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.

The Nepalese are dying because 20% of their doctors work in the NHS: HnH's racist approach to healthcare

In the pay of the big unions, Lowles dare not
offend the union barons and their banker
style salaries

As polling day approaches, so the Hope not Hate wraps on local newspapers in UKIP target seats
appear.

Once again, in the interests of fighting inequality, racism and homophobia, Hope not Hate are focussing on 'UKIPs secret plan for the NHS', which proves to be little more than a mirror of the stale Labour Party line about UKIP 'privatisation' - as if they hadn't saddled us with billions of £s of PFI debt as they lined the pockets of their donors with contracts.

We have discussed HnH's approach to this in a previous article in December. In it, we said:

"although possibly it is guilt over the Labour inspired need to import doctors from Sierra Leone (1 doctor per 50,000 people) in order to sustain the NHS administration (142 doctors per 50,000 people). Who knows? Labour doesn't care, Sierra Leoneans don't have a vote here anyway. With the partial privatisation of services introduced under the last Labour government, it probably makes sense to take desperately needed doctors from third world countries rather than train enough at home anyway."

With HnH having thrown their support behind the rather racist approach of saving the NHS by stripping third world countries of desperately needed medical personnel, they then try and present minutes from a UKIP meeting as a 'secret report'. In it, senior UKIP personnel are minuted as trying to get to grips with a workable solution for a bloated, unionised and politicised National Health Service which resists any change.

We're sure we are not alone in wondering just how much free and frank debate Hope not Hate would want to close down to protect the positions of their fat cat union paymasters. After all, UNISON's health care page claims 500,000 of their members work for the NHS, while UNITE claim 100,000 of theirs do. What we are seeing from Hope not Hate is how easily their name can be bought in return for promises of the sort of funding that keeps Nick Lowles in the style to which he has become accustomed.

Medical care is hard to find since the Labour government
stripped 2545 clinical staff from Nepal to work on first
world problems in the NHS

There is a strong negative side to the NHS which is felt not here but elsewhere. As mentioned above, stripping medical staff from the world's poorest nations is not a particularly caring or compassionate thing to do. But with the current disaster unfolding in Nepal, it is worth bearing in mind that the NHS employs 2545 medical staff from that nation across the UK. Meanwhile, Nepal has to struggle through an earthquake with only 10.5 doctors per 50,000 population, compared with the 147 per 50,000 that the NHS has. Still, as Nepal is the 159th poorest country by GDP, I'm sure stripping them of essential medical personnel to conduct breast reduction surgery, IVF treatments and other similar first world problems rather than healing the shattered bodies of their fellow countrymen seems like a bargain if it keeps Len McCluskey and Dave Prentis on their £120,000 pa banker style salaries. We'll just send them a few Land Rovers and a million quid by way of recompense for denuding them of emergency medical care.

"Job done", as Nick Lowles would say.

(Nepal has 10.5 doctors per 50,000 people. With a population of 27.8 million, that means there are a
total of 5838 doctors in Nepal. In other words, the Nepalese contingent in the NHS represents over 43% of doctors in the entire country. If you just count those with medical degrees and exclude nurses, there are 1143 Nepalese doctors in the NHS, or  20% of all Nepalese doctors. Still, Nepalese can't vote in the UK, so "screw them" appears to be the motto of the unions and Hope not Hate).

Wave of hard-left violence directed at UKIP premises

 

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

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?

"You're not singing any more" - Hope not Hate silent on new Daily Mirror poll - UKIP only 1.2% behind Tories

After a number of articles on the Hope not Hate website pointing at a dip in UKIPs polling results in an ICM survey in June, they've been very silent on the latest results of a poll commissioned by their own funders, the Daily Mirror. That said, the Daily Mirror have been very quite on the results too: this is from their NHS Anniversary Poll which is all over their paper today, apart from the voting intentions bit, which their online coverage fails to mention!

As Hope not Hate are 'putting UKIP under a magnifying glass' with their 'Purple Rain' campaign, their failure to mention this result is nothing more than censorship, plain and simple. So much for their claims to stand for free speech and democracy - their approach is more fascist than the NF's!!

In a Survation poll released yesterday the results were as follows:

• Labour - 36%
• Conservative - 22.8%
• UKIP - 21.6%
• Lib Dem - 9.6%
• Green 4.3%
• SNP 3%
• BNP 1.1%
• PC - 0.4%
• Respect - 0.2%
• TUSC - 0.1%

This may explain the apparent panic at Hope not Hate, and the increasingly threatening behaviour of UNISON and their union allies as they attempt to shut down debate.

