Forget tall stories about UKIP intimidation in Dudley - Lowles is trying to save his friend Austin's seat

Believe nothing about Dudley North - Labour PPC Ian Austin
is a long time friend of HnH's Nick Lowles. Both are full of
unlikely tales of their own victimhood.

Following our FB & Twitter post regarding the on-going campaign of vandalism against UKIP shops and intimidation against UKIP candidates and supporters, we have now seen Hope not Hate's response: to complain that they are the real victims. Unoriginal in the extreme, this rather dim-witted approach  is based on a handful of incidents, almost none of which are true. Their article focuses on Dudley North, where they complain that a Hope not Hate activist (also coincidentally a Labour activist) was photographed, with the photograph being put on Twitter by UKIP MEP Bill Etheridge followed by some alleged UKIP members saying rude things about him in the comments.

Contrast this with Hope not Hate's glee when posting pictures of hapless elderly UKIP members who can't keep up with whether people of African origin are coloured, black or BME in the latest politically correct terminology.

There is an ulterior motive for all this focus on Bill Etheridge and UKIP in Dudley North, which YouGov list as 'too close to call' between UKIP and Labour. Dudley North Labour PPC and outgoing MP Ian Austin is a friend of Nick Lowles, who previously wrote of Austin,

"Last night I spent about an hour on the phone with Ian Austin, the Labour MP for Dudley North. Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy"

This 'media strategy' has so far involved comedy death threats allegedly received from UKIP supporters, and leaking confidential information on a constituent who stood for UKIP, a strategy which backfired as that constituent is now local Cllr Dean Perks. It hardly needs mentioning that as a good New Labour man, Austin is also an expenses cheat.

Laughable claims of intimidation are nothing new. After the abortive attempt to deliver leaflets in Grimsby on Saturday when nobody turned up, Lowles was bleating that his activists were 'intimidated' and that the police had been called. However, as the Grimsby Telegraph makes clear in their article on Monday:

"The spokesman also claimed members and a member of Humberside Police staff had been physically assaulted. However, Humberside Police was unable to confirm if this was the case and, at the time of going to press, the group had not supplied the Grimsby Telegraph with a crime number."

In other words, even the local paper - which was there - doesn't believe them.

These lies seem to be a new tactic as Hope not Hate feel they are beginning to lose the battle, and the £600,000 a year that goes with it - an attempt, after years of bully boy tactics, to suddenly play the victim. Exactly the same tactic the Nazi's used, in fact.

In terms of threats, nothing compares to the vast amounts of hate that appear on Hope not Hate's own Facebook feed and on their own pages. Incitements to violence are frequent, as we have previously blogged here, while marches by anyone HnH deems unacceptable are given a running commentary to ensure their fellow hard-left bully boys can get the fight they desire, as here. Hope not Hate activists have called for UKIP shops to be burnt down, for attacks on the mentally ill and have cheerfully condoned acts of violence against UKIP MEPs by their own members. Of course, we have screen grabs of some of their supporters comments - we used to grab a lot, but it all gets a bit repetitive after a while.

Earlier today we posted a meme on our Facebook & Twitter pointing out that over 30 UKIP shops have been attacked during this extended General Election campaign. We have been unable to find any accounts of Labour Party or Hope not Hate premises which have been attacked outside of Scotland, where the SNP is responsible - something Hope not Hate has been at pains to not mention. If anybody has any knowledge of any attacks on Labour, HnH, Unite, UNISON, SWP, Green Party or Stand up to UKIP premises in England, we'd be interested in hearing of it.

Hope not Hate photoshop Facebook 'evidence' of racism/homophobia

Last week, Hope not Hate were busy sending 'evidence' of racism and homophobia to Oxfordshire newspapers after 'uncovering' evidence on the Facebook pages of two UKIP candidates, Alan Harris and Dickie Bird.

EXIF data showing the creation date of one of the
images used in the article

Perhaps it was the date - the article was posted on their website on the 1st April - but as usual Hope not Hate's evidence is not all it appears to be.

The article, written by 'Simon Cressy' (a pointless pseudonym used by Kirklees-based HnH activist Carl Morphett) features a number of images which purport to be 'screen grabs' taken from the UKIP member's Facebook timelines.

