Another lungful of HnH hypocrisy

Hope not Hate this evening posted the story which has appeared in the Guardian newspaper which attempts to suggest that there is something wrong with UKIP accepting a £25,000 donation from e-cigarette firm Pillbox 38 because UKIP has consistently voted against EU legislation which would outlaw their products. UKIP has always been against legislation which interferes with personal choice on both smoking and smoking replacement products. Hope not Hate's comment was 'is it me, or is this slightly dodgy'. The £25k represents less than 20% of UKIPs total donations.

Meanwhile, the same release of donor information showed that the Labour Party (who fund Hope not Hate) received over £2.4 million from the Trade Union movement (who also fund Hope not Hate). The trades unions have opposed the austerity drive by the current government which seeks to reduce state spending and, as a consequence, state employment, and Labour has voted in line with the trades unions wishes in Parliament. The £2.4m represented 77% of Labour's total donations.

Strangely, Hope not Hate have no comment to make on how dodgy this is, but as they receive money from both sides, that's hardly surprising. Just another dose of HnH hypocrisy.

Hope not Hate's take on democracy - shut down the opposing argument by name-calling

Hope not Hate are busy salivating over a series of comments which they claim prove UKIP to be 'misogynist'.

The carpet in their offices must be positively wet with all the dribbling, as last week they focussed on comments by UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom relating to aid being sent to 'Bongo Bongo Land'.

While attacking Bloom's comments, they naturally failed to address any substance within his comments, particularly as details came to light of aid to India and Nigeria (who have their own space programs) and F/18 fighters to Pakistan (as we continue to scrap our own fighter aircraft). Naturally, had any of Hope not Hate's armchair warriors actually travelled to areas which receive aid, they might have had a better perspective, but as most of their experience is gleaned from pages from the 'Guardian' newspaper it can hardly be expected that they know what they are talking about.

Today, they are up in arms over comments made by UKIP Treasurer Stuart Wheeler and UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom during a debate at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London on the subject of plans to impose a quota on the number of women represented in boardrooms.

For Hope not Hate's benefit, here is a dictionary (the Oxford English Dictionary) definition of a debate:

"a formal discussion on a particular matter in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward and which usually ends with a vote"

In practise, this works by openly debating the matter at hand, something which Hope not Hate are not keen on, probably because it smack of, well, democracy, and other 'right wing' tendencies.

In their moralising, Hope not Hate have yet to mention how an open debate can be held on whether quotas on the number of women in boardrooms should be held if only one side of the debate - the side in favour - is allowed to participate, of if those who oppose the idea of 'affirmative action' (which did so much to harm race relations in the United States) are castigated as racist/sexist/misogynist/Nazi (delete as appropriate).

This is what Hope not Hate mean by 'democracy', I suppose. Just out of interest, how many women do Hope not Hate employ? One? Out of how many?

Hope not Hate's response to us - play the man, not the ball

We have noticed a fresh line of attack developing on our work to expose Hope not Hate. Never ones
to push the envelope on originality, Hope not Hate's minions have hit on the entirely unoriginal idea of condemning what we write because Dave Briggs - me! - has as Facebook friends people it claims are from the far-right.

Playing the man and not the ball is an old established favourite of Hope not Hate, so we'd like to be perfectly clear about a few things.

• We support UKIP, a democratic, non-racist, non-fascist party.
• We do not support the EDL, the BNP, the NF or any of the other splinter groups from them or any other far-right groups. 
• We do not support or endorse violence in politics whether from the right or the left.
• We accept all friend requests on Facebook without endorsing the views held by those making the request. Hope not Hate has no shortage of Facebook 'likes' from far-right activists.
• We sometimes highlight inaccuracies in Hope not Hate reports on EDL and BNP activities. This does not imply support. The truth is always the truth, and a lie is always a lie no matter who tells it or for what cause.

