Labour join Tories with the 'dog whistle' racism in Thurrock: Hope not Hate silent

Tory leaflet condemned as 'diving head first into the gutter'

We posted a link on our Facebook newsfeed to stories in the mainstream media concerning Tory
racism in the council by-election battle for the Aveley ward in Thurrock last week. To recap, the Tories had put out a leaflet referring to the UKIP candidate, MEP Tim Aker as 'Timür' in order to draw attention to his half-Turkish parentage.

Jackie Doyle-Price, the shockingly dim-witted local Tory MP, dismissed the row as nonsense, saying it 'did him a favour' in a multi-cultural area, although this was not a view shared by the Tory supporting Mail on Sunday, which condemned the Tories for 'diving head first into the gutter'.

Hope not Hate's complaints were muted compared to the invective that would have broken lose from then had UKIP done such a thing. Deafening silence came from the Thurrock Labour Party, despite the leaflet also screaming in large headlines 'Labour Soft on Travellers'. As the travelling community is now a protected minority under the terms of current racial equality legislation, this is akin to saying 'Labour Soft on Muslims', but nobody seems too bothered about that as the prime purpose of the leaflet was to stop UKIP, not to worry about protecting minorities. We assume that it could have said 'Labour soft on Blacks' and Hope not Hate wouldn't have complained too much.

Scott Nelson proves just how desperate Labour are to halt
UKIPs advance: Use overt racism on the people of Aveley

Another reason has come to light for Hope not Hate's lack of outrage though. One of their leading activists in Thurrock is also a Labour Party activist called Scott Nelson. Nelson, who tweets under the user-name @TheMockneyRebel, is vociferously anti-UKIP and clearly didn't believe in casual references to Aker's Turkish father. The subtle call of Tory 'dog whistle' racism wasn't good enough for an anti-racism campaigner. No, better to go the whole hog and not just label Aker Turkish, but accuse him of wanting to bribe the electorate too simply because as part of his campaign he had promised to donate his councillor allowances to local causes as he considers his MEP salary sufficient.

In the end, neither the Tory's nor Labour's racism helped them. Tim Aker won the seat by a considerable margin, holding it for UKIP with a considerable majority following the sad death of Cllr Maggie O'Keefe Ray in September.

What is clear is the extent to which both main parties are prepared to suspend the 'normal rules' of politics in their fear of UKIP's advance. Tim is UKIP's parliamentary candidate in Thurrock, and whith Doyle-Price defending a majority of just 96, he could well find himself in the first tranche of UKIP MPs returned at a general election after next May's polls.

More surprising perhaps is the extent to which Hope not Hate are prepared to ditch their founding

Ford's UKIP leaflet - unauthorised by UKIP, but now worse
than racist Tory & Labour smears against UKIP MEP Aker.

principles in the interests of electoral politics. Earlier this evening, they were feigning outrage over a UKIP leaflet allegedly issued by Martyn Ford, UKIP's PPC for Swansea West, who supposedly issued a leaflet condemning multiculturalism. Despite this story being almost 2 months old, HnH writer Simon Cressy (Carl Morphett under a pointless pseudonym) builds himself up into a proper fit of righteous indignation over its 'shocking racism', despite the target of the leaflet's wrath being a religion as opposed to a race. Such distinctions are lost on Hope not Hate. They have no real problem with the leaflet's contents, just with the leaflet's author: he's UKIP. As we have seen in Thurrock, the political establishment can be as racist as they want, and as long as the target is UKIP, Hope not Hate will condone it by their silence.

A final point: of these three 'racist' communications, which one do you think has seen it's author face party disciplinary action? That's right, only UKIP. Martyn Ford is currently facing a disciplinary hearing for issuing a leaflet without central party authorisation. The Tories and Labour are taking no action against their much more obvious racists.

HuffPo calls for racial discrimination, while HnH's leaflet campaign goes off with a whimper

An interesting article on today's Huffington Post website, where they condemn UKIP for employing a leaflet distribution company which in turn hires Eastern Europeans to deliver the leaflets.

The gist of the rather weak argument is that HuffPo thinks UKIP should only have British leafletters, in other words that it should break the law by discriminating on the basis of their nationality against people who are in the UK legally, which is really a rather racist position for what is supposed to be a reputable website to take.

***Hope not Hate's 'Simon Cressy' has just chipped in with a blog post, asking 'whatever happened to British Jobs for British workers, it used to be a UKIP and BNP battlecry', forgetting that it was a Labour battlecry as well, straight from the mouth of Gordon Brown. Cressy (aka Carl Morphett) is also suggesting that UKIP practise racial discrimination, although that's not entirely surprising given his casual racism against an Anglo-Albanian UKIP candidate a couple of days ago. ***

While we're on the subject of leaflets, it is worth mentioning that Hope not Hate had their 'weekend of action' over the May Day bank holiday weekend just gone.

Interesting photographs were tweeted by Hope not Hate, who are pushing their 'votehope' campaign for all it's worth regardless of the net positive effect such leafleting has had in the past for those targeted by it. UKIP thanks them for their efforts in calling the 77% of people in the UK who are concerned about immigration 'racist', and looks forward to another boost in the polls.

