Lowles' mis-firing report - the 'some of my best friends are black' defence

Following Breitbart's expose of Hope not Hate's anti-Muslim bias in their latest report, it is good to see the heat has been turned up under their director Nick Lowles sufficiently to goad him into one of the self-justifying blog posts he is known for.

Breitbart pointed out that Lowles and his student co-author Joe Mulhall had singled out among others Muslim anti-Shariah campaigner Raquel Saraswati and lumped her in with assorted members of the hard-right. In a surprising volte-face, her name was hurriedly removed.

Also targeted were other reform-minded Muslims such as Auhdi Jasser and former extremist turned reformer Tewfik Hamed.

Lowles was quick to go on the attack when criticised by Quilliam Foundation director Maajid Nawaz, although that was more a continuation of the long running feud between the pair following Nawaz's success - and Hope not Hate's implied failure - over Tommy Robinson and the effective demise of the EDL. Lowles - after an amusing diversion attacking Nawaz for destroying the EDL - then resorts to playing the race card to try and save his own (apparently not quite white) skin:

Lowles - of mixed

parentage? Would he

know?

"There are several aspects of Mr Nawaz’s attack piece on our report that are demonstrably untrue, including his peculiar attempt to undermine it by explaining that it was written by ‘two white men’. One of us is of mixed parentage and the other is of Indian descent."

Readers may recognise this as the hard-left equivalent of the 'some of my best friends are black' defence which Hope not Hate regularly ridicules. Lowles leaves it open as to which of the two white men is of mixed parentage - if it's Lowles, we're surprised he can be so certain - and which is of Indian descent, although looking at the pair of them and assuming them to be a couple of white, comfortably middle-class champagne socialists would be an easy mistake to make.

Mulhall - clearly of

Indian descent

Lowles continues his self-justifying monologue by claiming credit for 'raising awareness of child grooming/exploitation' while failing to mention it was the attack-dog mentality of his organisation which prevented decent staff members of all religions from speaking out for fear of being labelled a racist in Rotherham, Bradford, Rochdale and myriad other cities (all Labour controlled, of course). After all, being a devout Muslim committed to reform of your religion has not saved many people from being called a 'counter-Jihadist' in this report. How many children suffered because his organisation acted as a persistent threat to the careers of any who dared speak out?

This defence of radical Islam from those who speak out against Islamic-extremism is not a new course for Hope not Hate, but rather a continuation of one plotted long ago. We blogged several years ago how Hope not Hate campaigned to bar Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from the UK, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the admittance to the UK of two extremist Muslim preachers (Mohammed al-Arefe and Yasser al-Habib) whose preached their usual blend of homophobia, sexism and violence to congregations across North London.

The rest of Lowles posting is little more than a continued attack on Nawaz, which really shows how much pressure Lowles has come under over his report. Citing a list of other groups, it would appear that Hope not Hate's 'The Counter-Jihad Movement' report is nothing more than a cobbling together of internet sourced second- and third-hand reports about people the authors have little if any knowledge of. As 'dodgy dossiers' go, it is second only to the Progress inspired Iraq War dossier.

The real interest here is the squeeze Lowles is coming under within the Labour movement. Having relied for several years on the financial support of the Mandelson lead, Blairite 'Progress' wing, he now finds the Corbynistas in the ascendant and Progress viewed as a pariah organisation by most of the Shadow Cabinet. As Breitbart reported earlier this week, Lowles' organisation gets significant funding from outside the UK (there is more to come on this story!), but it still relies on the Unions here to provide the bulk of his political funds. With the Unions moving to support Corbyn's 'old-Labour-lite' approach, Lowles is feeling the squeeze and his ready access to the movers and shakers has been diminished.

Even within Hope not Hate, there are finally rumours of discontent. With many long-term staffers little more than barely tolerant of Progress - come on down, Carl Morphett, David Braniff-Herbert and others - there are rumblings about the whole political positioning of Hope not Hate and its declining influence in the Labour Party. With the acrimony over the split from the more honestly left wing Searchlight organisation still ringing through the halls of Hope not Hate towers - an office let to them by another charity - there could yet be blood on the carpet if Lowles handles the negative publicity from his mis-firing report badly.

Dan Hodges - 1 cheque from the Telegraph, 1 cheque from Hope not Hate

Dan Hodges - paid by the Telegraph, paid by
Hope not Hate: nice work if you can get it

It was hardly a surprise to see Nick Lowles triumphantly echoing the words of Dan Hodges - "UKIP
is a racist Party" - and using this as a justification for continuing political action against UKIP not because it is racist, but because it threatens the Labour Party.

Hodges reached his conclusion because, amongst other heinous crimes, UKIP members were caught laughing at a racist joke at conference in Torquay, and used a slogan once used by the BNP. Hodges also complains that "there has been a steady stream of outrageous and disgustingly racist comments by UKIP councillors and officials" which he claims have gone unpunished. In fact, most have been punished, unlike the many Labour Party councillors who have featured on our Facebook page over the last year.