We endeavour to be accurate in all of our postings. Although we like to have a bit of fun at Hope not Hate's expense - they take themselves ever so seriously - we are not in the business of spreading lies or disinformation. We do speculate on events and their causes, but we attempt to do so honestly. Where reports of Hope not Hate meetings are published, they are reports which we believe to be accurate from people whom we believe were actually present. 'We' are a small team of like minded individuals who work hard to expose the machinations of the far-left - the groups like Hope not Hate and UAF of which Labour MP Simon Danczuk said "The hard right threatens social cohesion and sows ugly seeds of division. The politics of the hard Left does much of the same.”

We accept as true the following:

• Not everybody who supports the EDL is a football hooligan or fascist thug
• When someone aligned with the far-right says something, it is not necessarily untrue
• When someone aligned with Hope not Hate says something, it is not necessarily true

Finally, if you believe something we have published is incorrect, please draw it to our attention and if you can prove it wrong, we will correct it. Unlike Hope not Hate, we will not block you from our site and remove the posting as we believe in democratic debate.

We must be doing something right. 21,000 page views in 6 weeks, and a daily reach of between 3,000 and 11,000 people on Facebook. Not bad.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall - a close friend of demo & Sheffield Socialist Party organiser Sam Moorcroft

A pretty young woman dancing carelessly at a demonstration seems to have caused uproar at Hope not Hate and one of their funders, the NUJ.

The woman at the protest - is this Sarah Marshall?

Last week, the Casuals United blog, operated by people you wouldn't want to run into in a dark alleyway, posted what they claimed was the Facebook profile of just that - a young woman dancing carelessly at a demonstration. The young woman - who they allege was called Sarah Marshall - was also seen to be throwing flowers. None of this would have mattered except for several salient points.

Sarah Marshall - if it was she - is also a trainee reporter on the Doncaster Free Press, and was sent there to cover a demonstration and the expected conflict between members of Casuals United and the EDL on one side, and anti-fascist protesters on the other. The demonstration centred on the Cenotaph in Sheffield. It was alleged that Ms Marshall joined the Antifa protesters, and the flowers she was throwing were flowers which had been laid at the Cenotaph in private acts of remembrance not connected with the demonstration. Sadly for the maybe Ms Marshall, she was also caught on video.

Since then, a war of words has erupted. The Casuals United blog outlined the case against her, and asked that people contact her newspaper to see if they approved of their journalists taking part in events they were supposed to report. This appears to have degenerated into a series of threats against someone who is after all young and inexperienced and who may well be the victim of a case of mistaken identity.

Meanwhile, the NUJ has waded into the row, issuing a statement exonerating Ms Marshall and clearing her of any part in the demonstration, while calling for the 'EDL thugs' who are persecuting her to be prosecuted.

For the Doncaster Free Press, it originally tweeted that it was investigating complaints against Ms Marshall. It then apparently cleared her in another tweet, but the link it gave went dead almost immediately and the posting linked to was removed. Since then, the newspaper has refused to comment, and has removed all previous comments.

All of which leaves us no closer to knowing the truth. Was the young lady pictured Sarah Marshall or not?

Ms Marshall's Facebook front page
before access was restricted

Contrary to the squeals of outrage from the NUJ and Hope not Hate, there is more than a passing resemblance between Ms Marshall and the woman at the demonstration. The Casuals United blog also alleges that Ms Marshall acknowledged it was her on her Facebook page before changing the privacy settings to prevent others seeing it, although they offer no proof of this allegation, and no screen captures.

On the other hand, sections of Ms Marshall's Facebook account remain public. While her Facebook front page did show her support for both the NUJ and Unite - both of whom fund Hope not Hate - her 'likes' are equally revealing.

Sarah Marshall 'liking' items on Sam Morecroft's page -
Moorcroft was one of the Sheffield Socialist Party organisers
who sought violent confrontation at the demo

These include 'Socialist Party - Yorkshire',  'Socialist Meme Caucus', 'Yorkshire Youth Fight for Jobs and Education', 'Sheffield City Council - Bring Back our MMA', 'VI Lenin', 'Socialist', 'Karl Marx', 'Re-elect Dave Nellist', 'Sheffield Socialist Party', 'Occupy Liverpool', 'Occupy Sheffield', 'Occupy Shropshire' and others in a similar vein.