These figures were taken from Survation's data tables and can be found on Table 11, described as
 

"Q8 Voting Intention Tables - Special Table (After Replacing the Undecided/Refused Responses with 2010 Voters responses)

Q8.1. If there was a General Election taking place tomorrow, and there was a candidate from all political parties standing in your constituency, which party do you think you would vote for?

Base : All Respondents Would Vote and Excluding Undecided/Refused"
 These were not the most favourable figures - Table 10, which excludes undecided/refused and does not redistribute their votes, shows UKIP 0.4% ahead of the Tories!!

HnH's UNISON funders threaten UKIP candidate's wife, force withdrawal from election

I was looking through the list of local council by-elections today and was surprised that only one of the by-elections listed for today had a UKIP candidate. I then came across the following post in relation to the Swansea Llamsamlet ward by-election on the English Elections website forum written by the person who would have been the local election agent:

"The reason that there is no UKIP candidate in the Llansamlet election is because the intended candidate pulled out the day before nominations closed .... after his wife mentioned in work .... that her husband was thinking of standing for UKIP.

She claims that she was visited by the workplace UNISON rep who advised her that it would be the end of her career enhancement prospects if he stood."

Unduly influencing an election (or intention of the same) is an offence under S115 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and is punishable by up to a year imprisonment.

Readers may recall that last night's Bury 'Let's talk about UKIP' Hope not Hate meeting was hosted by a UNISON rep, and that UNISON is a major funder of HnH.

When HnH talk about free speech, democracy and freedom from fascism, this is what they mean.

Follow us on Twitter @nopenothope for updates

Bury Hope not Hate meeting (attendance 7) - Report by Ian Upton

"We have been asked to make clear that Ian Upton is not associated with the EDL. This occurred while merging two serarate accounts of the meeting we received. We apologise for any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have caused"

Many thanks to Ian Upton who attended last night's Hope not Hate meeting in Bury and provided us with the following report.

Report of Hope not Hate 'Let's talk about UKIP' meeting

The Met, Bury, July 3rd 2013

The meeting was chaired by Jason Hunter, a Unison union rep from Burnley.

The meeting began with the speaker stating that police were in attendance because the EDL were on their way. They were surprised to discover that the EDL was already present and wearing a suit, sitting quietly and respectfully at the back.

I asked if the Hope not Hate organisation had lost its way somehow in defining which type of hate it supported and which type of hate it didn't ? Out of the 7 people who attended the two obvious UAF at the front really couldn't help themselves when talking of fascists and shouted over everyone from the front, quite embarrassing really when you consider myself (and the Bolton EDL Organiser) were very reserved and there to ask questions and challenge the views.

The meeting attempted to stereotype all EDL and UKIP members as fascist or racist. It was quite clear that  the outcome was already decided: UKIP would become a target. They were unable to grasp the notion that because a handful were racist it did not mean that all were, and were unable to answer the contrary point: Stuart Hall was a paedophile and a Labour Party member, did that therefore mean all Labour Party members were paedophile?

One female attendee stated that all Manchester EDL were 'uneducated' because of how they look, before claiming racism because she had a conversation (presumably with an EDL or UKIP member) with a person once who spoke of 'Asians' generally and stereotypically. She did not appear to grasp the irony.

She was followed by a soon to be standing Labour MEP candidate who couldn't help but mention that the only time she had received abuse was when she was knocking on doors on a "council estate" because the family had the audacity to challenge Labour past record and poor performance in government in effect nearly bankrupting the county. It's interesting to see Labour candidates disdain for what used to be their core voters and the very mention of their residence being "council" shows there own inherent stereotyping and class distinction.

I am more certain than ever that the far left and those in these organisations have an embedded interest in ignoring the facts and in being selective in what they see as hatred.

In Hope not Hate's campaign the hatred that comes from "Islamic Terrorists" to put it in the speakers words does not matter, and  nor does it matter that their own colleagues (Union Reps) who are supposed to be representative of all society in the workplace abuse the general public. If they say someone is Racist then it must mean it is true without being challenged or questioned.

The left don't like being challenged and what went down in Bury certainly showed that the inherent vision and determination to label and target without separation certainly clouds the judgment of these organisations

In other words, the meeting was identical to other HnH anti-UKIP meetings: the outcome was predecided, the attendance was laughably low, they attempted to prevent any who disagreed with their views from attending, and it consisted of the far-left repeating the same old stereotypes and platitudes about UKIP.

I'm sure readers will join me in thanking Ian for the excellent report. Similar reports are always welcome from other HnH meetings!