But as the County chairman for UKIP pointed out in an e-mail, it is here that their lie is exposed. Contained within online images is data about the image itself. This data is known as 'EXIF' data, and contains amongst other information the date and time the image was created, and by whom. If we look at a sample image, we find that far from it being a post that was 3 years old, it was created by one Carl Morphett at half past eight on the 28th March. How convenient!

Some have the EXIF data stripped from them, and one - relating to a posting about Morrison's supermarket allegedly refusing to allow poppy sellers in the store - shows an image date in early 2014, indicating that it is the only genuine screengrab from the page.

To quote Dr Lee Upcraft, the Oxfordshire chairman:

"This proves that the image, reportedly a screen shot of Alan Harris’ Facebook feed, was created at March 28th 2015 at 8:32 pm. Similarly two others were also created within a few minutes of this. According to Hope Not Hate, these are screenshots of Alan Harris’s Facebook page – of postings from 2012 & 2013. Why then do they have an embedded date that is two days before the dissolution of Parliament?


If they are genuine, then they were taken just before start of the "short" election campaign. UKIP conducts extensive vetting of its candidates, and there is no chance that we would permit anybody to stand for the Party with that content on full view on their Facebook page. Nor would we allow anybody to stand who had expressed such views.

We maintain that these images are faked to smear Alan Harris. Alan is standing in a key Tory/Lib-Dem marginal seat. The Liberal Democrats lost this in 2010 to the Tories with a majority of 176. Ask yourself who is to benefit from this?"

 There are a few other points worth noting. Cressy/Morphett's article is rather strong on homophobia in places - in fact, the article is titled 'Oxfordshire UKIP candidate exposed as a racist homophobe'. This seems rather strange, as we understand that one of those mentioned shares his house with his adult son. Who is openly gay. Which makes it all the more remarkable that these two candidates would talk about 'gay pricks' as claimed.

Still, the wonder of photoshop is that you can make anyone say anything. Below we have damning evidence that Morphett and Lowles actively conspired to frame the two candidates. Needless to say, the evidence was created by our own fair hands in Photoshop.

A not at all Photoshopped screen grab from Carl Morphett's Facebook

Hope not Hate - still cheering for the BNP in Bradford

Paul Cromie, former BNP councillor
supported by Hope not Hate

Hope not Hate's latest 'Purple Rain' post by 'Simon Cressy' focussing on UKIP attacks UKIP's Bradford branch after someone realised that their printing company does their printing work in Germany and not the UK. We're not quite sure what significance this has, as UKIP have never made any secret of their free-trade credentials, but we assume that when it comes to Bradford, Hope not Hate have a vested interest.
Readers may recall the local elections last year, where Nick Lowles, HnH's owner, personally congratulated a former BNP councillor who remains a close friend of Nick Griffin for his success in narrowly holding his seat from a strong UKIP challenge:


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

Hope not Hate's now deleted message of support for the
far right in Bradford

This was followed in December last year by howls of mock outrage after Bradford man Peter Finan claimed he felt 'intimidated' because UKIP wrote him a letter. It later turned out that the 'political innocent' was a foul mouthed twitter user with close links to the watermelon wing of the Green Party and a long history of directing abusive tweets against UKIP.

Bradford West is of course a Labour target seat. Represented by George Galloway - who is hated by HnH - and with Respect looming large in the constituency, their hope is that Naz Shah can recapture the seat. Shah, who has made a career out of being the daughter of a murderer, and whose charity - Sharing Voices (Bradford) - submitted qualified accounts to the Charity Commission less than 6 months ago, is the last minute replacement after shenanigans in the local Labour Party saw the original candidate resign within days of selection.

With the fall-out from Labour's problems in Rotherham spreading across the Yorkshire constituencies it is little wonder that HnH are desperate to halt the rise of UKIP. Scraping the barrel about the location of a printer's workshop is a sure sign of an organisation with nothing left to say.

The NHS steals desperately needed doctors from Africa, but HnH attack UKIPs health policy

More fundamental dishonesty from Hope not Hate writer 'Simon Cressy' (Carl Morphett's pointless pseudonym) in an attack on UKIP's Neil Hamilton over the NHS. Quite what the NHS has to do with HnH's 'anti-racism and anti-fascism' campaign, we don't know, 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.