Is this Ms Marshall - centre?

The Sheffield Socialist Party was according to their website responsible for the confrontation with the marchers at the wreath laying on June 8th, and actively sought violent confrontation with what it classed (rightly or wrongly) as the far-right. The Sheffield Socialist Party for Sheffield South is run by someone called Sam Morecroft who, like Ms Marshall, is originally from Shrewsbury. Marshall and Morecroft are friends, both on Facebook and in real life, and would appear to have been since their days in Shrewsbury, as it looks like Ms Marshall in the picture of 'Shrewsbury Socialist Party' which features Mr Morecroft as well. There is another photograph of an inebriated Ms Marshall and Mr Morecroft posted last year which according to a comment by Ms Marshall was 'about 6 years ago'.

None of this proves anything one way or the other, and it is all just speculation and deduction. It does raise a number of questions which the various statements issued - and in some cases subsequently removed - fail to answer. In summary these are

• Is the woman at the demonstration Ms Marshall?
• Whether or not Ms Marshall was the person in the photograph, given her closeness with the organiser of the protest, was it wise to assign her to this event?
• Would Ms Marshall have been sufficiently neutral to abide by the NUJ's own code of conduct for journalists, point 2 of which states that a "journalist strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair"
• Why has the Doncaster Free Press apparently removed its defence of Ms Marshall, and why is it now refusing to comment?

There are other questions, but these are enough to be going on with for now.

A drunken Ms Marshall and Sheffield Socialist Party organiser Sam Morecroft

With all that said, even assuming that Ms Marshall is the person at the demonstration the campaign of harassment against her seems excessive, particularly given her youth and inexperience: she is only a trainee reporter after all, and it is difficult to see what is to be achieved by proving all the worst stereotypes of the far right correct.

So after all that, is the woman at the demonstration Ms Marshall? We don't know, but we suspect that it is. If we had to guess at a sequence of events, they would go something like this:

• Ms Marshall volunteers to cover demonstration because she knows one of the organisers
• Ms Marshall gets carried away, possibly after a beer or two, as the AntiFa demonstrators are friends of hers from the Sheffield Socialist Party
• Ms Marshall finds herself taking part in the demonstration rather than reporting on it.
• Ms Marshall acknowledges her part on her Facebook, and then hastily removes it and changes her privacy settings when she realises she has been caught out
• When Casuals United first published their information, she was called in by her editor and flatly denied it was her, knowing that it was unprofessional in the extreme.
• Her editor defends her and repeats her denial.
• The NUJ saw an opportunity to make political capital and, forgetting its own code of conduct, accepted her assurance while not caring if it was true or not.
• Her editor realised that the accusations on the Casuals United blog were actually true and therefore deleted his defence of Ms Marshall and refused to make further comment.

All of which leaves almost nobody looking good. What started as an informative post by Casuals United descended into a series of veiled threats against a young woman. The Doncaster Free Press found itself unwittingly caught in a lie, and couldn't withdraw without risking the wrath of the NUJ. The NUJ knows it is lying, but doesn't care - who will take it on? And it is not a funder of Hope not Hate for nothing, while its leadership belong to assorted far left political parties, and it is depending upon the principle of 'might is right' to force its lie on the world.

This is of course all speculation, but speculation based on fair comment and research which links Ms Marshall to the organiser of the AntiFa demonstration. We do not advocate violence or any further threats against Ms Marshall - there is nothing to be achieved, and which media organisation will print it anyway? What is interesting is the way that apparently all of the groups and individuals involved  are either lying or covering up a lie, but the truth has come a distant second to the opportunity to make political capital.

 

 

 

HnH comply with Data Protection Act after Nope not Hope pressure, but who knows who will get your data?

Good news - sort of - for those who value their privacy in the internet.

