is another SWP front organisation, this one run by former SWP leader Martin Smith. Smith was the 'Comrade Delta' named in an internal SWP report as having been responsible for the rape of at least one young activist and its subsequent hushing up by intimidating the victim (UAF LMHR events run by man accused of rape). Whether encouraging impressionable youth to attend concerts run by a rapist is a good idea is something Woods will have to answer himself. One thing is certain though. UAF and Woods are very keen to point to individual idiots within UKIP who say or do stupid things, and tar the whole party with that brush. If you know a man by the company he keeps as Woods clearly believes then remember his friend, the rapist Martin Smith.

It is worth mentioning that the anti-UKIP meeting was organised by a man called Simon Magorian, who although presenting himself without title in the Portsmouth News article today was previously described as 'Portsmouth UAF Convenor' in an earlier article about the EDL.

Also quoted is Zuber Hatia as 'a prominent member of Portsmouth's Muslim community and a community activist'. Hatia wrote in May this year in defence of Mashadur Choudhary, who was convicted of terrorist offences for having fought with ISIS in Syria, although Hatia says of him that he, " clearly did not join any combatant group and returned back to the UK having committed no crime, either abroad or here",  a view not shared by the British courts or even by the local Mosque in Portsmouth, where committee member Abu-Suyeb Tanzam condemned Choudhary for his 'betrayal' of the local community.

Finally, we have already mentioned Portsmouth South Labour PPC Sue Castillon, who you might be surprised to find sharing a platform with two associates of a known rapist and an apologist for Islamic terrorism. It is hardly a shock to discover that apart from being a raving Europhile (her Twitter name is @Eurosue), she is also a leading Hope not Hate activist in the area.

Leading local Hope not Hate activist Sue Castillon retweeting
Hope not Hate messages.

Green Leader Natalie Bennett to appear on anti-UKIP platform with convicted fraudster

We were not entirely surprised today to receive details of a meeting by yet another anti-UKIP campaign group which has popped out of the woodwork. The 'Movement Against Xenophobia' is an umbrella group comprising 99 separate organisations operating under a secretariat provided by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. Included in the 99 are many of the usual suspects: UAF, SWP, Unite, the Green Party and many others - the full list is here

This latest piece of scaremongering is based on distortions of UKIP's position by MAX offshoot 'Stop Scapegoating Immigrants' is a Rally Against Racism on the 19th May at the Indian YMCA in Fitzrovia, London: details are here and as shown on the screen grab.

What was more surprising was to see the speakers list. Natalie Bennett, the Green Party leader is the headline speaker: she fits right in, representing as she does the watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) wing of the Green Party. What was rather more shocking was to see her sharing a platform with Jasna Badzak and Lee Jasper.

Regular readers of this blog will recognise Badzak's name. She was briefly employed by UKIP MEP

Jasna Badzak - convicted fraudster and forger

Gerard Batten before defrauding him of £3,000 by using a forged bank statement to claim she hadn't been paid. She was convicted of fraud and forgery at Southwark Crown Court, received a 12 month suspended sentence and was tagged and curfewed for 6 months. The judge at the trial said if it wasn't for her child she'd have been imprisoned, and described her as thoroughly deceitful. Which was much the same verdict reached by the Industrial Tribunal she took Batten to for racial  harassment, and from which her multiple cases were thrown out, and her failure to pay fines, compensation and legal fees lead to her bankruptcy. She was never a 'UKIP' press officer either, and is also the architect of a long-running fraud perpetrated on Central European banks which has links to the Russian mafia. Full details can be found here

A measure of Badzak's consistency can be found on her Twitter feed. Aside from clearly being obsessed to the point of barking mad, she also claims to be a Tory supporter. This is surprising to say the least, as only 5 years ago Badzak left the Tories claiming 'racial and sexual harassment' - full details can be found here, but in brief she claimed that

"I have been told by the party agent that people like me can forget about progressing in the Conservative Party. This is not just locally, but nationally. It is just jobs for the boys. Unfortunately, I did not go to private school. I did not go to Oxbridge"

Alternatively, they may have found that her CV was a complete pack of lies. Which makes her tweet (below) all the more surprising.

Then we have Lee Jasper, former Director for Policing and Equalities under London Mayor Ken Livingstone who left under rather a cloud - Jasper had sent e-mails of an intimate nature to a woman involved with organisations who had received Greater London Authority grants and that Jasper has not declared the relationship. A subsequent report concluded that "Jasper failed to record declared interests to the "standards expected". He also found that Jasper's role in approving funding was "inappropriate given his interests" in a number of cases".

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett - in trouble if you
know a person by the company they keep.

