LaRoche supported 'race play' sex leader of International Socialist Network

Bunny LaRoche - fond of calling people racist, but happy to
support the idea of 'race play' sexual relationships

Long terms readers of this blog will have recognised the shrill, blue haired scold in the Question Time audience last night as professional middle class agitator and Socialist Worker's Party/International Socialist thug Bunny la Roche. La Roche, who hails from Thanet, was a leading organiser alongside Thanet Green Cllr Ian Driver of the demonstration which saw UKIP leader Nigel Farage assaulted in Cliftonville at the beginning of this year. It is no surprise to discover that she is also a personal friend of Andrew Scott, the man convicted of the assault.

More surprising for a woman whose every other sentence involves labelling someone racist is her involvement with the International Socialist Network (ISN). When LaRoche left the SWP she joined ISN, one of the splinter groups formed as the organisation began to break apart following the rape allegations directed towards leader 'Comrade Delta', normally known as Martin Smith. We suspect that she wasn't one of Smith's victims.

The International Socialist Network - of which she became one of the self-appointed leadership clique - was itself almost immediately riven by dissent. Much of this centred on a row about a sexual practise known as 'Race Play', in which partners of different ethnicity ignore social conventions and - basically - call the black one a 'nigger' while shagging. Life doesn't really get more racist if not white supremacist than that. The main proponent of this rather bizarre, counter-revolutionary activity was Richard Seymour, the 'leader' of ISN and a close ally of Bunny LaRoche.

Despite many of ISN's activists departing over the row, LaRoche has stayed loyal to Seymour, and continues to feature him on her website. All of which seems to indicate that LaRoche thinks racism is just fine so long as she decides on who gets to be racist and when. As LaRoche has a face like a slapped arse and a body like two billiard balls in a sock, we haven't dwelt too long on whether she herself partakes in 'Race Play' lest we lose our breakfast at the very thought, but it wouldn't surprise us.

Elsewhere, La Roche is hardly popular even among the self-described 'anti-racist' groups. She is also not averse to a bit of capitalism, as this posting from 'Socialist Unity' outlines: when their Stoke branch received an £2000 donation from the PCS union, she attempted to bill them £1800 for UAF's unwanted assistance. They write,

LaRoche - back on the SWP payroll as a 'Stand up to UKIP'
paid organiser.

" Bunny Laroche, a full timer who previously excelled herself by making the SWP’s name mud in Kent"
"Bunny accused the activist of stealing them from her. She then changed tack and said she was “not allowed” to sell the shirts"
"Bunny came into her unpleasant element again... She went from sweetness and light at the founding meeting... to an aggressive bully at the anti-fascist rally held a few days later"

There is much more, and we really recommend that you read it the Socialist Unity report linked.

It is worth mentioning that LaRoche has rebuilt her links with the SWP while remaining a defender of racist sexual practises, and is now involved with the SWP inspired 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign, the bully boy front of that other union funded organisation, Hope not Hate. We understand she receives a salary in return for her efforts.

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.

HnH/UAF handing out leaflets on your High Street? Stand next to them and dish these out.

 

 

This is not a party political leaflet, and as such does not require an imprint. It should not be delivered with party political literature. It endorses no party, and the SWP, UAF and Hope not Hate do not stand for election - they'd rather just shout from the sidelines.

 

 

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.

Another rape in the SWP as HnH remain focussed on UKIP trivia

As Hope not Hate continue to go on about UKIP related trivia, further serious allegations have been raised about their comrades in arms in the SWP, who are the power behind the allied UAF campaign.

This was spotted on the Howie's Corner blog, but the source was soon tracked down for verification purposes. In case you're a Hope not Hate flunkie reading this, verification is the bit where you check that your facts are correct before publishing them. You should try it some time.

Anyway, allegations surfaced on the International Socialist Network in the second week of October about yet another rape case hushed up by the Socialist Worker's Party. Don't hold your breath waiting for HnH to say anything about it - like the Grangemouth scandal, or Unite rigging candidate selections in Falkirk, they are silent on anything of import, although if the person concerned had been a psychiatric patient, on past experience they'd post it so everybody could laugh as they find that sort of thing funny.