After our story last month about Hope not Hate breaching the European Data Protection Directive  and the Data Protection Act, they have finally added a privacy and cookie statement to their website. Never ones to spend money when a cheapskate solution is available - they need the cash for the purposes of champagne socialism - they have opted for a free of charge solution available from the achingly right-on and inclusive 'Civic UK' company.

The option they have chosen ensures that visitors to their site still don't know what information is gathered by their cookies, and there is no option to browse without them - there is a Hobson's Choice of 'take it or leave it'.

Still, it is a start even if only a small one, and an acknowledgement that after a call from the Information Commissioner's office, even Hope not Hate are required to adhere to the law. We may have to wait a while to discover exactly what information HnH are harvesting though, as they have still failed to provide any information on what the multiple cookies they run actually do and what information they store.

Hope not Hate have also finally got around to publishing their privacy policy. It all sounds good - they will not share your information or sell or rent out their mailing list without your prior approval. Sadly, this rather contradicts the tacit permission you give if you do contact them, where the privacy statement says they will not share your personal information with anyone not connected with the Hope not Hate campaign. This rather broad, catch-all statement would allow them to pass your details on to the Daily Mirror (who help fund them), the Labour Party (likewise), Unite, Unison, NUT, NUJ, and a whole host of other trades unions. Who knows, if you live in the right area, you could even find yourself signed up as a Labour Party member by one of the unions.

The end result is that while Hope not Hate are playing lip service to complying with the law, their

broadly worded 'privacy policy' pretty much lets them pass any data you give them on to just about anybody. If you have contacted them, look forward to receiving anti-UKIP e-mails from a whole host of organisations ahead of next year's European elections.

It is worth remembering that Hope not Hate's 'technology consultants' are Blue State Digital, who are also employed by the Labour Party, and whose director is the Labour Party's favoured candidate in the Falkirk selection scandal currently gripping the Labour Party. Who knows what will happen to your information if they get their hands on it?

HnH Leicester meeting - a correction

Because we like to be accurate in our reporting, we felt we should correct an earlier report of Hope not Hate's meeting in Leicester in early June. In our report, we incorrectly stated that it had been attended by 76 people including the organisers. From Leicester's population of 441,213, this represented a 0.017% turnout. Our attention has now been drawn to an article written by a Mr George Gay who attended the meeting. In his report, he states that the meeting was attended by 'around two dozen people, mostly Leicester University students'.


He stated that the options on offer to the meeting were as follows:

1. Ignore them.
2. Monitor and expose racism within UKIP but don’t explicitly campaign against the party as such.
3. Do campaign against the party as such.
4. Recognising that much of attraction of UKIP is cultural, offer positive alternatives to communities.
5. Some form of combination from the above four.

And then goes on to say that:

Although there were a few supporters of position 3 above, there was overwhelming support, including from myself, for a combination of 2 and 4 ( an actual vote was taken ).

Finally, the “other” Owen Jones told us that there had also been overwhelming support for 2 and 4 from the meetings which had already taken place, and asked us to consider the best ways of campaigning in the circumstances of Leicester and Leicestershire.

In other words, the outcome of the meeting - despite it being heavily attended by those with a vested interest in campaigning against UKIP - was that it monitor racism in UKIP, and offer a positive alternative.

Nick Lowles must be seething with rage, as his Hope not Hate organisation has already begun acting on its preferred option - to campaign against UKIP - and he was expecting his carefully selected audiences to deliver the correct democratic response to rubber-stamp his decision. This may well account for his decision to further restrict attendances at HnH's 'Stand up for HOPE' and 'Let's talk about UKIP' meetings - it is far easier to obtain the correct democratic result if you hand select those allowed to vote. In this, he appears to have taken lessons from his Unite funders as demonstrated by them in Falkirk, which his organisation has nothing to say about.

Meanwhile, we apologise for our error which lead people to believe that 0.017% of Leicester's population had attended the Hope not Hate meeting when in fact the figure was 0.005%. In actual fact, the meeting ran true to form, and organisers were left speaking to mainly empty seats.

