HnH's Morphett photoshops details on latest 'expose': not spin, an outright lie

Hope not Hate's latest 'expose' of UKIP members with links to the far right has just been written in rather excitable style by Simon Cressy, the pseudonym for Carl Morphett.

According to Morphett, "Only three days away from Christmas and those lovely people in UKIP have given us a smashing present for us to unwrap in time for the big day". It could take some time, because the wrapping is quite complicated. Essentially, three former NF activists once belonged to a party - Third Way - set up by a person who now works for Nick Griffin. At some point but over a decade ago Third Way changed its name to the National Liberals. According to Morphett, this is clear proof that UKIP is linked to racists.



Morphett has photoshopped out the
'added by' details and altered
Davies position within UKIP

There are several problems with his breathless logical fallacy. The first is that it is an open group, meaning people can be added to it without their knowledge or consent. This is easily spotted by the 'added by' information under the members names. You would be able to see this on the screen grab Morphett helpfully appended to his post, except that he has photoshopped it out. You can see the two versions on this page. Certainly in the case of Davies, he did not join this group, he was added to it. Don't believe me? Go take a look - just search on Facebook for National Liberals.

We move on to the other two UKIP activists Morphett names -
Arthur Thackeray and Alexander Balkan. Morphett does not appear to have photoshopped their entries in the list of members, and they appear to have joined themselves.



How Davies entry actually looks

If this makes them racist, then I wonder how Morphett explains the membership of some of the other group members? I have screen grabbed some images, but among the other people he feels are also allied to the National Front and the BNP because of their membership of this group are Ruby Akhtar, Shira Singh, Sabiha Choudhury, Paul Siwela, Samer Reza, Tarig Anter, Thabisa Mabhena, Majid Sandilo etc etc. You get the idea. Bloody racists.

The point about Morphett is that he is not an internet amateur - this is what he does for a living with Hope not Hate. He has not made a mistake, and he is well aware of how these groups work. He knows that Davies did not sign up to the group voluntarily, but he has deliberately removed the wording which proves it. This is not spin. It is not propaganda. It is not a mistake. It is a deliberate lie intentionally done to smear the name of Davies.

It is also worth noting that if he found these three UKIP members in the group, he could hardly fail to have noticed Akhtar, Singh, Choudhury, Siwela etc. I don't know how Thackeray and Balkan came to join the group - perhaps they just hit 'accept' on an invite, perhaps they intentionally joined. Either way, it is no more proof of racism than it is proof of the other member's racism. Particularly as Morphett - under a pseudonym - is also a member.

Interestingly, Edward Davies was added to the National Liberals group by Richard Byng. Byng joined facebook in September, just weeks before he started adding people to the National Liberal group. Amongst his FB 'likes' are Radical Independence Campaign Scotland - the group which barricaded Nigel Farage in a Scottish pub, and who have close links to both Hope not Hate and the UAF. This looks more and more like a set up.



Racist members of the
National Liberals
Facebook Page