No news as yet on who this second rapist is, only on who it isn't - it is not Martin Smith, who the SWP have shunted off into a position which brings him into contact with young girls following his rape of an SWP activist. We will investigate and publish the name when we have it.

The text of the article is as follows:


Trigger warning: rape. This article is by a comrade who has decided to remain anonymous, telling of how she was raped by a fellow member of the SWP late last year, and how she was treated when she reported it. As she says, ‘The similarities in how the cases of W and X were handled and how mine was are striking.’ We believe it shows that these were not ‘isolated incidents’, but systematic in the organisation.

In December of last year – I was still at this point a member of the SWP – another member (I refuse to call that person a comrade) raped me. At first I refused to accept it and actually felt guilty. This person had been sexually harassing me for about a month prior to the attack and part of me felt that I should have said something sooner. In January, after confiding in a comrade who made me realise what really happened, I decided to file an official complaint with the SWP’s disputes committee.

This was not an easy decision to make. I had sat through that disputes report at conference that same month, with the man who raped me just a few seats away, and had been disgusted at what I had heard. However, I and other comrades truly believed that it must have been a one-off – that the appalling behaviour shown throughout must have been a mistake that would be rectified and never repeated. I think we all know now that we were wrong.

In late January I contacted my organiser to inform them I wanted to make a complaint. It was suggested that a female member in the district would hear my complaint and act as my intermediary. The organiser was a close ‘friend’ of both myself and the offender, and had been in the same house at the same party the night it had happened. I am not going to go into the details of the event, but I will outline the disputes procedure.

I made an initial complaint (of sexual assault, however the description of what happened can be nothing but rape) in which I detailed everything that had happened that night to my intermediary, who took notes. She got in touch with the disputes committee, forwarding the notes that she had taken the night I spoke to her. These notes were sent to Pat Stack, who sent them to Charlie Kimber, who then suspended the offender while the disputes committee (DC) looked into the case.

The DC replied that the complaint had to come from me in my own words. I emailed the DC myself, again forwarding the notes from my intermediary, saying, ‘Please accept this email as my formal complaint to the disputes committee. I have attached the previously forwarded, by [***], notes with one slight change and these are the basis of my complaint.’

As it turned out this still wasn’t enough, and I received this rather abrupt email telling me so:

“Currently, the DC is in receipt of your email (30th Jan 2013) that asks the DC to accept this email and its attachment – [***] previously forwarded (23th Jan 2013) notes with one slight change – as your formal complaint to the DC.  You have described these two documents as ‘the basis of your complaint’.

You are asking the DC to accept a third party description of what you said to the third party, as the complaint. This is not possible. Currently, the DC has still not received your account of what happened to you, while the defendant has been suspended for the past two weeks.

You need to finalise your own complaint.

Further, on the phone on Wednesday evening, you named three people to whom you have previously disclosed the identity of the defendant and to whom you are currently disclosing where your DC process is up to. You have done this even though you have open access to your chosen intermediary. Your actions are breaching the confidentiality that must surround complaints processes as well as identities and complaint details.

We recognise that this is difficult for you. We are trying to enable you to communicate clearly with the DC, and to protect the well-being, information and confidential identity of involved Comrades to the best of our abilities. It is vital that we work out the most constructive way forward from this juncture. The DC asks that you contact us at your earliest opportunity to discuss this further.

This correspondence is confidential between the DC and yourselves.”

I replied with this:

“Here is my statement, I have been out of the country so sorry for the delay.

In response to you saying i have broken confidentiality, i spoke to the other comrades before i decided to come to disputes as i didn't know what to do, i was wary of the disputes committee due to recent events and the report back that sat through at conference. Also one of these comrades is a female comrade who i know had previously felt uncomfortable at the behaviour of [***] and had helped me come to terms with what had happened.”