Lowles has of course been looking for an excuse to drag the dwindling band of Hope not Hate supporters along on his quest to attack UKIP, a party he was once happy to work with in fighting the far-right - as, in fact, was Dan Hodges who met with a senior UKIP official on a number of occasions. That was before UKIP looked like thumping the Labour Party in the European elections, and before UKIP started taking huge chunks out of the Labour vote in previously safe Labour seats in the Labour heartlands of the north.

Lowles has long faced a problem within Hope not Hate. Huge numbers of his own supporters were decidedly lukewarm about HnH turning its guns on UKIP, as we discussed about this time last year when he was doing a speaking tour in an attempt to drum up anti-UKIP feeling. Speaking mostly to empty chairs or hand-selected audiences of UAF and SWP activists who thought Lenin was a bit right wing and Mao was a fascist, he still lacked anything approaching a mandate to fight a battle with UKIP.

And now, out of the woodwork, crawls Hodges with his thoroughly dishonest diatribe. Hodges and Lowles are hardly unknown to each other - in the 2010 General Election campaign, HnH paid Hodges over £4,500 for a raft of services ranging from fundraising to writing press releases - the invoices are attached below. Hodges himself is a defender of Peter Mandelson, on the pages of Labour Uncut and even in the Progress Online website, while Mandelson's group are suspected of funding Hope not Hate. And yet, as Left Futures says, "Dan Hodges is not the most reliable of soothsayers."

No-one however has ever accused him of not knowing which side of the bread the butter is on. His latest column will inevitably raise the question about whether he is being paid by two masters for the same article: in 2010 he was already hard at work for Hope not Hate by this time of the year, although we'll have to wait for HnH's Electoral Commission returns later in the year to find out for sure. It's nice work if you can get it though - being paid to promote the views of one organisation in the columns of a national newspaper which is also paying you for the same thing.

And with Hodges mother - Labour MP Glenda Jackson - standing down at the next General Election, having Peter Mandelson's influence on your side shouldn't hurt when the selection battle starts. It just goes to show, it's never too early to get your nose in the trough.

So, what's in it for Lowles? He can trumpet a national newspaper - albeit one he is hardly likely to read - labelling UKIP as racist, and flaunt the article before his dwindling band of supporters. It helps drag out the death throes of Hope not Hate - an organisation which since UKIP saw off the remnants of the BNP has no purpose - for another election campaign, and all the money that involves. The bleaker long-term reality for Lowles is that Hope not Hate is becoming an increasingly unwieldy alliance of hard left and Blairite Labour funding, with the trades unions on one side, and Mandelson's Progress on the other. The public meetings mentioned earlier showed that HnH has no true grass roots support - this is why in 2010 it was reduced to paying private companies to carry out its leafleting as it simply no longer has the ability to put feet on the ground.

How long can he continue to pull off this balancing act? The smart money is that his organisation will be gone by the end of the year.

Lowles and the hard left couldn't miss the point more on UKIP and the EU

Hope not Hate owner Nick Lowles ability to miss the point about UKIP is already almost legendary, but today he felt the need to prove it once again.

Reposting an article from Left Foot Forward on his HnH blog, he launches into the tired attack about how UKIP MEPs are the 'laziest in Europe'.

Accompanied by a fetching graphic which showed that UKIP had amended the least reports of all UK parties (apart from the SNP and the BNP, neither of which were featured), it also showed that Labour were in this respect the second laziest by their own definition, which we assume was unintended.

Just in case Lowles doesn't grasp it - HnH supporters commenting underneath their Facebook posting of it mostly don't - UKIP's job is not to help the EU stifle British industry in red tape and pointless regulation, it is to get us out of the EU: UKIP votes only on issues which it deems to be of the greatest importance to the UK, and always votes to mitigate its effects as much as possible. Aside from that, the voting process is so rushed and so opaque that it is often impossible to know what is being voted on at any one time, as Derek Clark points out in this article and in the video to the right.

In reality, Lowles is perfectly well aware of all this, but admitting as much would hardly fit with Hope not Hate's new policy of propaganda over facts, particularly where the EU is concerned. With much of their money coming from organisations or unions which are rabidly pro-EU and actively campaign for a federal Europe that is hardly a surprise while the ever closer links between the hard left within HnH and Lord Mandelson's Progress group will ensure an ever more strident pro-EU message.

Of course, Lowles and the Hope not Hate team are themselves all avid Europhiles, and remain ever ready to jump on the gravy train whenever possible. The EU's Strasbourg building even features on their 2014 calendar (pictured, left) and features Lowles and others on their trip there in 2009 to protest at the temerity of the general public in daring to vote for the BNP after Hope not Hate had only delivered 2,000,000+ plus leaflets bearing their name, thereby helping to ensure the BNPs election at the expense of UKIP candidates (who were placed just behind Griffin and Brons) in the North West and Yorkshire & Humberside. Naturally, the expenses for this trip were paid by Labour MEPs.

How all this sits with Old Labour - as opposed to the sort of New Labour represented by Lowles and Mandelson, who mistake mushy peas for guacamole - is clear to see in by-elections across the north of England. UKIP have been taking Labour votes by the truckload, and the more stridently HnH and Labour shout, the more their vote evaporates.