For Natalie Bennett and the Green Party sharing a platform with a convicted, mentally unstable fraudster just because they have an unfounded vendetta against UKIP is surely scraping the barrel, not least because you know a person by the company they keep, as they say. We understand that they are desperate to save the seat of their London MEP Jean Lambert - aka 'the bag lady' - but this really is pitiful stuff. Bennett's leadership has already drawn criticism and created factionalism within an already divided Green movement, as can be seen in the Green stronghold of Brighton. The lack of judgement shown borders on the suicidal, displays the lack of foresight which has marked her leadership and will surely come back to haunt her in the future.

It hardly reflects well on JCWI either, although relying as they do on support from the SWP - where unreported rapes seem to be a matter of course - such unsavoury participants are perhaps more a matter of course, if not daily visitors.

Greens select SWP watermelon for Wythenshawe & Sale East

The Green Party have selected a typical watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) as their candidate for the Wythenshawe & Sale East by-election. Further education lecturer (what else) Nigel Woodcock is their man of choice who wrote this letter to Socialist Worker, in which he said:



Nigel Woodcock, Green Party
watermelon candidate

In Marxist terms, society is divided into two basic classes. Most of us are forced to sell our labour, so we are working class. The distance between the working class and the “middle class” is tiny when compared to that between the broad mass of people and the ruling elite.....We have a critique of capitalism and elite power. The Green Party is one where socialists can operate. It is misleading to say that we believe in “individualistic solutions” to the problems we face. Solutions must be collective and must start with global economic justice....This is not instead of collective solutions based on mass movements and redistribution of wealth, but as well as. We do not believe that the SWP advocates wastefulness or other unethical behaviour from its members....We have a bright future ahead of us and hope to be key players in creating a society with a redistributive agenda. We’d like to be alongside you in this struggle.

Quite apart from his support for the rape apologists at the SWP, he also administers an anti-Sun newspaper Facebook group. Other interesting Facebook groups he belongs to include a whole host of vegan and vegetarian groups - no wonder he looks like he needs a decent steak - and the Morning Star reader's group: the Morning Star being the UK's communist daily newspaper. Interestingly, he also belongs to the EDL group, but I dare say we won't see Hope not Hate attacking him for that.

On Twitter, he follows (of course) the SWP, UAF, Socialist Resistance, Green Left and a host of other extreme left wing causes.

What could local resident expect if they were to defy common sense and elect a true working class hero from, erm, Maidenhead in Berkshire? There's a group on Facebook called 'We want a congestion charge in Manchester'. Woodcock is the sole member.

We can only suppose that the Green Party had little choice but to choose Woodcock. He's the only Green Party member north of Watford with a job, and those deposits are hard to come by for elections!

Green Party and former Labour Cllr Ian Driver - revolutionary socialist - at Margate demo

In Margate, it wasn't just Labour.

Meet Thanet Green Party councillor - and prospective parliamentary candidate - Ian Driver.

Driver is a what many Greens turn out to be: a watermelon. Green on the outside, red on the inside. Previously the publisher of a blog called 'Red Thanet'. Naturally, he also has close links to the Labour Party, having been elected originally as a Labour councillor. A supporter of Revolutionary Socialism, he is a close associate of Bunny la Roche who is pictured next to him: she is a member of the SWP, CPGB, UAF and supports the rapist lead Love Music, Hate Racism campaign. She was a speaker at a UAF meeting organised in Margate, heading the bill with Labour councillor Will Scobie.

Here's what a Thanet local by the name of Tom Clarke had to say about Ian Driver on a blog:

"Quite incredibly, Ian Driver, on his own Red Thanet blog, talks of snouts in troughs because councillors may hold office at severalk levels. Well, if we just discount the value of progressive experience for the moment, let us examine Driver's own record.

He stands for Ramsgate Town and Thanet District councils for Labour, thus becoming a double hatter in his terminology and securing himself some £4,000 a year in the process. He then turns his back on Labour, having used their machine to get the seat and allowance, but promptly sells his soul and his vote at TDC back to them again in return for a chairmanship carrying another £8,000 per year. That secured, he then turns his back on Labour yet again and decides to run against them in the KCC elections.

Is this really a man the electorate can trust and is his snout not equally in the trough. Think about it and his grand jesture to resign his Ramsgate and Thanet seats, costing us further elections in the process, why not resign now? Why didn't he resign either the Ramsgate Town or Thanet Dist5ict seats earlier if he feels so righteous about double hatters. Then, and this is the big one, what is his chance of taking the Ramsgate KCC seat or will he just split the Labour vote, he is. after all, unlikely to take any from the Tories. Hence his grand jesture is just the usual posturing or have we already forgotten what he was going to do as Kent's Police Commissioner and then could not even raise the deposit.

Since many of the anonymous commentators mark me down as a Tory, you would think I would be happy to see Driver splitting the Labour support in Ramsgate. Wrong, I would be much happier to see clowns and chancers like this one totally out of local politics."