Sierra Leone - Labour and the Unions are happy to steal their
medical personnel to prop up their NHS empires

On the HnH website, Cressy puts his name to an article titled "UKIP Claim NHS is diseased and worse than Taliban". Referring to an article which is over a year old, and coincidentally discovering it on the evening that Hamilton was due to attend a selection meeting for the Basildon constituency (he withdrew), Cressy begins his distortions in the title, and doesn't let up throughout his entirely misleading article.

Take the Taliban claim. What Hamilton actually wrote was, "Since 2001, we have had 450 British fatalities in Afghanistan. During the same period, Mid Staffs hospital alone was responsible for at least 1,200 avoidable deaths....another 14 English NHS trusts ... may be responsible for 13,000 unnecessary deaths".

Neil Hamilton

In other words, what Hamilton said was the same as the original Express article's subtitle - The NHS is a more effective killing machine than the Taliban. However much Cressy's union paymasters may not like this, the statistics are true, which is more than can be said of the gross distortion of Cressy's paraphrasing of Hamilton's words.

Did Hamilton say the NHS was diseased? Yes, it was the title of the article. But what he was referring to - contrary to what Cressy implies  - was not the principle of free, universal healthcare, but rather the dominance of it by Labour and the largest trade unions and the need to break that by genuine democracy - "If we are to retain a state-funded system, it must be more democratic so that patient power counter balances the power of unions like Unison and the BMA."

That Hope not Hate should leap to the defence of the big Unions is hardly a surprise as they are heavily reliant upon them for their funding. And control of the NHS - and the £120bn annual spend and 1.4m employees - is essential if the Union's fat cats are to continue drawing banker style salaries. As Hamilton says, "Labour's shroud-waving has closed down debate on whether this is the best way to provide healthcare free at the point of delivery."

Whether you agree with Hamilton's assessment or not is immaterial, as is whether you have

Carl Morphett - not the first time he's
been caught taking lessons from Goebbels

reservations about Hamilton. Certainly his argument about debate being closed down is correct: what other point is there in deliberately distorting the whole thrust of his argument?

It borders on the obscene that on a day that Hope not Hate is singing the praises of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights they should fall back on the tactics of the totalitarian: to distort with propaganda rather than to argue with facts. The point of a democracy is to hear all sides of the argument. It is not talking about other options for the NHS but preventing those options even being open for debate which is fascist. Perhaps someone will buy Cressy/Morphett a dictionary for Christmas.

Casual racism from HnH's Carl Morphett, whose geography isn't so hot

A little bit of casual racism from Hope not Hate's Carl Morphett (writing under the utterly pointless (as everybody knows who it really is) pseudonym of Simon Cressy) yesterday evening in a post entitled 'A quick question for UKIP Barnsley'.

Rather neatly summing up exactly why Hope not Hate don't grasp the problems of immigration or
UKIP's policy, he writes:

"It is well documented that UKIP have a problem with East European immigrants coming to the UK.
So I was rather interested to see that UKIP in Barnsley are fielding an Albanian immigrant, Anisa Kola as a candidate in the Dodworth ward.
How very interesting"

(i) UKIP does not have a problem with Eastern European immigrants coming here, we'd just like a say in how many.
(ii) Most Eastern European immigration comes from within the EU. Albania, the last time we checked, was not a member of the European Union, and therefore immigrants from there have to qualify for a visa to enter the UK. This visa is issued under the points system we'd like to apply to EU immigrants as well.
(iii) Why would her country of origin make any difference if she is a suitable candidate?
(iv) Why would a legal immigrant to the UK not realise that allowing 200,000 people a year into the country will put further strain on public services and greater pressure on housing, which is already in short supply?

In order to avoid them mistaking Albania for an EU country the next time they want to attack a UKIP candidate based on their ethnicity, we have prepared a handy 'cut out and keep' guide for them to check.

Good to see that it hasn't got in the way of Hope not Hate's casual sexism either. Alongside comments about how good looking or not Anisa is is the following gem, suggesting that because she's pretty, she is therefore too stupid to make up her own mind. 