Throughout the whole of this process the need for confidentiality was constantly repeated to me. I, as someone who had been through something horrific, was being told that I could not talk to my friends and comrades – that I must only to talk to a woman who up until this point I had very little to do with.

After sending my statement it was arranged for Rhetta and Jackie from the DC to come to my area and interview both me and the offender. At this point I believed that this was my case being heard. On the evening of the interview Rhetta and Jackie asked me to talk them through the events of the night, which I did. Some of the questions that followed included “what effect would you say drink and drugs had on you that night?” I was also asked and pushed to talk about abuse that had happened to me previously, as earlier on that night I had been emotional and had confided in the man that assaulted me. This was extremely upsetting for me during a process that was already hard enough.

There is also some of the assault that I cannot remember fully, not due to intoxication but rather that I have blocked it out. He spoke to me throughout, however while I can still hear him talking, feel it in fact, I cannot remember exactly what it was he said.

At the end of a very long and upsetting interview I was asked what I wanted to happen next. When I enquired further what was meant by that, I was asked whether I would like to make it an official complaint and have an official hearing. Up until this point I thought that this was already so and that this was part of the official hearing.

They went on further to say that it was unlikely that the DC would be able to find either way, especially taking into account the level of intoxication, without being sure of the effect it had on me (in fact I was stone cold sober by the time the assault happened, which I repeated throughout). They said that I couldn’t remember everything (in fact the only thing I couldn’t remember from the actual assault was what he had been saying to me), and that a hearing would be harder for me.

I was encouraged to drop the case, whilst being told that “it is of course your decision, you do what’s best for you”, etc. Given such a bleak choice I decided to drop the complaint. I in no way feel this decision was mine – I was basically told there was no point, something which, as I found out more later on, was most definitely true.

I feel it is worth mentioning that the interview with Rhetta and Jackie was extremely stressful for me and damaging to my already frail mental health. They made me feel as if I was ridiculous for making a complaint and too damaged a person to really assess what had happened and how to deal with it. Following the interview I fell into a week-long state of mania. This is the real effect of what the SWP’s line towards women and rape is: it damages people, it is dangerous. During the week that followed I was phoned three times by my intermediary and by members of the DC to essentially make sure I kept quiet: “If anyone asks you about the complaint or why it was dropped just say ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ and ‘it was my decision’.” Well actually I do want to talk about it and it wasn’t my decision.

I have since found out that he was able to read my statement, while I have not seen his or even heard from the DC what he had said in response. Also he was able to have a character support, who turned out to be someone not even in the party. I was offered no sort of witness, despite the fact that I listed in my statement another female comrade in the district and mentioned that they would be happy to confirm that they had not only felt uncomfortable in that man’s presence but had also, previous to the assault, mentioned to me that he was acting in a harassing manner towards me.

I feel that it is no coincidence that the DC showed favour to a male member who was very prominent in the district and was starting to make a name for himself nationally within the organisation. A male member who was sent by the district to special conference (after my complaint) – even my intermediary voted for him – on a strong pro-CC line, who then went on to be on the district committee, and who is still a visible presence at demos, meetings, etc.

The similarities in how the cases of W and X were handled and how mine was are striking, and should be proof to anyone that the Socialist Workers Party is a group that is sexist, full of bullies, and above all will cover up rape to protect its male members and reputation. Taking this on board, the SWP is counter-revolutionary and is against the socialist tradition; we cannot have a revolution without fighting for the liberation of all oppressed groups – to cover up rape is oppressing women. So anyone who is a revolutionary, a socialist, a decent human being should have nothing to do with the SWP and its abhorrent practices. Deprive them and all rape apologists of air, do not in engage in any way. They are not worth the energy of revolutionaries – in short they are scum and we need not bother with them.

If any other person wants to come forward and share their story please do, or speak to someone you feel confident speaking to – we are not in this alone. Solidarity.

