Ed Miliband, David Prescott and the £100k fraudster candidate convicted 6 days before election

Here it is folks, the big picture. Can you imagine if she had been a UKIP candidate? How many front pages would this photograph grace? How many leading articles about it being 'fair scrutiny' of UKIP? Lets not forget that it is only £30k more than Hope not Hate fraudulently escaped paying the taxman in VAT!

Full details of Charmaine Bowers' crime can be found here - http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Walter-Mitty-wannabe-model-Labour-councillor/story-26426716-detail/story.html

The Nepalese are dying because 20% of their doctors work in the NHS: HnH's racist approach to healthcare

In the pay of the big unions, Lowles dare not
offend the union barons and their banker
style salaries

As polling day approaches, so the Hope not Hate wraps on local newspapers in UKIP target seats
appear.

Once again, in the interests of fighting inequality, racism and homophobia, Hope not Hate are focussing on 'UKIPs secret plan for the NHS', which proves to be little more than a mirror of the stale Labour Party line about UKIP 'privatisation' - as if they hadn't saddled us with billions of £s of PFI debt as they lined the pockets of their donors with contracts.

We have discussed HnH's approach to this in a previous article in December. In it, we said:

"although possibly it is guilt over the Labour inspired need to import doctors from Sierra Leone (1 doctor per 50,000 people) in order to sustain the NHS administration (142 doctors per 50,000 people). Who knows? Labour doesn't care, Sierra Leoneans don't have a vote here anyway. With the partial privatisation of services introduced under the last Labour government, it probably makes sense to take desperately needed doctors from third world countries rather than train enough at home anyway."

With HnH having thrown their support behind the rather racist approach of saving the NHS by stripping third world countries of desperately needed medical personnel, they then try and present minutes from a UKIP meeting as a 'secret report'. In it, senior UKIP personnel are minuted as trying to get to grips with a workable solution for a bloated, unionised and politicised National Health Service which resists any change.

We're sure we are not alone in wondering just how much free and frank debate Hope not Hate would want to close down to protect the positions of their fat cat union paymasters. After all, UNISON's health care page claims 500,000 of their members work for the NHS, while UNITE claim 100,000 of theirs do. What we are seeing from Hope not Hate is how easily their name can be bought in return for promises of the sort of funding that keeps Nick Lowles in the style to which he has become accustomed.

Medical care is hard to find since the Labour government
stripped 2545 clinical staff from Nepal to work on first
world problems in the NHS

There is a strong negative side to the NHS which is felt not here but elsewhere. As mentioned above, stripping medical staff from the world's poorest nations is not a particularly caring or compassionate thing to do. But with the current disaster unfolding in Nepal, it is worth bearing in mind that the NHS employs 2545 medical staff from that nation across the UK. Meanwhile, Nepal has to struggle through an earthquake with only 10.5 doctors per 50,000 population, compared with the 147 per 50,000 that the NHS has. Still, as Nepal is the 159th poorest country by GDP, I'm sure stripping them of essential medical personnel to conduct breast reduction surgery, IVF treatments and other similar first world problems rather than healing the shattered bodies of their fellow countrymen seems like a bargain if it keeps Len McCluskey and Dave Prentis on their £120,000 pa banker style salaries. We'll just send them a few Land Rovers and a million quid by way of recompense for denuding them of emergency medical care.

"Job done", as Nick Lowles would say.

(Nepal has 10.5 doctors per 50,000 people. With a population of 27.8 million, that means there are a
total of 5838 doctors in Nepal. In other words, the Nepalese contingent in the NHS represents over 43% of doctors in the entire country. If you just count those with medical degrees and exclude nurses, there are 1143 Nepalese doctors in the NHS, or  20% of all Nepalese doctors. Still, Nepalese can't vote in the UK, so "screw them" appears to be the motto of the unions and Hope not Hate).

I'm not voting UKIP because.....

Hope not Hate have recently launched their "I'm not voting UKIP because" campaign, where they encourage people to write in and tell them why they are so opposed.

Here at Nope not Hope, we were a little worried they'd censor some of their biggest supporters in the interests of political correctness. So, in the interests of free speech, we thought we'd help out a little and create some posters which more accurately reflect their 'members' beliefs.

We're always open to suggestions, so if you create any yourself, please let us know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Scum' mob lead by Green Party member and PCS NEC member with links to Diane Abbott and Chukka Umunna

The mob which attacked UKIP leader Nigel Farage in a Kent pub was lead by Green Party member and 'Stand up to UKIP' activist Dan Glass and PCS Union NEC member and Hope not Hate activist Zita Holbourne, it can be revealed.

Holbourne was recently pictured at the House of Commons with Labour MPs Chukka Umunna and Diane Abbott (not really a surprise, is it?). She appeared on a platform at the TUC conference with PCS Deputy President Kevin McHugh vowing to 'develop campaigns with Hope not Hate and Unite Against Fascism' to stop UKIP. Is this the sort of action they had in mind, attacking a family while they ate lunch? Intimidating a couple of teenage girls?

Holbourne is a co-chair of BARAC (black activists rising against cuts) with Lee Jasper. Regular readers may remember Jasper as a former deputy mayor of London until leaving under a financial cloud after being accused of using the public's money to make unauthorised grants to an organisation run by a woman he was banging. He also regularly appears on platforms with Green Party leader Natalie Bennett and with Jasna Badzak, the fraudster currently awaiting trial on harassment charges following her conviction for stealing from UKIP MEP Gerard Batten a year or so ago.

Glass meanwhile is a professional campaigner against, well, everything. From airport runways to NHS cuts, he's a typical middle-class Green Party watermelon - green on the outside, red on the inside. A member of the 'Green Left' movement - it's far enough left to make Josef Stalin look like a liberal - he is also an activist with the union funded 'Stand up to UKIP' movement. His Facebook page is a web of organisations which protest against things, but its rather harder to find something that he's for besides a lot of protesting. He does write for the Guardian periodically, and says of himself:

 

So far, we have involvement in this from the Labour Party, the big unions, Stand up to UKIP, UAF, the Green Party, Hope not Hate and the SWP. Anyone care to take a bet on how many will apologise?

 

So far, there is apparent silence from Hope not Hate on the attack, which is rather surprising as they normally post anything to do with UKIP within minutes of it hitting the news. Its not as if they're not posting, as they continue to post UKIP related stories, but for some reason when Hope not Hate activists attack the leader of UKIP during a family lunch, they don't think its newsworthy. Strange, huh?



