Snell begins Stoke campaign with Hope not Hate funding scandal

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Snell begins campaign with funding scandal

Gareth Snell, Labour’s PPC for the Stoke-on-Trent Central seat vacated by Tristram Hunt, is set to begin his campaign facing questions about election expenses after it was revealed a leaflet attacking UKIP candidate Paul Nuttall was funded by an organisation run by a close colleague and fellow Labour councillor.

The leaflet – “6 reasons to vote against UKIP” – bears the imprint of Hope not Hate and local

The Hope not Hate/NORSCARF leaflet

delivered with Labour leaflets

campaign ‘Norscarf’ (North Staffordshire Campaign Against Racism and Fascism), proving there’s nothing like self-interest to bring together the Progress and Momentum funded wings of the Labour Party. The leaflet is helpfully printed in Labour’s red and yellow colours.

The registration of the Norscarf website lists a single contact phone number – 07563245515. A quick Google of that number reveals it is the personal mobile phone number of Councillor Chris Spence, a colleague of Snell’s on Newcastle under Lyme Borough Council, which neighbours the Stoke Central constituency. Spence originally put his own name forward to be the candidate, but failed to make Labour’s long list.

Our source reveals that he received the leaflet – alongside a Labour one – on Saturday evening (the 21^st January). Which is interesting, as Gareth Snell tweeted a photograph that evening of Spence delivering Labour leaflets in the same area of Stoke under the caption ‘What better way to spend your evening after a hard day at work than campaigning for @Stoke_Labour and our #NHS’. If you look at the picture, you can see the ‘6 reasons’ leaflet sticking out of the top of the Labour one, which may explain the ‘winky face’ Spence finished his Tweet with.

Snell's colleague Cllr Chris Spence delivering Labour

leaflets - the HnH/NORSCARF leaflet can be seen

sticking out of the top of the Labour one

The participation of Hope not Hate – funded by the anti-Corbyn ‘Progress’ wing of the Labour Party – with the decidedly Corbynite ‘Norscarf’ is perhaps less surprising that it appears. Stoke North MP Ruth Smeeth is a former General Secretary of Hope not Hate, while Tristram Hunt, Stoke’s outgoing MP, is a member of the Labour Friends of Israel, one of the few groups in the Labour Party which stood by Smeeth after she was subjected to anti-Semitic abuse by Labour members when it announced the outcome of its investigation into anti-Semitism. Snell – a former leader of Newcastle Borough Council who lost his seat to UKIP before regaining a different seat at a by-election - is on Hunt’s staff.

A senior UKIP source said that it was "rare for expenditure scandals to begin before the candidate had been selected but was a clear indication of just how worried Labour were about losing the formerly safe seat to the new UKIP insurgency."

UKIP insiders say that they expect Labour to include the cost of the Hope not Hate leaflets on their expenditure returns as they are clearly published with a view to aiding Labour's faltering chances of retaining the seat. A UKIP source close to the campaign said, "They are required to account for all expenditure. The active participation of two organisations with close links to the Labour Party using Labour councillors to deliver the leaflets alongside official Labour literature with the clear approval of the candidate makes it difficult to pretend these are anything other than Labour leaflets in disguise. Hope not Hate have considerable form for this sort of thing, which has gone unremarked and unpunished for too long. It simply allows Labour to effectively double its election spending without having to account for it."

A poll for Labour Leave published on Wednesday showed Nuttall 10% ahead of Labour, while on Thursday bookies shortened the odds on a UKIP victory to make the party the odds-on favourite, with Labour slipping to evens ahead of the also-ran Tories and Lib Dems on 33-1.

HnH Activists pay Jim Carver's office a visit - Spotlight on Hope not Hate #2

Continuing our series looking at what Hope not Hate mean in practise, news reaches us that some of their activists paid UKIP MEP Jim Carver's office a visit last night. The display window was smashed, and paint was thrown over the windows and internal fittings.

Jim Carver's Kidderminster shop - redecoration provided by Hope not Hate

Of course, Hope not Hate will say that it's 'nothing to do with us or our activists' and that they 'deplore violence'. But as we saw in Wales recently, those who attacked the UKIP shop in Penarth were active supporters of Hope not Hate, as were those they were affiliated with, including 2 Green Party PPCs and 2 Labour councillors.

And let's not forget Hope not Hate's contribution whenever there is a far-right event: tweeting and Facebooking the precise locations of far-right activists to help their fellow travellers in Unite Against Fascism find them to ensure that there's a punch up.