Of frauds and forgeries

Prominent on Hope not Hate's website today - although yet to make it to their Facebook page - is their "100 days to stop UKIP" campaign, complete with a plea for funds from Nick Lowles. We're not convinced that using a slogan already used by Nick Clegg will prove to be an asset, but Hope not Hate have never been strong on originality: most of their methods have already been tried and tested by Josef Goebbels after all.

Still, Lowles can barely contain his excitement at it all. He breathlessly gushes about how 'just £15 will pay for 1,000 anti-UKIP leaflets', and '£100 will pay for 500,000 online ads' - remember boys and girls, if you ever see an online ad for HnH, be sure to click it to help them spend their budget!

Lowles also talks about their planned 'Campus Call Outs at dozens of universities where we'll register and mobilise student voters". Given their links with the Labour Party, we're sure that such registrations will in common with the TULO/Unions Together efforts be diverted via the Labour Party national communications centre in Newcastle.

The vast majority of HnH's funds come not from the public,
but from the Union barons

The question which really needs to be asked is why Lowles bothers with such campaigns at all. A
quick check through the Electoral Commission's records of regulated donations to Hope not Hate shows that in fact, of the £542,893 reported since 2004, a mere £88,618 has come from members of the general public - less than 17%. The remainder - £454,275 - has come from the trades unions and bodies such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust.

It is of course rhetorical to ask why. Hope not Hate's own 'about us' section still states "HOPE not hate mobilises everyone opposed to the British National Party’s (BNP) and English Defence League’s (EDL) politics of hate" - no mention of UKIP - and likes to give the impression that it is a grassroots campaign. Needless to say, that is not the case - it relies heavily on the unions, the Labour Party and political charities to fund its cause. If it relied solely upon private donations, it would have gone bust many years ago.

The old saying does however remain true - he who pays the piper calls the tune. As we have said before, with recent newspaper polls showing UKIP to be the best regarded party amongst the general public, Labour and their Union paymasters are desperate to head off the challenge in what Labour regard as 'their' heartlands. As we discussed in our last posting, there are no depths to which they will not stoop in order to achieve this end, and Hope not Hate are increasingly becoming the front organisation they hope to use to do it.

For Hope not Hate to be credible, it is necessary that they continue to present themselves as a grassroots campaign and not as they really are, a tool of the unions and Labour and powered by multinational consultants in Blue State Digital.

What does that mean for the whole "100 days to stop UKIP" fundraising campaign? It is nothing more than a charade. The union barons will pick up the tab for a sophisticated on-line, anti-UKIP campaign, while the rank and file are viewed as little more than an irritant except when there is violence against UKIP to be incited.

Although Hope not Hate's entire campaign is based on a lie, one question remains: would they be prepared to pay for UKIP infiltrators to spill the beans? A letter has been doing the rounds which purports to come from Simon Cressy promising payment for UKIP 'secrets'. For a whole host of reasons - not least that Simon Cressy doesn't exist, but is a nom de plume for HnH employee Carl Morphett - we are forced to conclude that the letter is a forgery. In a fast growing party such as UKIP, it is far easier to get their own supporters to sign up and attend UKIP meetings than it is to pay for information, and we are forced to conclude that the continued circulation of this letter is likely to be counter-productive.

Why so? Because unlike Hope not Hate, UKIP is a genuinely grassroots organisation. We are well regarded by the voting public, and are not in the pockets of anybody. While Hope not Hate, Labour and the trades unions are quite happy to lie, cheat and steal in order to blunt the force of our message, we have no need to descend to such depths. The British public are increasingly behind us, and we are happy to stand on our own beliefs: the use of forged documents will not help us in this.

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



Another HnH campaign descends into farce as Polish AntiFa condemns Morphett article

Chaos is surrounding Hope not Hate's latest campaign against a Polish politician on a speaking tour of the UK.

Robert Winnicki is the President of the Młodzież Wszechpolska, or All Polish Youth Movement, MW. HnH blagger Carl Morphett (aka Simon Cressy) is the author of HnH's piece, which accuses Winnicki of everything short of child sacrifice.