Wave of hard-left violence directed at UKIP premises

 

The UKIP shops pictured are (Left to Right) Newark, Plymouth, Thanet and Penarth.

Homophobia, fraud & payola - Labour Euro leader's shocking past

UKIP had endured several months of attacks - mainly from Labour - after Polish MEP Robert Iwaszkiewicz joined the EFDD Group. This came after European Parliament president Martin Schulz effectively bribed a Latvian MEP into leaving the group in an attempt to cause its collapse by having insufficient nations represented in its membership. Schulz of course is a member of the 'Party of European Socialists' (PES), the group to which Labour belongs. But is everything clean in Labour's garden?

PES is currently headed by Sergei Stanishev, former PM of Bulgaria and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party from 2001 to 2014 until he was forced from office following a scandal after the appointment of a media mogul as head of the nation's Agency for National Security. Protesters chanted 'mafia' and 'red trash' in a series of demonstrations across the country. In 2011, he was elected unopposed as the President of the PES with the support of 91.5% of their MEPs, including backing from Britain's Labour Party contingent.

Baroness Royall & Stanishev,
showing what they think of
'gays', no doubt

It was no secret even then that Stanishev is a homophobe. In 2008, while he was Bulgaria's Prime Minister, he opposed the first Gay Pride march in the country, saying he did not like the "manifestation and demonstration of such orientations". While this matter of public record would bring howls of outrage from the usual suspects in Hope not Hate and UAF not to mention their Union and big business backers had it been said by anyone in UKIP, when it comes to Stanishev, there is a strange silence over his past indiscretions. In fact, it is the opposite of a silence, as Stanishev expects the backing of Glenis Willmott and the rest of the British contingent of Labour MEPs when he stands for re-election as the PES President in 2015. Will they really back him? Of course they will, homophobia doesn't matter when its their side that says it - if they cared, why was the leader of the Labour opposition in the House of Lords, Baroness Royall, so keen to be photographed with someone with such views? Royall serves as a Vice President of the PES in Stanishev's administration.

And then we have the fraud. There are a lot of allegations, both directed towards Stanishev personally, and against his wife, who if anything has even dodgier connections than him, including links to a jailed drug trafficker.

The first indication of Bulgarian Payola came with the development of a Black Sea resort in the country in an area designated for environmental protection by the EU. The Euro 1bn project was forced through in the face of huge objections - although the EU has remained strangely silent. The Bulgarian partner of the developing consortium is run by George Stanishev, who coincidentally is the brother of Sergei, who was Prime Minister at the time consent was granted. It's not what you know, it's who you know, eh?

This was followed by a bit of mutual back-scratching. Stanishev received the full backing of Commission President Manuel Barroso in early 2009, only for Stanishev to support Barroso's second term as Commission President a couple of months later.

And then we get on to the really serious fraud involving Stanishev's wife, drug traffickers and a payola scandal in Austria. Our apologies, but it makes for hugely complicated reading, so I hope you will bear with us.

Stanishev married his second wife, Monika Yosifova in 2011, although he had been living with her since late 2008. She was a noted PR expert in Bulgaria, and runs a PR company called 'Aktive Group'. In 2013, Aktive was given a contract by the PES under Martin Schultze to create a website explaining the function of the European Parliament to Bulgarians. The grant application had originally been rated 24th out of 111 submissions by the EP communications directorate. Rather than argue the case for the contract - which had been signed in his wife's family name of Yanova - Aktive

Sergei Stanishev and wife Monika - what name
will she be using today to hide her frauds?

promised to return the Euro 30k deposit it had already received.

 

This is not the first time that his wife had been involved in EU website funding scandals however. Between 2006 and 2008, Austrian national Peter Hochegger worked as a lobbyist pushing for Bulgarian accession under a Euro 1.5m contract issued by Stanishev's government. Part of this money was in turn paid to the PR company headed by Stanishev's wife, again under her former name Yanova. Hochegger himself was sentenced to 2.5 years by the Vienna Criminal Court last year for hiding donations to the 'Alliance for the Future of Austria' Party (BZO) during the 2006 Austrian elections - donations were hidden using fake invoices from PR and communications companies. Hochegger himself admitted that Euro 270,000 was paid by his company to Yanova/Yosifova/Stanisheva's company, along with Euro 100,000 to Ernst Strasser, the former Interior Minister of Austria. There were close links between the Bulgarian branch of Hochegger's company and other senior members of Stanishev's party in Bulgaria: Bulgarian branch manager Rositza Velkova was a close associate of Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, and other names close to the ruling party were also found to be connected to the PR business of Hochegger, including Juliana Nikolova, adviser to Prime Minister Borisov on EU funds management and Ivaylo Georgiev, former director of the Arena Armeets sports facility, who is currently in charge of the National Palace of Culture.

Austrian Peter Hochegger - serving 2 1/2 years for his role in
a political payments scandal, and a close associate of
Sergei Stanishev's wife.

 

Stanisheva's links to Austria do not stop with Hochegger. In 2007, a company called Europroject Holdings AG was registered in Vienna. Notionally formed by Austrian citizen Herbert Edlinger and Bulgarian Evelina Gyuderova, by 2010 only Stanisheva (registered in the Austrian registry using her middle name as a surname, ie Monica Lyubomirova, owning 75%) and Aneliya Krushkova (owning 25%) were the beneficial owners. Krushkova was a former Deputy Minister of Trade in the Bulgarian government and was appointed head of the State Tourism Agency in 2007 by the government headed by Sergei Stanishev. Krushkova is also listed as the head of another Austrian registered company, BDZ Holding, related to the Bulgarian state railway company. In July 2007, a company was registered in Sofia called Europrojects Point, with the Austrian 'Europrojects Holdings AG' listed as the sole shareholder. Management of the Bulgarian company was in the hands of Zinaida Zlatnova until the end of 2007, when she was appointed the European Commission representative to Bulgaria. She is currently the Deputy Prime Minster and Justice Minister. Europroject Point was formed specifically (according to its now defunct website) to assist in the application by Bulgarian companies for European Commission grants, and between 2007 and 2010 the company dealt with L1.2m of grants (roughly £500k). Many of these represented clear conflicts of interest with deals having been signed by government members and companies which they owned, and Stanisheva had other business interests with several of them. This included contracts signed by Krushkova in her capacity as head of the State Tourism Agency with Europroject, of which she was also an owner.