The simple truth is that Jim's shopfront is merely the latest casualty of the politics of division, hate and envy that Hope not Hate seek to spread. You'll see no condemnation - and perhaps some triumphalism - on the HnH pages, but not all hate is equal: Nick Lowles is quite happy to condone just about anything directed at UKIP or the party's windows.

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.

Illiteracy new job qualification for Labour MEPs

We're sure Labour MEP Paul Brannen thought he was being clever. Except as you'd expect of the son of 2 socialist teachers brought up in Labour controlled Newcastle, he can't spell 'artificial'. Still, it's an improvement. A sign written about UKIP by Labour which doesn't have the word 'racist' in it.

'Artificial', Paul. It's spelt 'Artificial'

 

13 years of 'education, education, education', and this is the best he can come up with.

UKIP MEPs home attacked with bricks as campaign of hate against UKIP steps up.

News reaches us that the campaign of violence and intimidation against UKIP has been stepped up a notch. UKIP's London MEP Gerard Batten and his wife were woken at 3:30am this morning by a loud noise in their house. On getting up and investigating they could see nothing and assuming their cat had knocked something over they went back to bed. 45 minutes later, they were woken again by a loud bang followed by the sounds of breaking glass. There was no mistaking the cause this time, as on coming downstairs to investigate they discovered a house brick in the middle of their living room and their living room window smashed. Police are investigating and reviewing local CCTV footage.

This is just the latest in a string of increasingly heated attacks on UKIP supporters, activists and premises and comes just hours before a UKIP meeting in Hove this evening which is expected to be heavily picketed by Hope not Hate and UAF activists. At UKIP's last meeting in the area, Hope not Hate activists verbally abused and intimidated pensioners they believed to be attending the UKIP meeting only to discover that they were in fact blood donors attending a regular NHS donor session in the same building.


Nothing to do with Hope not Hate, says Lowles

Elsewhere, UKIP leader Nigel Farage was assaulted by Hope not Hate activist Andrew Scott in Margate - Scott was subsequently convicted - and by HnH/UAF activist Fred Glenister in Nottingham. Glenister is awaiting trial.

UKIP billboards across the country have been repeatedly targeted in an organised campaign of
destruction, with hard left activists encouraged to post pictures of their handiwork on a Facebook page. Look into the active member's profiles, and you'll see plenty of likes for the usual hard left suspects - UAF, SWP, AntiFa, Hope not Hate and all the rest, mostly combined with 'likes' for various Green Party organisations. The Greens are currently the subject of an internal takeover attempt by the hard left which wants to turn them from watermelons into tomatoes. Hope not Hate and UAF of course claim no responsibility for this and deny it is anything to do with them. Most of the poorly spelt slogans painted onto the UKIP billboards are taken directly from Hope not Hate and UAF literature.

MEPs windows and UKIP billboards aren't the only targets for damage, however. In Plymouth, the UKIP shop on Mutley Plain has had its windows smashed 3 times since

Smashed UKIP shopfront on
Mutley Plain, Plymouth

March. In the Wythenshawe by-election, hard left activists daubed the windows with paint on three occasions, broke in and stole equipment on once occasion and stormed the premises while it was open on one occasion, stealing leaflets and letting off stink bombs. Elderly UKIP by-election campaigners were insulted and threatened while canvassing, and council house tenants were threatened with the loss of their housing unless they removed UKIP posters.

Meanwhile, UKIP meetings have been increasingly targeted by elements of the hard left who find intimidation easier than argument. 'Stand up to UKIP' another SWP front organisation has seen it's demonstrations publicised across many groups - including the billboard group - as Hope not Hate continues to publicise yet another SWP front organisation, Love Music Hate Racism (run by SWP rapist Martin Smith).

Concerns are being raised at UKIP about how long it will be before these increasingly aggressive tactics turn into open violence, particularly given the large UKIP vote expected on the 22nd. Several 'anti fascist'  groups have published the home addresses of UKIP MEPs on their Facebook pages with the suggestion that members 'pay them a visit', while the intimidatory tactics directed at UKIP supporters grow ever closer to open violence. Last week's UKIP public meeting in Westminster saw SWP, UAF and Hope not Hate activists debating whether to use racist terms such as 'coconut' and 'oreo' to describe UKIP candidates from ethnic minorities in a further sign of the lengths they are prepared to go to in order to deter public support for UKIP.

Are Hope not Hate and UAF responsible for the actions of their activists? By their own standards of attacking UKIP based on what isolated individuals say then yes, they are. And yet these are not isolated incidents: UKIP has had a handful of individuals who have said or done stupid things, and has dealt with them all swiftly. This campaign against UKIP of violence, intimidation, assaults both verbal and physical, and criminal damage is widespread and being conducted by significant numbers of people. It is time for the Hope not Hate and UAF leadership to publicly distance themselves from these people: if they will not, that can only be considered as their tacit acceptance of the actions of their activists.