The comments threads are particularly interesting. They start with simply mocking 'retards', the 'mentally handicapped' and the 'brain-damaged': all fairly normal stuff for Hope not Hate supporters so far:

A new touch - even for Hope not Hate - is the implicit racism in this one but of course you can't be racist if you're a Hope not Hate supporter, can you?

However, their already ropey campaign descended further into farce when several Polish supporters of Hope not Hate - including prominent anti-racists - accused Morphett of using discredited media reports and distorting the facts surrounding Winnicki and his MW movement. After initially deleting posts which called into doubt the veracity of the article, they then resorted to simply reposting the same media reports they used as sources, while denying that the broadcasters concerned had apologised for them

A cursory glance at the number of 'likes' under the stories shows what HnH's own supporters thought of such rubbish.
So what was the original comment that Hope not Hate removed? A rather damning critique of their own story which exposed it as being largely rubbish and propaganda put out by Winnicki's political opponents:

To those of us in the UK, Hope not Hate's refusal to correct glaring errors is nothing new for we see them as the propaganda machine they are. That the article smacks of anti-Polish racism is beyond doubt - as a primarily Catholic country it is hated by the hard left for (a) throwing off the shackles of the Communism HnH so adores and (b) daring to have moral values which do not equate to Hope not Hate's own, ie they don't tell enough lies and aren't keen on homosexuals.

The final word must go however to an exchange between London Antifascists and Hope not Hate. The former had asked on behalf of several Polish members for the article to be removed or amended. Hope not Hate showed their usual solidarity:

With friends like Hope not Hate, who needs enemies?

Hope not Hate's actions define them as more fascist than their opponents

A comment by Andy Lovie on my Facebook recently set me to thinking more widely about Hope not Hate's tactics with respect to UKIP.

For those of you who don't recall, Mr Lovie was 'outed' by Hope not Hate in cleverly written piece which implied far more than it actually said in order to avoid libel action. Mr Lovie's supposed crime was that he appeared on the BNP's leaked membership list from 2009.

Andy Lovie - dared to speak to a
former BNP activist

Now, I don't know Mr Lovie personally - he is a Facebook friend whose posts I view occasionally, but that is it. I can't say that I've ever seen him post anything which could be considered either racist or fascist: I've only ever seen from him the sort of thing one would expect a middle-ranking UKIP activist and sometime branch officer to post. His interests are wide-ranging, and he shows a genuine concern for the world.

I don't know if Mr Lovie was ever a member of the BNP. Yes, his name appears on their list and is marked 'activist'. And yet Lancaster Unity, in a commentary on the lists at the time they first appeared, clearly stated that

"Some of the additions to the list are as recent as September of this year, indicating that some of the members listed - though how many is anyone's guess - are not in fact members at all."

While even Wikileaks, who first published it stated

"It should not be assumed that every person with a BNP membership number is a current member of the BNP," the site says. "For instance, journalists and opponents have sometimes joined the BNP to obtain information about it."
This is certainly true, not least because there are at least 6 names which are not real people at all, and whose addresses are fronts for either the UAF (2) or Hope not Hate/Searchlight (4). There are probably more whom we are not familiar with. Mr Lovie categorically denies having been a member of the BNP, and does not know how his name came to appear on their list. He would not be the only person caught in such a situation.

Hope not Hate did allow Mr Lovie a 'right of reply', but then heavily annotated his response to ensure

Carl Morphett - regularly associates with
former BNP activists

that it lacked continuity and that their point of view would prevail. As if to prove their case, they accuse Mr Lovie of discussing the matter online with a former BNP activist, Steve Thompson. The fact that the author Simon Cressy (more properly Carl Morphett) regularly speaks to former far-right thug and HnH employee Matthew Collins is an irony not mentioned, and is hardly proof that Cressy/Morphett is himself of the far-right.

Sadly for Mr Lovie, he is just the latest victim in a long line of UKIP personnel subjected to these intimidatory tactics. We recently saw a UKIP councillor paraded across Hope not Hate's pages: his crime? He was in hospital and missed a council tax payment by 4 days - the council subsequently summonsed him for non-payment. We have seen a prospective UKIP candidate's wife's career threatened by a local union official if her husband dared to stand for UKIP.