At several general meetings of Europroject Holdings AG, both Stanisheva and Krushkova were represented by a lawyer/banker called Boryana Lindiger who was employed by Euram bank in Vienna. In 2006, Lindiger was involved with a private finance house in Bulgaria called 'Private Finance Union', or PFU. She assumed a board position vacated by a man called Simo Karaychev. Karaychev is the brother of Evelin Banev, nicknamed 'Brando', who was convicted in Italy of cocaine trafficking and in Bulgaria of money laundering. While Lindiger downplays any association between herself and either Banev or Karaychev, the Sofia City Court in its conviction of Banev stated that Lindiger had 'serviced the bank accounts of the defendant', and that the source of funds arranged by Lindiger was from cocaine smuggling between Columbia and Bulgaria. Lindiger was also involved in another company with Edlinger which hit the headlines when the Commission for Establishing Property Acquired Through Criminal Activity was attempting to foreclose a property owned by Ahmed Dogan. Dogan, apart from his sideline as a hotelier, was also leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which was a minority party in Stanishev's administration. Edlinger's company managed to dispose of the shares in the hotel before the Commission could act. Dogan himself was acquitted of corruption in relation to European funding of hydroelectric power projects in Bulgaria for failing to disclose his links to the company awarded the £300k contract after it was discovered the law he was prosecuted under was not in force at the time: this was alleged to have taken place while he was part of Stanishev's government.

 

There, was that complicated enough for everybody? Our apologies, it is very difficult to write this stuff concisely, as part of the 'modus operandi' of fraudsters is to make things complicated and difficult to follow in the event of a subsequent investigation, although with Stanishev placemen occupying the senior positions at any Bulgarian agency which might have to conduct such an investigation, there would seem little chance of that happening. Our thanks to the researchers on this, and we will add the links to the external sources as time permits: many of them are present on Stanishev's Wikipedia page in any case, so this stuff is hardly a secret. All of which begs the question - why does the Labour Party believe a corrupt homophobe is the best person to represent their interests in Europe?

HnH activist and Labour MP sought Commons breastfeeding ban

Nick Lowles - not the only one with Photoshop

A story which we missed - or at least didn't get around to mentioning - last week was Hope not Hate's attack on UKIP leader Nigel Farage and his comments on breastfeeding. Farage had been asked about breastfeeding while being interviewed on LBC last week and was heavily criticised by the usual coalition of the professionally outraged for suggesting that organisations should be free to make their own rules regarding suitability and perhaps offering alternative locations for breastfeeding, and that breastfeeding mothers should exercise discretion so as not to cause offence among sections of the population who would not be so keen to see it.

This pragmatic approach did not meet with Hope not Hate's approval, of course. An internet meme rapidly appeared on their Twitter feed which appeared to miss the entire point - no surprise there.

What Hope not Hate appear to have forgotten is that not only is breastfeeding not permitted in the House of Commons, but one of their prominent supporters lead the campaign to keep it out because it was not a suitable place. The Early Day Motion was submitted by Helen Clark, former Labour MP for Peterborough and a noted Hope not Hate supporter (she lists them on her Linked In page) stated that the "Commons Chamber, committee rooms and division lobbies are not the right places for breastfeeding."


 HnH activist and former Labour MP Helen Clark's EDM to ban
breastfeeding from the Commons chamber

In other words, a noted Hope not Hate campaigner actively sought to ban breastfeeding from Parliament. Now, we take no opinion on whether this is right or wrong. What we do have an opinion on is that yet again, Hope not Hate and Nick Lowles' attack on Farage and UKIP is based on blatant hypocrisy.

A final note - Helen Clark was a founding signatory in the creation of Unite Against Fascism.

London Labour - "UKIP full of money grabbing Jews"

Updated @00:30 - Labour Press Office denies account is official Labour Party one. It is still followed by Shadow Ministers, MPs, MEPs, Cllrs and CLPs, who are this morning being treated to a series of fascists posts decrying 'white genocide'. We wonder whether the Daily Mirror will be so quick to publish the details of this account as they were to publish details of a series of fake UKIP accounts apparently set up by the same person earlier this week?

A Labour Party twitter account has accused UKIP of being 'full of money-grabbing Jews' in a
disgraceful attack on UKIP candidate Shneur Odze this evening.

Mr Odze, who earlier this week organised a 'Friends of Israel in UKIP' event attended by several MEPs and senior activists, is a longstanding member of UKIP who now resides in the North West. He is the most prominent of UKIPs many Jewish members.

the Twitter account in question - @LabourLondon - describes itself as the 'Official North London Labour presence. It is followed by Labour's Welsh Assembly Group, journalist Dan Hodges, and others including Meg Hillier MP, Jude Kirton-Darling MEP, Alison Seabeck MP, Dan Jarvis MP, Ian Lavery MP, Steve Reed MP, Sadiq Khan MP,  Cllr Tudor Evans, and Constituency Labour Parties including Barnet, Brent, Norwich, East Lothian, Redbridge, Labour Youth, Ipswich, Bedford, Aylesbury, SE Region and SW Region. Can we look forward to the howls of outrage and demands for an apology from Hope not Hate?

Update - The offending tweet was removed around 21:30 last night, and replaced with the following:

 

By 00:30, the Labour Party Press Office was denying that Labour were responsible for the account, and saying that they had nothing to do with it.



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.



 

 

 

Senior Labour Party figures Miliband and Ummuna closely associated to man with links to 'Britain First'

A 'Mr Robinson', happily posing with
Britian First candidate

Senior figures within the Labour Party including leader Ed Miliband and shadow Business Secretary Chukka Ummuna had been repeatedly photographed engaged in earnest discussion with a man known to associate with far-right group 'Britain First'.

Left wing commentators and campaign groups showed their outrage by not saying anything, and threatened to protest at such outrageous behaviour by not highlighting it in any way and by not flagging up the connection on their blogs at all.

Labour shadow business secretary clearly
associating openly with 'Mr Robinson'
despite his far-right links

Neither Miliband nor Ummuna had any comment to make on photographic evidence that they had repeatedly been seen in public with a Mr Nick Robinson, the political editor of the BBC, despite recent photographic evidence that he was in a 'selfie' photograph with the deputy leader of Britain First and their candidate in the Rochester and Strood by-election Jayda Fransen.