Beating women - fine when done by Hope not Hate's allies

Hope not Hate's gloating over a fight at the Young Independence ball last Thursday night has become somewhat muted lately when it was revealed that the man who bravely attacked a young woman, punching her, pulling her hair and calling her a 'fascist', was none other than Hope not Hate commentator Timur Moon.



Alex Nixon, left, and Timur Moon, the 36 year old who thinks
punching young women and pulling their hair is ok, so long as
he also calls them 'fascist'.

Mr Moon began assaulting guests after being told that it was a private function at which journalists were not welcome. In fairness, Mr Moon barely qualifies as a journalist, but striking a young woman and then having to be restrained until police arrives is hardly dignified behaviour. Still, it is what we have come to expect from Hope not Hate and their associates. No doubt the NUJ will investigate the circumstances closely, and then stand up for women by doing nothing.

Quite why 36 year old Mr Moon, who has a track record of poorly researched articles on the far-right, felt that he qualified either as young or as an independent has not been disclosed, although the recent closeness between Hope not Hate, UAF and Lord Ashcroft's dirty tricks department may provide some indication. Ahead of May's local elections, HnH and the Tories were peddling such headline grabbing news stories as Young Independence members 'dancing stupidly'. We should all count ourselves lucky that our fathers haven't ended up on the front page of the Sun if that is now a noteworthy event.

Still, Moon's crass articles still appear all over Hope not Hate's website. Apparently, it makes no difference if one of their own is likely to be convicted of a criminal offence, even where the crime at hand is gate-crashing a party and punching a young woman. We can only assume that these things are only bad when their opponents do them - another Hope not Hate case of 'do as we say, not as we do'. After all, their own Director of Intelligence (sic) Matthew Collins boasts of his days spent 'Paki bashing' as a member of the BNP in his recently published book (available from bargain buckets everywhere, price £0.25), but apparently he is not a reformed character in a way any former BNP members not involved in Hope not Hate can never be.

It would be a shame to forget the UAF in all this too - for all their talk of equality, rape appears fine. As Martin Smith discovered, a penchant for sexually assaulting young women does not mean giving up your far-left sinecure, organising music festivals to give yourself access to even more young women.

Does it really take a £1m organisation to combat people saying rude things about Islam on the Internet?

Hope not Hate last night reposted a Channel 4 news article headlined "EDL 'linked to a third' of

Data based on 'Tell MAMA's figures -
but they are losing their grant because
of doubts about their accuracy

online anti-Muslim incidents".

The report, by the Centre for Fascist Studies at Teeside University, runs to 30 pages of analysis, but suffers from a serious drawback: its data is based on information provided to it by the 'Tell MAMA' campaign. Tell MAMA, which was founded by Fiyal Mughal last year and funded by the government, has just lost its central government grant because its figures were unreliable. In an article on June 9th in the Sunday Telegraph, Andrew Gilligan wrote:

"A controversial project claiming to measure anti-Muslim attacks will not have its government grant renewed after police and civil servants raised concerns about its methods.

The project, called Tell Mama, claimed that there had been a “sustained wave of attacks and intimidation” against British Muslims after the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, with 193 “Islamophobic incidents” reported to it, rising to 212 by last weekend.

 The group’s founder, Fiyaz Mughal, said he saw “no end to this cycle of violence”, describing it as “unprecedented”. The claims were unquestioningly repeated in the media.

Tell Mama and Mr Mughal did not mention, however, that 57 per cent of the 212 reports referred to activity that took place only online, mainly offensive postings on Twitter and Facebook, or that a further 16 per cent of the 212 reports had not been verified. Not all the online abuse even originated in Britain.

Contrary to the group’s claim of a “cycle of violence” and a “sustained wave of attacks”, only 17 of the 212 incidents, 8 per cent, involved the physical targeting of people and there were no attacks on anyone serious enough to require medical treatment."