We can also add to this mix the hacking of UKIP member's social media and e-mail accounts, the photoshopping of screen grabs and the repeated jumping on out of context or poorly phrased quotes from largely elderly UKIP members.

The point? It is quite straightforward. It is using the tactics of Nazi Germany to intimidate people into not sticking their heads above the parapet and supporting or standing for UKIP. As thriller writer John Lescroarts said, “The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.” - which seems to fit Hope not Hate rather well.

Thus we see nothing about Labour racism, so ably demonstrated by the formerly ruling group on Harrow council, and yet god help an aged UKIP councillor who - respectfully but mistakenly - uses the word 'coloured'. We see Mr Lovie crucified because his name appears on a list which even their allies deem inaccurate in an article written by a close associate of a former NF thug. We see a UKIP councillor who was mistakenly summoned smeared, while there is no mention of the hundreds of Labour councillors who don't just miss a payment but refuse to pay their council tax at all - see our Facebook page for details.

If anyone can imagine a closer fit for Lescroarts quote than Hope not Hate, we have yet to see it.

After cashing in on Lee Rigby's death, HnH now attack the late Sir Patrick Moore

Fresh on the heels of using the atrocity in Woolwich to sell copies of their latest magazine, Hope not Hate blogger Carl Morphett (also known as Simon Cressy) has just posted an attack on the late Sir Patrick Moore.

Posting a picture of Moore overlaid with a phrase they have attributed to him, Morphett wrote:

"Patrick Moore was a regular face on British TV for decades and was loved by many. Unfortunately, Moore had a dark side, he was a bigot and also a huge supporter of UKIP, which probably comes as no real surprise.

In the 1970s, Moore was the chairman of the anti-immigration United Country Party and was also a huge fan of the racist MP Enoch Powell.

This interesting little quote was posted to me the other day by one of our supporters.

Funny, but I don't remember UKIP ever condemning Patrick Moore for such blatant racism. But when it comes to racists within their party UKIP have a habit of closing their eyes."


Sir Patrick was quite clearly talking about 'parasites' - ie benefit scroungers - as opposed to all immigrants, even assuming that he actually said the words attributed to him.

The only slight consolation is that at least Sir Patrick is dead and in the ground. Lee Rigby's body was scarcely cold before they started trying to cash in on his death, and they announced the sale of the 'Woolwich Special' magazine just an hour before Rigby's funeral was scheduled to begin.

HnH defends Croatia regardless of facts - another 'Purple Rain' fail

Carl Morphett (writing as Simon Cressy) has just posted on Hope not Hate's blog about comments made by UKIP Deputy Leader Paul Nuttall regarding the accession of Croatia to the EU, and the possible effects on UK immigration.

Carl Morphett/Simon Cressy -
So eager to write propaganda he forgot
to check the facts

Once again, HnH show an astonishing lack of regard for the facts.

While Croatia is a small country it is getting ever smaller due to the net outflow of people - it is ranked 46th in the world for net migration according to the CIA World Factbook, and this rate of emigration has been accelerating for some time. Youth unemployment ranks 16th in the world, higher than Jamaica, Egypt and Iran, while adult unemployment is 35.6% for males and 36.8% for females.

While Croatian citizens may not in theory be able to work in the UK until 2020, Romanians are also technically unable to work in the UK until next year. This has not prevented a considerable inflow of Romanians, including those who obtain works permits as 'self-employed' sellers of the 'Big Issue' magazine, a route which also allows them full access to the benefits system as reported by the Daily Telegraph two years ago. Romania's youth unemployment rate is a modest 23.7%.

Paul Nuttall - elected to raise concerns

Nuttall also highlighted the issue of organised crime groups in Croatia, which is similar to the situation in Romania. It is clear that Romanian organised crime has extended its operations to the UK using Romanian immigrants, and Croatia remains a key entry point into Western Europe for drugs smuggled from South America. The BBC featured a report on Croatia in 2009 - Croatia cursed by crime and corruption - which outlined some of the problems the Balkan nation faces, while a HUMSEC report - funded by the EU - highlights the problems of crimes such as terrorism, trafficking of women and organised crime in the Western Balkans.