Mr Robinson, 51, of North London, has a long history of talking to people involved with politics, and has previously spoken to Nick Griffin, former leader of the BNP.

Self-appointed 'anti-fascist' leader of Hope not Hate Nick Lowles has remained strangely silent on the subject, despite earlier tweets during the by-election campaign demanding to know "Why are UKIP campaigners having photograph taken with Britain First candidate in Rochester today?" after Fransen 'ambushed' them for a picture. At the time, Lowles

Labour leader Milliband and Robinson

rubbished claims that they did not know who Fransen was, and said it was 'clear proof of a link between UKIP and Britain First'.

We asked Hope not Hate whether Robinson's photograph was clear proof of a link between the Labour leadership, the BBC and Britain First based on exactly the same logic, but their press officer put the phone down without responding. We also e-mailed the question to Mr Lowles, but on attempting to e-mail again 12 hours later after he had failed to respond, discovered that they had blocked our e-mail address. We were going to contact both the BBC and the Labour Party with the same question, but then remembered that we weren't Nick Lowles, and that drawing conclusions based upon photographs taken out of context was absurd, stupid and the sort of puerile childish behaviour one expects from an anti-UKIP organisation.

Hope not Hate's '85%' campaign runs into some factual difficulties

Hope not Hate's 85% campaign appears to have run into some difficulties, most of them factual. To make up for this, we've created our own '16%' campaign to highlight the share of the vote Labour gained in Rochester and Strood. See if you can spot which one is ours below.

 

Labour MP photographed with known NF activist in her constituency

 

UKIP MP pictured with stranger

 The top picture of course shows Labour MP Dame Anne Begg photographed with her local Scottish NF activist during the recent referendum campaign. She knew who he was. The bottom picture shows UKIP MP Mark Reckless photographed with a stranger who came into the constituency office and who was unknown to him. Even HnH don't name her. Somehow this makes him racist in a way that Dame Anne Begg isn't.

Scottish Labour MP campaigned with National Front leader

Clearly a Labour Party event for the
'no' campaign in Aberdeen

Following earlier revelations regarding the links between Labour's Liz McInnes (their candidate for Heywood and Middleton) and former BNP councillor Trevor Maxfield, news reaches us of a rather more shocking collaboration.

9 days ago, Dame Anne Begg, Labour MP for Aberdeen South, was out campaigning for a 'no' vote. Some of her campaign team looked a little rough around the edges, but they were clearly welcome there: the picture shows them taking part in the Labour 'action day'.

Labour MP Dame Anne Begg and Scottish NF
leader Dave McDonald share a laugh and a joke

The bloke on the right seemed to get on particularly well with Ms Begg, as the next picture shows: they seem to be sharing a laugh and a joke. All of which is slightly surprising, as his name is Dave McDonald. Not a household name perhaps, but one she should have been aware of: McDonald is the leader of the Scottish National Front.

So, did Ms Begg not know who he is? Unlikely. He was the NF's candidate for the Aberdeen Donside by-election, and has apparently been active in Aberdeen politics for the Scottish National Front since at least 2003. As our source says, it is inconceivable that she would not know who he was.

Now the NF does have its share of troubles just at the moment, with about 3 different groups of people arguing about who is and who isn't the official National Front. At least one of these groups claims that McDonald isn't a member of their version of the 'official NF'. They need to get the message through to Dave then, because earlier the same day - before he linked up with the local Labour MP - he was out spreading his own message, complete with National Front banner. We wonder why Hope not Hate haven't been spreading this one all over their pages? You can see McDonald's interview with STV here from the Donside by-election


Dave McDonald earlier the same day, before joining
the local Labour MP and Labour Party

We can only imagine what Nick Lowles and his motley crew would be saying if a UKIP MEP had ben photographed campaigning with an NF activist. But Anne Begg is Labour, so associating with the far right is ok. 

Lowles edges closer to admitting HnH culpability in child grooming scandal

A revealing blog post by Hope not Hate director Nick Lowles has edged closer to admitting his
organisation's culpability in driving the culture of fear over being labelled a racist which helped sexual offenders hide their crimes.

In an article posted this afternoon (Friday) entitled 'Whose side are we on?', he argues that Hope not Hate activists should not oppose a march allegedly organised by the EDL to protest against child grooming, and goes on to explain how his own organisation's approach to past grooming scandals lead to the perpetrators of such crimes escaping justice.

"There will be some who will be tempted to organise a counter-protest, which will amount to little more than standing behind a line of police chanting 'Nazi scum off our street'.
While I understand the desire to show opposition to the EDL, I believe that this approach is futile and counter-productive.
In the autumn of 2012, an EDL demo against grooming attracted a coach load of people (mainly men) from the former pit village of Maltby. These people weren't fascists and most weren't racist; in fact many were decent union men who had stood loyally with their union during the year-long miners’ strike and, more recently, had even leafleted with us against the BNP.
What they were, however, was angry.
They were angry because some of their daughters had been sexually abused and they were angry because the Labour Party - for so long their party – had, at best, ignored the problem or, at worst, connived to keep it under wraps. The EDL, on the other hand, gave them an outlet for their anger.
But as they filed through Rotherham town centre that day they were genuinely horrified to be called racists and fascists by those protesting against the march and rather than dissuade them against joining up with the EDL this name-calling only pushed them closer into the pack."

Which is all very well, but fails to address the wider issue: that there are some crimes which have a cultural or ethnic bias, and yet the motivation behind organisations such as Hope not Hate and UAF is to ignore this in the broader interests suppressing opposition to multi-cultural harmony through fear. In fact, Lowles goes on to admit that the combined actions of his organisation, their trades union financers and the Labour Party prevented an earlier investigation of similar offences in Keighley and Bradford by dismissing the claims of victims as 'BNP propaganda':

"We found this out, to our cost, in Bradford and Keighley in 2004, when there was a consensus to dismiss BNP claims of grooming in Keighley as racist propaganda. The BNP won four council seats and just missed out in several more.
Grooming was occurring in Keighley and everyone there knew it. In fact, nine Muslim men were sent to prison and as many as 65 young girls were believed to have been abused."