HnH 'Infographic' worst example of deliberately misleading propaganda

Hope not Hate continue to cash in on the death
of Lee Rigby with dishonest infographic

Hope not Hate continue to attempt to cash in on the death of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich with the
launch of their new 'infographic' and its claim that it is a representation of anti-Muslim violence across the UK since May's events.

For some reason, HnH have also seen fit to include on their graphic not just marches by those it classes as 'far-right', but also wreath-laying ceremonies in memory of Rigby accompanied by what it claims are the number of those attending such ceremonies.

We can not see what the supposed link between the two is supposed to be. A quick glance at the map shows that there is no obvious link, with many areas which held wreath laying ceremonies experiencing no anti-Muslim events, and such events happening in areas where there was no wreath laying.

Hope not Hate also appear to have left off inconvenient wreath-laying events, such as the one in Woolwich attended by Labour MPs Stephen Timms, Saddiq Khan and Nick Raynsford. We assume that only events which cash in on Rigby's death in the correct fashion are approved by HnH: that is has ignored Labour organised events is understandable, as it will itself hope to share in the proceeds.

Then there are the 'anti-Muslim' incidents. Of the 31 they list, 13 related to either spray painting of graffiti or the leaving of bacon and pork at mosques. Included among the list is the vandalism at the Newport cemetery, where those who painted 'BNP', 'NF' & 'UKIP' on graves carefully avoided doing any other damage, and thoughtfully used a water soluble paint: we have discussed previously whether these were the actions of a far-right thug or a UAF/HnH supporter, and the same applies to these other incidents - it is in UAF and HnH's best interests to stir up religious strife.

Also featured are the arrests of Kevin Carroll and Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon in East London - nowhere near a mosque - and the threats sent to BBC political presenter Andrew Neill following his interview of Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon. The latter are more 'anti-Neill' than 'anti-Muslim'.

There are some outbreaks of honesty in their infographic, although perhaps unintentional. The supposed 'suspect device' left at a Liverpool mosque - which subsequently turned out to be a worshippers laundry - does not feature on the list.

HnH's Nick Lowles uses the opportunity in a blog posting to sell copies of his latest magazine, and he quotes liberally from his own editorial, saying:

"More importantly, ordinary people refused to let the extremists win. Most people understood that the actions of two people do not reflect the views of the British Muslim communities. "

Sadly, he seems to forget that while the actions of the two individuals in Woolwich may not be representative of their community, the actions of those who commit anti-Muslim vandalism or violence are not representative of theirs either. He then goes on to defend the 'Tell MAMA' organisation, despite the withdrawal of its government grant for massaging its own figures:

"It is disappointing then, amidst this hatred, that some journalists have attacked Tell MAMA, an organisation established last year to monitor and encourage reporting anti-Muslim hate crime, and even the very concept of Islamophobia. It is easy, sitting in their comfortable offices, to pick faults with Tell MAMA (an organisation HOPE not hate is proud to support) and downplay the level of violence. It is not they who are greeted by a nail bomb going off as they go to their place of worship or have to be woken from their beds in the middle of the night because someone has maliciously started a fire.
None of the journalists who attacked Tell MAMA and the concept of Islamophobia, have made a comment about Tipton."

Still no mention of
Karmani's positive
initiative

In the absence of any arrests or public comment on who the perpetrators of the Tipton event may be, it is difficult to make any informed comment beyond deploring all such violence. That Tipton
occurred does not however make 'Tell MAMA' right, and Lowles and Hope not Hate have consistently failed to deal with accusations that 'Tell MAMA' has deliberately lied over many months, in the process stirring up rather than damping down community divisions. To attempt to tie the two together from his 'comfortable office' is just more hypocrisy from HnH's head.

The article finishes with the usual publicity for groups and initiatives linked to Hope not Hate. Readers will be unsurprised to discover that there is still no mention of Imam Alyas Karmani's anti-grooming campaign nor any other event or initiative which is designed to improve community relations unless it is organised by an associate of Hope not Hate. Remember, only Hope not Hate are allowed to cash in on a soldier's death.