 The Teeside report focuses on incidents over a longer timescale, but the figures are broadly in line with those since the Woolwich incident. In the period 1st April 2012 to 30th April 2013, Tell MAMA has recorded 584 anti-Muslim hate crimes, of which 434 took place on-line, as opposed to 150 in the real world. Of these real world incidents, only 8% - 12 - involved 'extreme violence', although there is no indication of what extreme violence means. This is not to downplay the seriousness of assaults, but to show that of the 584 incidents recorded by Tell MAMA, only 2% involved anything more than what amounts to name-calling or insults.

HnH would like you to think that this is commonplace -
but even Tell MAMA's figures show this is not so

Of the real world incidents, only 29 out of 150 involved an identifiable link to the far-right, or 19.3% - a figure the report refers to as 'nearly a quarter', when it is actually 'nearly a fifth'. By 'far-right', the report refers to the BNP, NF and EDL and its offshoots: it specifically excludes UKIP (HnH take note).

There are several gaping holes in this data. Most noticeable is the lack of any indication of how many of the real world incidents which resulted in violence also had connections to the far-right, which leads us to believe the figures were pretty evenly spread. This would mean that statistically only 2.4 violent incidents took place with far-right links of the 12 recorded. Online, the situation was clearer, with 300 out of 434 incidents having links to the far-right, although even here the methodology was not clear - was passing on an internet 'meme' which could be considered anti-Muslim sufficient? As EDL membership is self-selecting and not limited to the UK, it is also not clear to what extent the data is valid.

What is interesting is to turn this data around the other way. Hope not Hate and its associated groups

Once again, HnH prove inept at
sorting data which doesn't fit
their agenda

have an annual turnover approaching £1m, and a significant number of staff. For the past year, it has involved itself in opposing hate crimes primarily against Muslims living in the UK. But that really highlights the scale of the problem facing Nick Lowles and Ruth Smeeth. On Tell MAMAs figures since the Woolwich incident, HnH's expensive organisation has essentially spent the last 6 weeks going after 40 EDL members who said rude things online about Muslims, and a further 17 people who shouted rude words at a Muslim in the street. According to the data in the Teeside report - and merging it with that released by Tell MAMA since the Woolwich incident - it means this expensive organisation has been chasing a mere 796 incidents, the vast majority of

Ruth Smeeth - may have
to step off the HnH
gravy train

which - 554 - amounted to Muslims being called rude names in internet postings. Of the real world incidents, only 12 - or 1.5% - involved violence, and only 2.4 - 0.3% -of those involved the far right. This does not seem to justify the scale of resources which Hope not Hate deploy, and explains their desperation to find another target before their own supporters begin to ask the same questions.

Without UAF to hide behind, Weyman
Bennet is just another political thug

The same problem is also facing the other supposedly anti-racist organisations, chief amongst which is Unite Against Fascism and its various offshoots. Many of these groups like UAF are simply front organisations for other political groups such as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who use them for spreading their own propaganda. If organised fascism is seen to be defeated, this audience is lost to them and that
they can not afford to happen.

Hope not Hate is not all about the money. It is about the influence and the power that brings: the access to media which unquestioningly accepts what they say. It is a heady brew, rubbing shoulders with sympathetic MPs and Ministers, editors and journalists. By selectively using statistics, they are not combatting the problem of anti-Islamic attacks, they are making it seem worse than it is, and diverting efforts away from the majority of perpetrators of real-world incidents who have no connection to the far-right. If there is a better example of Hope not Hate failing in its primary task, we have yet to see it.

All of this adds to the evidence that many of the supposed racist incidents are orchestrated not by the far right, but by anti-racist groups desperate to hang on to their positions and bands of thoughtless followers. Incidents such as the careful desecration of Islamic graves we reported on yesterday appear increasingly calculated to extend what HnH and UAF define as 'far-right' into the political mainstream. We have seen continually decreasing attendances at EDL marches which the EDL leadership has attempted to combat by ever more desperate political stunts. We have seen the collapse of the BNP, with its own attempts to hijack the Woolwich incident descend into farce. The English Democrats attempts to harvest disillusioned members has resulted in the collapse of the party. Andrew Brons and his new political party have disappeared.