To 'our' cost? It didn't cost the left anything - that price was paid not by Lowles and his fellow travellers, but by 65 young girls. We already know that Hope not Hate is far from being a grass-roots organisation, and has few if any feet on the ground in terms of genuine activists. But still, we find it amazing that none of their Labour Party or trades union supporters on the ground in Keighley thought it worth mentioning if 'everyone there knew it'. It demonstrates one of two things: either the distance between their supporters and the genuine working class which Labour used to pretend to represent is so vast that they genuinely weren't aware that this was going on, or more worryingly - not to mention cynically - they were perfectly well aware of it, but after it was raised as an issue by their political opponents there was a conscious decision to conceal its existence and to use their media muscle to shovel it all under the carpet simply to prevent the BNP from using it as an issue. We tend to agree here that the latter is more likely, and there is something deeply, deeply sinister about it if that is the case.

Part of the reason for this wilful ignorance - which Lowles describes as 'a consensus' - is the entire modus operandi of HnH - it doesn't matter how obvious a problem is, if their political enemies annunciate it then it must be rubbished. This is particularly true of any issues which touch on immigration: we need only look at their denial of recent crime figures which show the scale of Romanian organised crime in the capital and elsewhere. The problem for Lowles is that if they cease doing this, then what is the point of their organisation? This is something which Lowles acknowledges without providing any solutions when he says,

"We need to have something tangible and meaningful to say about Grooming; we need to be genuine in our condemnation of this evil and, fundamentally, we need to have some answers to prevent it happening again."

Quite what those answers would be is difficult to guess. The fundamental problem with this type of grooming is that it is committed by groups of men who are immigrants and who are Muslim. It would also appear to be relatively widespread, and to affect significant numbers of victims. The nature of such offences leads inevitably to wider questions about certain types of Islam, and immigration from certain countries. While Hope not Hate have been happy to pay lip service to supporting sexual equality and gay rights, they have always shied away from tackling the difficult questions that certain strains of Islam raise and which spring from fundamental cultural differences which are diametrically opposed to the values of a secular western democracy: homophobia, misogyny, vote rigging and electoral violence spring to mind. Far from having Lowles 'answers to prevent it happening again', Hope not Hate has so far offered a mechanism to ensure it is kept out of sight by condemning all who raise any of these issues as 'racist'. Does anybody outside of Lowles closed circle really believe that all of a sudden his organisation will welcome free and open debate on issues relating to race and religion, particularly Islam?

"The people of Rotherham have every right to be angry about what has happened but unless we intervene in a constructive way then we become complicit – through our actions or our silence – in pushing them into the hands of right wing groups"

The problem with Lowles self-righteous sentiments is that there are 1,400 young girls in Rotherham, 65 in Keighley and God only knows how many across the rest of the country who are already paying the price in suffering for his attempts to stifle genuine, legitimate concerns. Lowles has nothing constructive to say - if he did, he would have said it already. He is already complicit, because his organisation is largely responsible for the conspiracy of silence which has infected mainly Labour authorities and which was brought about by a fear of being labelled 'racist', something the left views as worse even than the rape of a child.

So how sorry is Lowles? Apart from his failure to openly acknowledge his own responsibility, there is also the lack of any concrete suggestions as to how to proceed. His caution against calling people who are genuinely concerned about the issue 'racists' and 'fascists' has all the hallmarks of a stopgap measure designed to last until the heat is off: after all, how will they campaign on behalf of Labour against UKIP if they can't return to the tried and trusted (if discredited) tactic of calling any mention of immigration, race, culture, ethnicity or religion as 'neo-nazism'. If he was serious in his intentions to deal with the issue, he'd forget the Labour antipathy towards Respect and sing from the rooftops the details of Imam Alyas Kharmani's 'Together Against Grooming' campaign, which is based in Bradford - precisely where Lowles let down 65 young girls in the interests of political gamesmanship. Instead, his silence about this excellent campaign demonstrates that his statement - apart from being an unintentional admission of culpability - is nothing more than cynical, self-serving temporising designed to ensure that Hope not Hate continues to be a hobby horse for his own ambitions.

Shaun Wright - Labour's gift to South Yorkshire

Shaun Wright - Labour's gift to the people of South Yorkshire

A statement issued last night by Shaun Wright declared that he had resigned: not as Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire, but as a member of the Labour Party which had selected him as somebody fit for high office. The Commissioner post is one he intends to hang onto come hell or high water, along with its £85k salary: he is Labour's gift to Rotherham, immovable for the remainder of the term to which he was elected to by about 7 in 100 of South Yorkshire's voters as none of the parties at Westminster have bothered to act on promises to enable voters to 'recall' elected officials.

The witless Wright has a habit of hanging on until the last minute. Although he did eventually resign as councillor responsible for children's services in Rotherham when, as he claims, the 'full scale of the problem came to light', this ignores the OFSTED report on his department, in which it achieved the worst possible score in December 2009 - a '1 - performs poorly'. To quote from the letter from OFSTED to Joyce Thacker, the strategic director for children and young people's services, Rotherham's serviced were "of sufficient concern that the safety of children cannot be assured". Despite have presided over this for 5 years, Wright saw no need to go then, clinging on until the full scale of what had been done to children came to light the next year. But what role did Wright play in this? The 2006 OFSTED inspection rated Rotherham's child services as 'Good', so the decline all happened under his watch.

A sign of the esteem in which Rotherham's voters hold Wright and his associates is what happened when he did finally stand down as a councillor on election as PCC. Parachuting his wife Lisa into his old ward of Rawmarsh, the Labour hierarchy expected another easy walkover. Instead, UKIP's Caven Vines took the seat with a majority of 104 despite a Hope not Hate inspired campaign to brand him 'racist' and a 'BNP supporter' on the most tenuous of evidence - he'd once sat on a local committee with a woman who subsequently became a BNP candidate. In this years local elections, UKIP held that seat, also winning the popular vote in Rotherham and taking 9 further seats from Labour, coming a close second to them in 11 others. UKIP won the popular vote with 46% vote share, compared to 43% for Labour. Readers may recall that the UKIP surge in Rotherham began after MP Denis MacShane was convicted of expenses fraud and stood down the day before he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

Will Wright eventually resign? It looks unlikely, despite his fingerprints being all over the failure of police and the local authority to deal with the issue. Not only was he the councillor responsible for children's services, he was also vice-president of the local police authority and a local magistrate to boot. Full details of Wright's many misdemeanours over the years can be found at the excellent 'Rotherham Politics' blog which lifts the lid on local Labour's apparent inability to effectively run a piss up in a brewery.