For more updates, follow us on Twitter @nopenothope

Desperation strikes as HnH proved a busted flush

The depths to which Hope not Hate have been forced to descend in order to keep their absurd and factually inaccurate campaign against UKIP alive could not be better demonstrated than by two of their recent postings.

The most recent was less than 30 minutes ago when they posted a link to an article entitled "Is UKIP a party of bigots?". Naturally, as it was posted by HnH, it is a rhetorical question because if they answer was 'no' they wouldn't have published the link at all. Again naturally, as the article in question was originally published in the New Statesman, the answer is 'yes', because they'd found a series of outlandish quotes from people who by their criteria were associated with UKIP.

Reduced to sharing 15 month old articles, Hope not Hate
demonstrates that it has passed it's sell-by date

Is this a story which is about to break into the national consciousness? Will it be front-page news tomorrow? Unlikely, as the article in question was originally published over a year ago back in February 2013, and was linked at the time by Hope not Hate.

Back in those days, it was being used to persuade unwilling HnH supporters that UKIP should be a target for HnH's efforts as the writing was already on the wall for the far right, and in the absence of a far right enemy, how would Hope not Hate justify their existence? By attempting to create one, of course. Nothing illustrates their failure better than recent polls showing UKIP set to overtake Labour and win the European elections on the 22nd May.

In the midst of this focus on UKIP, what is particularly remarkable is the silence with which HnH have greeted the spoiler party set up by former UKIP MEP Mike Nattrass and known as 'An Independence Party'. On it's list of candidates for the South West in position number 4 it features one Andrew Edwards, a man described by BNP leader Nick Griffin as 'a close ally' who worked inside UKIP until he was caught in 2003 and expelled. It is possible that this silence is because Edwards is also a long-standing source of information for Hope not Hate on internal factions within the BNP - as a Griffin loyalist he has proved a useful conduit for forwarding information on Griffin's rivals to Lowles' associate Carl Morphett.

Still, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' as they say, and hopes that the deliberate attempt to confuse voters on ballot sheets in 9 regions into accidentally not voting for UKIP means that Nattrass' vanity project will be left alone despite heavy representation from the far-right.

Touting for business when your campaign runs out of ideas is
a sure sign of desperation

The final sign of the current desperation to save the Labour vote at Hope not Hate is that they have been reduced to touting for anti-UKIP stories on the 'net. Running advertisements for people to contact them if they 'have a story about UKIP to share' reeks more than a little of a campaign which has run out of ammunition, something further demonstrated by their need to attack UKIP over a single vote on the trade in ivory (which is already illegal) in the European Parliament.

What does the future hold for Hope not Hate? Not much, apparently. Deputy Director Ruth Smeeth has been given another safe Labour seat to lose in the general election, while Nick Lowles will stumble on funded by donations from unions largely supplied by the working class who are set to vote UKIP in their droves. All they can hope is that the Labour Party feels the need to try the same lines of attack ahead of next year's general election and will once again call on their services to attack UKIP without Labour needing to address the political arguments publicly. As their efforts in this year's election appear to have failed catastrophically it appears an increasingly forlorn hope. So take heart, the end of Hope not Hate is in sight.

Hope not Hate's take on democracy - shut down the opposing argument by name-calling

Hope not Hate are busy salivating over a series of comments which they claim prove UKIP to be 'misogynist'.

The carpet in their offices must be positively wet with all the dribbling, as last week they focussed on comments by UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom relating to aid being sent to 'Bongo Bongo Land'.

While attacking Bloom's comments, they naturally failed to address any substance within his comments, particularly as details came to light of aid to India and Nigeria (who have their own space programs) and F/18 fighters to Pakistan (as we continue to scrap our own fighter aircraft). Naturally, had any of Hope not Hate's armchair warriors actually travelled to areas which receive aid, they might have had a better perspective, but as most of their experience is gleaned from pages from the 'Guardian' newspaper it can hardly be expected that they know what they are talking about.

Today, they are up in arms over comments made by UKIP Treasurer Stuart Wheeler and UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom during a debate at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London on the subject of plans to impose a quota on the number of women represented in boardrooms.

For Hope not Hate's benefit, here is a dictionary (the Oxford English Dictionary) definition of a debate:

"a formal discussion on a particular matter in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward and which usually ends with a vote"

In practise, this works by openly debating the matter at hand, something which Hope not Hate are not keen on, probably because it smack of, well, democracy, and other 'right wing' tendencies.