UKIP should be on their guard. Lowles, Smeeth, Bennett and Smith will not let power slip through their fingers, and will resort to almost any means to prevent their followers seeing their own irrelevance to the political debate. They recognise that unless they successfully convince their own followers that UKIP is more than a political threat, their ride on the gravy train is approaching the terminus, and we should be aware from past experience that there are almost no depths to which they will not stoop to avoid having to step off onto the platform.

 

 

Ban on 'fascist street thuggery' should include UAF and AntiFA

Hope not hate today published the comments of Colin Inglis, former head of the Humberside Police Authority.

Inglis called the EDL 'fascist street thugs', and called for a ban following an event in Hull which saw 10 people arrested. All ten were protesting the event, and none were associated with the EDL.



The worst of the EDL........

We make no secret of our views of sections of the EDL. While the vast majority of people who support them are decent, law abiding folk there is undeniably an element who are exactly what Inglis calls them. Fascist street thugs. We have no time for them.

At the same time, Inglis seems to have lost sight of the fact that all 10 arrested in Hull were from UAF or another of Hope not Hate's allies. At a recent EDL march in London, the majority of those arrested were also UAF.

...are no worse than the leaders of UAF. Just shabby
street thugs and fascists. The difference is that Hope not Hate
approve of UAF violence. Pictured here (centre) is
Martin Smith, SWP rapist and UAF organiser.

If Hope not Hate are going to call for a ban on 'fascist street thugs', they could do worse than looking much closer to home than the EDL. Their own associates and fellow travellers are no less fascist street thugs than the worst elements of the BNP and EDL.

The question is whether Lowles will also condemn his allies in the UAF, SWP and Anti-Fascist Alliance? Do Hope not Hate believe that violence on the streets is fine as long as those committing the acts of violence are their allies? Do Hope not Hate - and Inglis - advocate the advancement of political aims by the use of violence and intimidation so long as they agree with the cause?

We already know the answer, of course. Just yesterday, when UKIP leader Nigel Farage accused the Anti Fascist Alliance in Scotland of being 'as bad as the EDL', there were howls of rage from Lowles and his mates, who feel they should have an exclusive right to bring violence to the streets of our nation. With that sort of attitude, it is easy to confuse two particular people called 'Nick' - they are beginning to sound the same, and they are both hypocrites of the first order.

Breivik and Adebolajo, and Hope not Hate's hypocritical stance

In 2009, a group calling itself 'Stop Islamification of Europe' announced a protest at the then new Harrow Central Mosque in Harrow, Middlesex. The protest was subsequently announced on the EDL's Facebook pages, although it was never clear whether the EDL intended to take part themselves. As soon as the protest was announced, UAF announced a counter-protest to take place at the same time.

In all the fuss over who and how many were attending, one important voice was lost. Haroon Sheikh, the Mosque chairman - speaking of both demonstration and counter-demonstration - said, "We would request that the local authority and the police try to put a stop to it. The concern we have is with a large congregation. It's very difficult to control what people would want to do on the day. We would have 200 to 300 people coming here for prayers on a Friday. Emotions will be high if it's provoked, but we will have the police and we will have stewards here."

As it turned out, not many people on either side bothered to listen. The 20 SIOE protesters who turned up were outnumbered by up to 1,000 UAF protesters who repeatedly charged police lines and threw bottles and stones. So far, it was just another UAF gathering, but what made this one different - if only in retrospect - was the presence of Al-Muhijaroun activist Michael Adebolajo, who was captured on video telling a group of UAF protesters that what they did, they did 'for Allah'. Adebolajo was one of the two men arrested recently for the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.

It is not so much the presence of Adebolajo which is the problem: at the time, he had done nothing illegal, and was as entitled as anyone to be there, even if the local Mosque had asked for people to not attend. No, the thing which is striking about it is the response of UAF since the murder occurred. Weyman Bennett, the UAF leader, has batted away implied criticism with a statement that Adebolajo was 'not on the platform, and was not an official speaker'. While Adebolajo was speaking, a procession of UAF and trades union flags passed within yards, so his words were hardly a surprise to Bennett and his SWP colleague Martin Smith, who passed just feet away.