These failings are not minor, by the way. Labour cleared a councillor of wrong-doing despite his admitted role in returning one pregnant 14 year old girl to council care after it was alleged she had been abducted and repeatedly raped by his own relatives and that this was known by Social Services. Neither the council nor South Yorkshire Police felt there was 'sufficient evidence', although they did not bother to formally interview the journalist to whom the admission was made. Cllr Jahangir Akhtar finally stood down as deputy leader of Rotherham Council in August last year, before losing his seat to UKIP in last May's elections. He was previously convicted of affray, and the 'Rotherham politics' blog lists a selection of his official misdemeanours. It is believed that Akhtar is one of the Pakistani councillors referred to in the report who are believed to have deliberately obstructed inquiries into the abductions of teenage girls.

So what does it all mean for Rotherham? Most positively, it looks like at long last the issue will be taken seriously, now Labour have found it impossible to brush the issue under the carpet any longer. For Labour, it could be the death knell for their control of Rotherham: with their councillors heavily implicated of at best turning a blind eye towards child sexual abuse for fear of being called racist, they are likely to feel an even heavier backlash than they did in this year's elections.

And then there is the Shaun Wright effect. If he continues to hang on as PCC, it will not be forgotten that it was Labour who put him there, or that he along with his Labour colleagues on the council were responsible for turning a blind eye to child abuse in order to avoid causing offence to minorities. Under his watch as PCC, South Yorkshire police could gather 30 officers and a police helicopter to search Cliff Richard's house while investigating a 30 year old claim of inappropriate behaviour, but failed to even detect 1,400 rapes of children carried out by a significant number of local Pakistani men, including those related to the former deputy leader of the council.

Today's announcement by Tory MP Douglas Carswell makes Wright's position look even more cynical: Carswell, on switching to UKIP, also stood down as an MP and will fight a by-election to ensure he has the support of his constituents. Wright resigned from the Labour Party to avoid suspension and appears determined to keep his nose in the public trough for as long as possible while occupying a position which will assist him in minimising further investigation into Labour's (including his) role in the wider scandal.

Those who have seen Wright perform on camera speak of his wooden demeanour, his monotone delivery
and his general air of disinterest in the proceeding that surround him. Since being handed what 2 years ago was a sinecure - a Labour nomination in South Yorkshire - he has proved more than adept at demonstrating that for him, it is self-interest over public interest every time. And yet more about Wright has changed than the quality of his suits over the past couple of years. It could just be that by failing to resign, he is about to hand the keys of Rotherham to UKIP.

PS - We forgot to add that some may think the new Labour MP, Sarah Champion, is free of the taint of Labour corruption in Rotherham. Not so, apparently. Her political adviser is Shaun Wright's mother in law.


 

The responsibility for the grooming crisis lies within the culture Hope not Hate has infected the Labour Party with

Make no mistake - Nick Lowles and Hope
not Hate are a major part of the conspiracy of
silence in the Labour Party which allowed
this to happen repeatedly.
 

'Shining a light on abuse' is the disgraceful apologia issued by Hope not Hate director Nick Lowles following the publication of the report on child abuse in Rotherham. As an exercise in obfuscation and blame passing it is truly New Labour in its scope, which is only to be expected from an organisation so heavily supported by the New Labour faithful, many of whom have ended up in prison for expenses fraud.

Lowles - while at least having the decency to join calls for Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Shaun Wright to resign - goes on to say, "HOPE not hate was vocal in its criticism of how local authorities were dealing with on-street grooming from as far back as 2005". Leaving aside the minor point that Hope not Hate as a separate entity did not exist in 2005, their interest in the issue was politically motivated and solely an attempt to counter BNP propaganda: the type involvementstawhich Hope not Hate advocated and which was deeply entrenched within the Labour Party - turning a blind eye and hoping the problem went away on its own - ensured the continued ability of these grooming gangs to operate.

The desperate attempts to play down their culpability have lead to major re-writes of sections of their blogs and websites as history is re-arranged to make their own actions seem less supportive of those who engaged in child grooming. Luckily, we still have their pages available off-line, meaning articles such as the snippet below are not entirely lost to posterity:

"New HOPE not hate leaflet - £700 needed by midnight tonight

We are producing a new leaflet to debunk the racists’ lies around grooming.... the leaflet will also debunk racist myths peddled by far right groups. We have a mother of a girl who was groomed condemning the BNP for exploiting the issue. We have people in the Muslim communities speaking out. And while racist groups try to blame all Muslims for the actions of a criminal few, this leaflet will also show that many of their own supporters have been convicted child pornography and child abuse"

Nobody was attempting to suggest that every Muslim or every Asian was a child grooming paedophile in waiting except in the deepest reaches of Lowles mind - but making out that that was what his political opponents really meant ensured that the problems could be deferred or ignored. It was a policy always destined to failure, and the price of that failure to date - 1,400 sexually abused young girls in Rotherham alone - is only the tip of the iceberg.

Their actions in opposing child grooming amounted to pointing the finger at the BNP and saying that they too were child abusers, while attempting to minimise the cultural associations which made it particularly prevalent within sections of the Asian community. Elsewhere, serious attempts to deal with the ongoing problem of grooming have been deliberately ignored by Lowles for political reasons. We have long supported the campaign by Imam Alyas Khamani which seeks to impose a 'khutba' in mosques underlining that grooming is un-Islamic behaviour. Hope not Hate meanwhile have never mentioned Khamani's initiative because he is a Respect councillor in Bradford: in fact, in Bradford Nick Lowles was recently praising a councillor with long, established links to the British National Party for managing to hold his seat and keep UKIP (and Respect) out in last May's elections.

 

Lowles goes on to paint himself as a martyr in the fight against Asian grooming gangs, writing, "Unfortunately, too many people have remained silent for too long,” I wrote at the time. “Police and local authorities have been slow to protect these young girls. Leading figures in local Muslim communities have often been too slow in speaking out on this issue, and in some cases simply dismissed it as Far Right propaganda. They have been joined in this by some on the left, who have been too quick to silence any discussion.". He fails to mention that he himself is one of those on the left who have for many years been desperate to silence calls for action by dismissing them as racist and attacking the messenger rather than the crime. It is Lowles and his band who have ensured that these crimes have continued by refusing to countenance the idea that there may be a racial/cultural/ethnic basis simply because it clashed with their dogmatic, blinkered approach to racism: all differences are good, and to suggest that some are not is to be a neo-Nazi.