Hope not Hate very helpfully posted images on their blog showing how many of their leaflets and newspapers they intend to deliver in each of their target areas - it is reproduced at the bottom of this article. We congratulate them on their ambition, but wonder given the size of their campaign teams whether this will prove possible.

In Brighton, for example. Their plan is for 40,000 leaflets to be delivered, and yet the morning's

VoteHope Brighton - with 40,000 leaflets to deliver, they'd
do better to get cracking rather than standing around taking pics!

campaign team photograph is of 4 people. Allowing for the photographer, that's 5 of them, or 8,000 leaflets each. If they really run and deliver 100 leaflets an hour, they'll be finished in a mere 80 hours, assuming they have no breaks for food, drink or the toilet. We should not forget that police are still hunting for the Hope not Hate activists who assaulted two policewomen at a UAF demonstration there last weekend, so it is possible that the campaign team will be further reduced. You will notice as well that all the ethnic groups in Brighton are represented in this show of solidarity for minorities, who have demonstrated their support by, erm, staying at home and leaving it to the achingly right-on middle class to stand up for them.

HnH's Ruth Smeeth takes the pictures, others do the delivering.
Will they deliver the 25,000 each, or just chuck them in a skip?

Meanwhile, in Halesowen, Ruth Smeeth popped by to tweet a photograph before going home and leaving the delivery work to the peons. Again, the minorities put in a strong show of concern by staying at home and having a lie in. Or maybe they've just heard of the institutional racism in the Labour Party in Harrow and want no part of these smears. Not entirely surprising perhaps, as the entire campaign team appears to consist of Labour Party candidates and activists taking a break from their day jobs which involve protecting the incomes of the richest by supporting an unending flow of cheap labour.  No surprises there from the party which used to stand up for the working man.

three of the four HnH activists complaining about something
different this time.

With 100,000 leaflets to deliver across the West Midlands, the Labour campaign team needs to get cracking with the mere 25,000 each they have to get rid of. At 100/hour, it'll only take 2,500 hours or a little over 14 days of 24 hour working to get them all delivered. As most working class people have to do those hours to pay for their families, it may well educate them on how the other half live: being Labour, they'll use that knowledge to hire poor people to do the deliveries next time. You will note the picture of the local Labour Party from earlier this year protesting against a tax they have no intention of scrapping features three of the four Hope not Hate activists. The fourth is also a Labour Party member, but there's not enough space to fit in pictures of them all.



Warrington Labour Party reduced to scaremongering as they
have nothing positive to say ahead of this month's elections

Labour were heavily involved with all this - they want to get their money's worth out of Hope not Hate, after all. In Warrington, the Labour Party gave up on campaigning for the European and local elections and instead spent the day handing out Hope not Hate leaflets in the town centre and then tweeting about it. Quite how that is supposed to persuade people to vote Labour we're not certain, but then they don't really have anything to say about the EU that voters want to hear. Better to scaremonger with HnH leaflets than tell people how you want to give their country away.

Whitehaven Labour Party resign themselves to being out of
touch and so deliver negative propaganda instead.

In Whitehaven the local Labour team had also given up telling people what they were planning to do if elected, preferring to hand out HnH leaflets as they ramped up their negative campaign. As there are three Cumbrian activists pictured and 20,000 leaflets are planned for delivery, they'd do better making a start pushing them through letterboxes rather than standing around taking selfies as they've each got just under 7,000 to deliver.

And so on to Manchester, where the 8 ethnically diverse Labour Party members are planning to deliver almost 250,000 leaflets across the Metropolitan area. Good luck with that then.

HnH's Manchester team taking pictures rather than delivering
the 31,000 leaflets each needed to reach HnH's target

Given the increase in the vote they will deliver for UKIP, we're almost tempted to put out a call for UKIP members to go and help them. Then again, most UKIP members have jobs and responsibilities other than signing on, so they can't devote the time necessary. HnH's supporters are of course largely unemployed, which may explain the low turnout - it's only lunchtime and it's not giro day, so most haven't got up yet. To be serious, what is sad is how Hope not Hate target the poorest in society and attempt to persuade them that having lower wages is good for them: as polling figures show, it takes a special kind of stupid to believe that, which is why UKIP's argument is soaring. But with HnH's 'officer class' comprised entirely of middle class kids who have never had a proper job, it's in their best interests to protect the richest in the land at the expense of the poor. Donkeys lead by donkeys.

 Elsewhere in the North West, the much vaunted 'major leafleting exercise' was not spotted by activists carrying our own leaflets in the centre of either Manchester or Liverpool, and UKIP activists had as of today received no reports of HnH leaflets being delivered through doors.

If you see a Hope not Hate campaign team out delivering leaflets, please take a photograph. We don't want it, but it is such a rare sight, it may prove a collector's item one day. Alternatively, you could print off a few of our leaflets available on the blog here and hand them out - perhaps their campaigners don't know the racist, criminal, tax evading company they are unwittingly keeping.