UAF and Trades Union banners passed within feet of
Michael Adebolajo at the Harrow protest....

 One can just imagine the outcry from UAF if it came to light that Anders Breivik had attended a UKIP meeting in 2009 and had been allowed to hold his own impromptu rally. It stretches credibility to imagine that Nigel Farage could get away with the notion that Breivik 'not being on the platform and not being an official speaker' would be a satisfactory dismissal of concerns.



...as he was spewing his message of Hate, not Hope



There is no love lost between Hope not Hate and the UAF, although there does seem to be a thawing of relations since HnH was taken over by Nick Lowles. Under the Gables' stewardship, HnH recognised that far from being part of the solution, UAF were a part of the problem: the other side of the racist violence coin. Lowles seems to take a more relaxed view, as reports on EDL marches over the past few years demonstrate on HnH's twitter and Facebook feed: the reporters seemed to glory in the violence of running battles between the EDL and UAF, although as most of Hope not Hate's 'feet on the street' were previously BNP activists who a decade earlier would have been in there with fists and boots flying, this is perhaps not surprising.

As Andrew Gilligan discusses in his Telegraph article, the actions of the UAF do not detract from the rise in tensions, they add to it, a point then Harrow Council leader David Ashton made back in 2009: "We are saddened and dismayed that groups from outside the borough have come here and caused unrest. Harrow has an excellent record in community relations and we condemn those who came to our borough from elsewhere to either foist extreme political opinions on us or use religion as a cover for causing trouble."

All of this leaves Hope not Hate's core purpose - fighting racism and fascism - looking rather neglected. Where is the condemnation of Bennett and UAFs pitiful excuses for Adebolajo's presence at the Harrow protest? Back in 2009, nobody knew what Adebolajo would go on to do, but with the benefit of hindsight it is clear that he was an extremist with a future no less notorious than Anders Breivik, even if the number he left dead was smaller. Speaking against Breivik in an article in the Guardian last September, Lowles said, "Sadly, there are many others at large who share his warped ideology. Seventeen people in the UK....have been imprisoned in recent years for terrorist-related offences": the words I have removed and replaced with '....' were 'with far right views'. With those four words removed, it applies as much to UAF as it does to the EDL and the BNP.

But if Hope not Hate can launch an investigation into links between the far right and Anders Breivik and display its results as symptomatic of the approval of the former for the latter, why does the far left not also warrant a similar investigation? With Al Muhajiroun ostensibly a target for Hope not Hate, where is the investigation into the links between the boot boys of the UAF and Anjem Choudhary and Michael Adebojalo?

I will not win many friends in the EDL and BNP by suggesting that such sloppy thinking would not have been a part of Hope not Hate's approach under the Gables' stewardship, but it remains true. Lowles very much takes the view that 'if God is with us, who can be against us', and feels that however fascist the far left becomes, and whatever terrorist organisations it mixes with, the righteousness of his cause outweighs any concerns.

This may have been true were he not simultaneously attempting to make Hope not Hate less a tool to be used against racism, and more a tool to be used against what he perceives to be the political right.
Part of the problem for Lowles is the continued presence at the top of the UAF of such noted Labour Party activists as Ken Livingstone, Diane Abbott and Glyn Ford. Despite UAF being effectively an SWP front organisation, such high profile Labour politicians at its top table - even if they are without meaningful power - makes an attack or even an investigation into UAF politically unpalatable for Lowles. To brand the UAF as fascist would be to brand sections of the Labour Party fascist as well, and that is counter to Lowles purpose as he seeks to align Hope not Hate ever more closely with the Labour Party.

Whether such hypocritical evasions are tenable remains to be seen. Certainly the poor attendance to date at his anti-UKIP meetings have lead to the rebranding discussed yesterday: better to climb on the Woolwich bandwagon and hope nobody notices the tolerance shown by the hard left to Al Mujahiroun in the past. We can not believe that the majority of Hope not Hate support will put up with such hypocrisy for long.

