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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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




Malik Furreed's barely literate call to violence

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

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

Perpetrators of the violent attack on the UKIP shop in Penarth

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

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

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

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

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