In their moralising, Hope not Hate have yet to mention how an open debate can be held on whether quotas on the number of women in boardrooms should be held if only one side of the debate - the side in favour - is allowed to participate, of if those who oppose the idea of 'affirmative action' (which did so much to harm race relations in the United States) are castigated as racist/sexist/misogynist/Nazi (delete as appropriate).

This is what Hope not Hate mean by 'democracy', I suppose. Just out of interest, how many women do Hope not Hate employ? One? Out of how many?

Want to know why you've got a BNP MEP? Thank Nick Lowles.

Michael McManus -
But for Hope not Hate, he
would be the NWs 2nd UKIP
MEP, and the BNP would not
have gained a seat.

Michael McManus MEP (UKIP). Not a name that's familiar to you? I thought not. That's because he didn't quite become an MEP. He was the second name on the UKIP list for the North West in 2009, and was beaten to the prize by Nick Griffin of the BNP. UKIP missed out on the second seat by fewer than 1,200 votes.

During the campaign, Hope not Hate delivered almost 4m leaflets. The vast majority were in five regions - London (300k), the East & West Midlands (150k each), Yorkshire & Humberside (880k) and the North West (1.6m). They also say "Our eve of poll email was sent out to almost 600,000 addresses, making it the largest single political email in British domestic political history".

But now look at how the BNP polled. The average BNP increase across the country was 1.3%. In the five regions targeted by Hope not Hate, only two showed increases below that average - London and the West Midlands, with increases of 0.9% and 1.1% respectively. In both of these regions, the overall HnH effort was by their own admission a small one, while London as a whole has never been particularly fertile territory for the BNP. The West Midlands, despite the below average increase still gave the BNP their 4th largest vote share - 8.6% - suggesting they were close to their vote ceiling.

In the three regions where Hope not Hate directed most of their resources, the BNP vote increased by more than the national average. These were:

Region                         Share    Increase
East Midlands              8.7%     2.1%
North West                   8%        1.6%
Yorks & Hum              9.8%      1.8%

Hope not Hate also claim that thanks to their intervention, the Labour vote held up in the regions they targeted - especially the North West. While they may claim this, it is not a claim which is borne out by the statistics. The Labour vote across the country fell by 6.9%. In the North West, the Labour vote fell by 6.9% - in other words, by exactly the national average, while the BNP vote was up on its average national increase by almost 25%.

So if Hope not Hate's claims about helping to shore up the Labour vote are not true, how about their claims to have limited the BNP's vote? Did they limit the increase in their vote? As was mentioned above, that is a claim which does not bear close scrutiny. 6 of the 10 largest increases in the BNPs share of the vote - according to HnH's figures - were in areas they targeted: Copeland (+6.7%), Knowsley (+5%), St Helens (+4.2%), Barnsley (+8.8%), Rotherham (+6.2%) and Nuneaton & Bedworth (+5.6%). 7 of the BNPs 10 highest votes by local authority area were also HnH targets - Barking & Dagenham, Stoke on Trent, Barnsley, Rotherham, Burnley, NW Leicestershire, Bolsover and Ashfield.

If this is a success, we'd love to know how they would define failure.

The reality was that, faced with a general disenchantment with politicians - particularly amongst the least well off - Hope not Hate's campaign simply made the BNP seem more like the voters. There was a lack of originality, a lack of thought and a feeling of tedious repetition about Lowles' campaign that failed to catch the imagination of anyone. For all the triumphalism of Hope not Hate, their 4 million leaflets only served to highlight in the most deprived areas of the country that while Westminster politicians were stealing £10's of thousands with impunity, their local BNP activist once stole a car 20 years ago. There was little if any attempt to take the BNP on politically in their campaign, while their commitment to a 'no platform for the BNP' policy ensured the other parties largely failed to as well. The intensity of the campaign only served to highlight to a disenchanted electorate that voting BNP was a sure way to give the political establishment a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. If the BNP vote was held back, it was done so not by Hope not Hate, but by the strong showing for UKIP, which offered a moderate alternative.

So what then did Hope not Hate really achieve? Their expensive advertising campaign failed to maintain the Labour vote - which it was so transparently designed to do - while drawing to the attention of the poorest sections of society that the BNP was a party of people more like them than anyone in the three largest parties.

The end result is a matter of historical record. BNP leader Nick Griffin took the final NW MEP seat by a mere 1200 votes from UKIPs Mick McManus, who would have made an absolutely first rate MEP for the North West. Hope not Hate's misguided, tedious and scare-mongering campaign ensured voters were landed with Nick Griffin for 5 years. 1201 fewer HnH leaflets, and UKIP would kept out the BNP. That is why you have never heard of Michael McManus.