UAFs' "Love Music, Hate Racism" Events run by man accused of rape

Unite Against Fascism's 'Love Music, Hate Racism' campaign is now officially headed by a man accused of rape.
 

Martin Smith - 'Comrade Delta' - was accused of raping a
17 year old girl, but escaped justice at the hand of the SWPs
'Disputes Committee' comprising 5 of his colleagues.

Martin Smith, a former national officer of the Unite Against Fascism campaign, is a close friend and political associate of UAF leader Weyman Bennett, and is listed on their website as the LMHR National Organiser. He is also a former leader and Central Committee member of the SWP, which is the organisation behind UAF and LMHR.

There is a much seedier side to Smith, however. Apart from his string of criminal convictions - most recently in 2010 for assaulting a police officer - there is his role in the rape scandal which has convulsed the Socialist Workers Party in recent months.

News of this first leaked out after the SWP decided that it did not trust the 'bourgeois court system', and decided to deal with the allegations internally through its disciplinary committee: no, really! At issue was a 'Comrade Delta', who was accused of raping a 17 year old SWP member, Miss X.

Miss X was pressured into not reporting the matter to the police, but to pass it on to the party Disputes Committee to investigate. The Disputes Committee found in favour of Comrade Delta, and dismissed the case without further action.

Comrade Delta was in fact Martin Smith, former leader of the SWP and Central Committee member. According to the 'pre-conference bulletin' prepared by supporters of Miss X:

‘In this case, the comrade making the complaint was kept waiting for four hours before she was called to the DC [disputes committee] to give evidence. This added stress made it harder to put her side of the case.


Weyman Bennett, UAF leader who appointed accused rapist
Martin Smith to run an organisation which would give him
access to young girls

‘In this case, the DC made a one-sentence decision — that the allegation of rape was unproven — with no further explanation. As might have been expected, the comrade who had made the accusation was extremely distressed.
‘The DC took a full two weeks to provide a statement. Yet the DC’s statement did not explain why it did not accept her account, or why it failed to make any criticism at all of the male comrade’s behaviour.'


Given the age of Miss X, it seems almost unbelievable that Martin Smith now runs 'Love Music, Hate Racism'. With its mission of putting on concerts in support of anti-racism, his new position will bring him into contact with large numbers of impressionable young girls - just like Miss X - while the apparatus of the SWP has already shown that it will do all it can to close down discussion of allegations against its leadership. At least two Central Committee members of the SWP were expelled following their attempts to challenge the findings of the Disputes Committeee.

To quote Tom Walker, a journalist who left the SWP over the handling of the matter,

"As those who raised criticisms pointed out, the disputes committee included five current or former CC members, and all have known comrade Smith for many years. Though I believe they took the case deeply seriously, this was not a jury of his peers, but a jury of his mates. If we were talking about any other organisation we would all consider it obvious that allowing it to investigate itself is unlikely to produce damning conclusions"

It is worth remembering that there are allegations that a further 9 rapes - including at least one other involving Smith - have been dealt with in a similar fashion, with the Disputes Committee dispensing 'revolutionary justice' in the form of expulsion or suspension from the SWP, in some cases for periods of up to two years. For any who feel that being made to temporarily leave a minor political party may not be a punishment which fits the crime of rape - which is a hate crime based on power - it may be worth asking why Hope not Hate feels no need to address such behaviour when they are supposedly opposed to inequality.

Thankfully, under Smiths' leadership the Love Music, Hate Racism campaign seems to have ground to a temporary halt: the last event listed on its website was last August, although the nature of the campaign means that there are often long hiatuses in its event schedule.

Should they start up again under Smiths' leadership, you may wish to ask yourself one thing before allowing your teenage daughters to attend an anti-racist event which sounds so worthy: the man behind it has been accused of rape, and has never faced justice because his friends in the anti-racist, anti-fascist movement whitewashed the allegations. Is this a person young girls should be around? You decide.