Hope not Hate use seminar organised by victim of Labour racism

Hope not Hate's 'Jihad news' - it's token attempt to make it appear to be targeting more than UKIP for the Labour Party and unions - was over the weekend pushing a BBC report of a 'counter-extremism' conference' held in Slough.

The conference was run by a Mr Zafar Ali, the chairman of the board of governors of the Iqra Primary School.

 

Mr Zafar Ali - victim of
Labour Party racism

We doubt whether Mr Ali appreciates being used as propaganda fodder by a Labour-front organisation like Hope not Hate as he had formerly been a victim of racism in the Labour Party, and successfully sued the party all the way to the court of appeal over its persecution of him and 4 other local Slough members.  In 1998, he along with 4 other men including 2 councillors were suspended from the local Labour Party for what was euphemistically described as 'membership irregularities'. Behind the scenes briefings expanded this to make accusations of bribery and corruption against Mr Ali. Despite these allegedly criminal activities, nothing was reported to the police by the Labour Party, and suggestions persist that the dispute was designed to ensure Labour got its preferred candidates to the top of the European elections list for the London Region.

Bad feeling unsurprisingly continued to persist between Mr Ali and the local Labour Party and in 2009 local Labour MP Fiona McTaggart was barred from visiting Iqra school unless she first apologised for criticisms of the Slough Islamic School Project made in 2006. Despite her unfounded criticisms, the Government later awarded around £8m to run the school in Grasmere Parade, Slough.

There is a double embarrassment for Hope not Hate however. Nick Lowles toured the TV studios in 2008 speaking about the leaked BNP membership list and persecuting people on it - many of them mistakenly -  while making sure that everybody who heard him was left in no doubt about where to find it on the internet so they could join in the persecution. Mr Ali, at the time chairman of the Slough Race Equality Council - was giving an interview to the 'Slough Express' newspaper on the same subject. In his measured response which showed considerably more appreciation for democracy than Lowles' had, Mr Ali said,

"I don’t support the leaking of personal data of this nature and irrespective of what party you believe in, you have the right to confidentiality... We would deplore any action of intimidation or violence against any BNP members.”

As Hope not Hate's actions seem designed to do precisely that, it would appear that Hope not Hate represent exactly the sort of extremism against which Mr Ali is directing his efforts. We wish Mr Ali well in his endeavours and hope that the Labour Party has now ceased to persecute him because of his race.



 

 

 

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.