We should be clear about this. When the report talks about councillors of Pakistani origin who blocked and mislead the inquiry, this is a direct result of the type of culture within the Labour Party which has been encouraged by Lowles and Hope not Hate. It is a culture which is so determined to turn a blind eye to anything which may have ethnic origins that they would rather sweep it under the carpet than deal with it head on, regardless of the consequences to some of the most vulnerable members of society.

In this, Lowles is as guilty as the PCC whose resignation he calls for: Labour's Shaun Wright, who was responsible for children's services in Rotherham at the height of the scandal, and who was also a member of the police authority at the time. His compliance with the idiotic, blinkered approach advocated by Lowles and the rest of the Labour Party hierarchy allowed this to happen. While taking foster children away from a couple because they happened to be UKIP members, they also permitted over 1,400 children to be sexually abused, threatened, beaten and trafficked as they turned a blind eye because to act may have been considered racist. If clearer proof was needed of the political motivations of this bunch of clowns elevated to high office, we're not sure what form it could take.

And so Lowles finds himself now walking a tightrope. Posts by his organisation which dismissed rumours of major and organised involvement in child grooming by members of the Pakistani and Kashmiri community have been deleted, while some attacking those who suggested a link between certain immigrant communities and child sex have been deleted altogether.

Time and again, Lowles and Hope not Hate have ignored some of the most unpleasant aspects of extremist Islam as they try to persuade us that there is nothing to worry about. Misogyny and homophobia have been ignored as they take aim time and again at any who would dare to raise the fundamental incompatibility between a secular western democracy and fundamentalist Islam. By refusing to shine a light on crimes which they are supposed to expose Hope not Hate have revealed their fundamental hypocrisy: it could be argued that they are in some respects even complicit for promoting an attitude and a culture within the Labour Party which actively prevented such issues from being dealt with.

So, Mr Lowles. Spare us your self-serving crocodile tears. You are not a martyr. You are not and have never been working towards a solution, and to suggest that you are is to overlook your own complicity with the culture of secrecy and silence which permitted such crimes to flourish in Labour controlled areas. 14 months ago, we wrote of Lowles refusal to even mention Imam Kharmani's initiative:

"So I say this to Nick Lowles and his Hope not Hate comrades. Shame on you, for betraying your core principles. Shame on your silence which allows hate to grow and lies to spread unchecked. And shame on your shoddy attempts to put your own personal allegiances ahead of an initiative which will clearly aid better relations between communities. Your blinkered attitude and political partisanship makes you no better than those you claim to oppose. For many years, you attacked the BNP, and ran with the slogan 'Not in my name', only for us to find the tables are now turned, and an increasing barrier to harmonious relations between communities is not the BNP and the EDL, but Hope not Hate and your refusal to back initiatives like Karmani's. If you must continue with such wilful blindness, be aware you do so on your own and not in my name."

It is as true today as it was then. Shame on you, and shame on the cowards you represent. Your moral ambiguity has permeated the Labour Party to such an extent that it has failed in its duty towards not just children, but whole populations of a significant number of Metropolitan areas which it controls. The fault is your, so don't you dare try and wash your hands of it.

Nick Lowles supports former BNP councillor and friend of Nick Griffin over UKIP

Former BNP councillor Paul Cromie
- congratulated by HnH for beating
the UKIP candidate!

It's true. It really is. On Nick Lowles personal blog on the Hope not Hate website he writes:

"Former BNP councillor, turned Independent, Paul Cromie, has fought off a strong challenge from UKIP in his Queensbury ward, in Bradford.
Well done Paul!"

You can read the post yourself, here. And it's screen-shotted below in case they have a change of heart and remove it.

Changes of heart seem common when it comes to Paul Cromie and his wife Linda, who is also a local councillor. Cromie professed to have left the BNP in 2011 and yet in April 2012 Lowles was writing on his blog a post entitled "He's Back", in which he passed comment on the Cromies attending a BNP fundraiser in Yorkshire where they met with Nick Griffin. Cromie wrote in his defence that Griffin was a personal friend.

The date of this meeting makes it doubly interesting because of the elections in May 2012. In the Queensborough ward which the Cromies represent on Bradford Council, the Conservative Party candidate was a Michael Walls. What is remarkable is that he was proposed and seconded on his nomination papers by Paul & Linda Cromie. Since his election, he is very close to the Cromies, who helped him with his campaign in 2012, and were at the count cheering as he won. Queensborough is a three member seat elected in thirds.

It really is true. Nick Lowles is congratulating an ex-BNP
councillor for beating UKIP.

The chumminess the couple display towards their Conservative colleague in Queensborough is nothing compared with their closeness to the ruling Labour group. At the Bradford count following Thursday's elections, Cromie was seen laughing and joking with the local Labour councillors, including those who run both Hope not Hate and local UAF activities across the city. Rumours persist that Cromie would defect to Labour if he thought he and his wife could hold their seats under that party's banner: in the meantime, the Cromies know what side their bread is buttered on in a city where in most wards they weigh rather than count the Labour vote: if Queensborough was not one of only a few non-Labour wards in the city, the Cromies would sign up in a heartbeat. Labour's perpetual grip on Bradford politics means only they can hand out the plum jobs, the seats on local boards. Its not just the plums, either - there's the icing too: Hope not Hate spend some of their 'restricted' funds which they receive from the Department for Communities and Local Government on their 'anti-racist community work' campaign in Bradford.

In Bradford, Hope not Hate were particularly active during the local election campaign. It was one of the places where the Labour Party instead of running its own campaign against UKIP based on policy ran Hope not Hate's leaflets based on scaremongering. It is not by accident that HnH's leaflets were all in Labour Party colours. UKIP Bradford have published on their own blog pictures of Labour councillors and campaign teams engaged in such negative campaigning which were tweeted by Labour councillors using campaign groups bought and paid for by Hope not Hate's government grant allied to those made by Bradford council itself.

They hypocrisy scarcely needs pointing out, although that Lowles would be so blatant is rather a surprise. They had nothing to say about the former BNP councillor who is now a Labour cabinet member in Darwen. No comment on the former openly Nazi Labour councillor in the Home Counties. Nothing about the 9 Labour councillors in Harrow or the 5 Labour councillors in Middlesbrough who resigned because of racism within the Labour Party.

The message is clear. There are no allies too low, no racism which is too much: to be considered a Labour Party ally is to be immune to criticism from Lowles and his chums. This extends to UAF, who are also notable by the silence over such incidents.

Many of Hope not Hate's own supporters are not best pleased by Lowles support for a 'former' racist though. On Twitter, Lowles & co are not backpedalling furiously as suggesting their support for Crombie was an 'in-joke'. Clearly it's an in-joke their own supporters didn't appreciate, and one which 41 of their supporters didn't see, as that's how many times their original message of support for Crombie was re-tweeted!

"We're not responsible", bleats Lowles as the focus shifts to Hope not Hate inspired violence and lies

Having spent the past year doing his very best to stoke up hysteria by misrepresenting UKIP's immigration policy, HnH director Nick Lowles has this afternoon published a self-justifying set of lies and evasions on his personal blog. This came after UKIP leader Nigel Farage shone a spotlight on the violence Hope not Hate and Unite Against Fascism  have incited against UKIP in an interviewon BBC1's 'Sunday Politics' programme this morning.


Farage said, "Sadly we have a a couple of organisations out there headed up by senior Labour Party figures, who purport to be against fascism and extremism, who receive funding from the Department of Communities, who receive funding from the trade unions, who have acted in a violent way more than once."

Asked if he was accusing the Labour Party of organising the violence, he said: "No. I said Unite against Fascism and Hope not Hate are taxpayer-funded, they are trade union-funded, they are headed up by very senior Labour figures".

Lowles bleats a whole host of untruths and partial truths in his defence as he sees his income stream unravel before his eyes. In his response, it is what he fails to say which is more revealing than what he does. As an example, nowhere in his blog posting does he deny that Hope not Hate members have acted in a violent way and he makes no attempt to disassociate Hope not Hate from such violence.

Hope not Hate of course have a long history of inciting violence against groups they don't like. We blogged back in February of this year how HnH 'director of intelligence', former BNP thug Matthew Collins sent a series of tweets during a visit to London by members of the Hungarian far-right party Jobbik which were designed to vector Unite Against Fascism boot boys to their exact location. This sort of incitement has been carried out repeatedly by Hope not Hate, including during EDL demonstrations both in the UK and overseas.

As for direct violence against UKIP Andrew Scott, the man convicted of assaulting Farage with a banner in Margate, was a Hope not Hate supporter. Fred Glenister, the man currently on bail after assaulting Farage by hitting him with an egg in Nottingham, was a Hope not Hate supporter.

Of the rest of his evasions, to take some of them in turn:

"We are not aligned to any political party" - This is hardly worth responding to. It is so transparently a Labour Party & trades union front that such an assertion is simply laughable. Lowles deputy director is Ruth Smeeth, a Labour parliamentary candidate selected for a safe seat, while 80%+ of their funding comes from the trades unions. UnionsTogether organiser Byron Taylor sits on HnH's management board. Meanwhile, in 2009, Lowles wrote, "anybody...serious about stopping the BNP was by now mobilised behind the Labour Party campaign. The campaign was carefully planned with Hope Not Hate Yorkshire to coordinate Labour activity and third party interventions". Former Labour MEP and Europe Minister Glenis Kinnock is a patron. Meanwhile, Hope not Hate's online campaigning is managed by the Labour facing Blue State Digital. Verdict - Lie

"(Our) supporters have not attacked or disrupted any UKIP meeting, nor have we encouraged anyone to hold protests outside such meetings." - Except that UnionsTogether is closely aligned with the UAF's "Stand up to UKIP" campaign, while their organiser Byron Taylor said earlier this year on the Labour List website, "To save them a lot of time and effort, I’m very happy to point out that in my spare time I’m on the management committee of HOPE Not Hate". Attendees at last week's UKIP rally in Westminster may have noticed that alongside the Socialist Workers Party (no imperialist apostrophe in their name) banners were a large number of 'UNITE' ones. And it was difficult to miss the UnionsTogether advertising truck with their poster on it which drove past repeatedly. As we reported the following day, our own representative at the protest reported that a number of SWP people present also identified themselves as Hope not Hate activists. The membership overlap between these organisations is so great that it is impossible to tell where one ends and where another begins. We have of course dealt with precisely this issue in more detail in an earlier posting and comprehensively demolished Lowles' lies then Verdict - Lie

Nigel Farage has claimed  that I'm a member of the Communist Party with close links to the Socialist Workers Party: claims which are utterly untrue - We can not comment on his membership status with the Communist Party, but it has long been rumoured that he was a member in the past. As for links with the Socialist Workers Party, HnH paid hack Carl Morphett is a former member, while the HnH website frequently highlights events run by Love Music, Hate Racism, another (like UAF) SWP front organisation, this one headed by UAF in-house rapist and former SWP leader Martin Smith. Meanwhile, UnionsTogether - who are actively represented on HnH's board and who supply funding to HnH - work closely with the UAF in the 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign (see above) Verdict - Lie

"Now Farage is peddling a fantasy that we have received Government money to take him on. This is a lie. Three years ago our charitable arm received a grant for £60,000 from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to undertake anti-racist community work in four areas of the country. This was a one-year project which ended in 2012, long before we started scrutinising UKIP" - Hope not Hate's accounts show a total of over £120k received from the DCLG between 2010 and 2012. As their most recent accounts have yet to be filed, it is not possible to tell whether this has continued. Meanwhile, Hope not Hate has been scrutinising UKIP since 2005, as confirmed by former UKIP staffer Mark Croucher who liaised with them. Verdict - Lie

"Last year we began to identify racists and extremists within UKIP. We initially tried to form a constructive relationship with the party leadership but it became quickly evident that they had no interest in working together to root out these racists" - UKIP worked closely with Searchlight and then Hope not Hate (see above) up until the scale of the drift in support from Labour to UKIP became clear. By 2011, this cooperation had completely ceased, not because of UKIP, but because of Hope not Hate, who had no interest in continuing cooperation with a party it was about to start actively campaigning against. Verdict - Lie

So why did Lowles fail to disclaim violence? A look at their supporter's comments on their Facebook page is instructive. In an article published on the 25th January this year regarding comments by UKIP's Farage on gun control, a whole series of HnH supporters made violent suggestions, including the following:

 

These are the sort of comments which - had they featured on a UKIP website or been written by a UKIP supporter - would be spread all across Hope not Hate's page as 'evidence' or 'proof' of violent intentions.