The accession of Croatia to the EU may or may not cause problems for the UK. What is certain is that however well Croatia has done since gaining its independence from the Yugoslav federation, it is not a nation without considerable internal problems of its own, and one could not blame its residents for seeking a better life elsewhere. Whether that is likely to be the UK will only be seen over time, but given the problems caused to date in the London alone by organised crime from Romania - whether that be in the form of trafficked women as in this BBC report or over reports that up to 1/3 of Romanians living in the UK have been arrested - it is not unreasonable to raise concerns.

Rather than attacking Nuttall for raising perfectly reasonable concerns, should HnH not be asking why politicians from the other parties are ignoring them?

The respectful desecrators and a history of HnH and UAF disinformation

On our Facebook page this morning we covered the South Wales Argus' story about a racist attack on

Hate slogans carefully daubed while flowers and borders
remain undamaged and unmolested?
A strange sort of hate crime.

Muslim graves in Newport's Christchurch Cemetery overnight on Saturday. Graves in an area set aside for Islamic burials were daubed with 'Lee Rigby Murder', 'BNP', 'NF', 'UKIP', 'Kill the Muslim Pakis' and swastikas.

Our first thought was what a disgraceful thing it was to do.

Our second - who was responsible? - got us to thinking.

The picture shows that while the graves were daubed with paint, flowers, plants and solar lights mounted on the graves were all intact and unmolested, and in the image shown (above) the graffiti artists appear to have painted around the flowers on the headstone rather than apply a hefty kick to free up space. It is a pretty remarkable hate crime indeed where the perpetrators daub violent slogans and yet appear to have set out to do as little damage as possible: surely if you're desecrating a grave and you really mean it, you'd kick it to pieces as well? Nice, well brought up middle class vandals, perhaps? At least - unlike most 'far right' graffiti - it is all spelt correctly.

Then there are the omissions. The graffiti mentions the BNP, NF and UKIP and yet fails to mention either the EDL or its Welsh equivalent, the WDL. Coming just hours after the high profile arrest of Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon and Carroll in London, it struck us as strange that only political parties were mentioned rather than the rather more high profile groups who had been making news headlines all that day. An extension of these thoughts is that UKIP bars anyone associated with the other two groups - or any other far-right group - from membership, while the BNP & NF have a mutual loathing for each other which far outweighs their loathing for Islam. The idea that someone would paint the names of the three organisations as a gesture of support is absurd, given that the BNP and NF regards UKIP as 'race traitors'. A much more likely scenario is that it is an outrage designed to link UKIP and the far-right, which makes it unlikely to have been carried out by anyone on the far-right.


 Richard Purssell (l)
and Dan Cole (r) - both
allegedly UAF activists

There is also the location of the cemetery. Christchurch cemetery is relatively remote, separated from the nearest houses by the M4 motorway and in a relatively rural and difficult to reach location. This was not some midnight drunken prank: carting paint and brushes to such a location required some thought and advance planning rather than a spur of the moment decision, otherwise how would the correct graves be found in the middle of the night out of the many thousands there? How would the slogans be daubed so carefully without torches, and if it was done by torchlight, how come there is no sign of accidental trampling of flowers or other ornaments unless great care was taken?

This brought us back to thinking of several other recent events. On Saturday, we had two UAF supporters dressed as EDL members attacking the EDL leaders on their publicity stunt. Initial reports and tweets from UAF and Hope not Hate indicated that the 'far right were fighting amongst themselves': there has been little reporting of the assailants since. If reports on far-right websites are true the assailants were UAF activists Richard Purssell and Dan Cole dressed in what has become the unofficial uniform of the EDL.



Wood was cleared by a police investigation of making these
statements - they were either made on a duplicate account
or were photoshopped.

This in turn lead us to think about the story of Alex Wood, the UKIP candidate who was splashed across the front page of the Daily Mirror allegedly giving a Nazi salute. With his left hand. He was also alleged to have made comments about Africans living in mud huts, and to have admitted that the picture was of him making a Nazi salute. Hope not Hate devoted considerable time to attacking his claim that his account was hacked, and yet a police investigation subsequently discovered that Wood had not in fact made either statement, and that alleged screenshots in his name appeared to have been created either on a duplicate account created by somebody using his name, or to have been photoshopped. While the original discussion that took place on-line on the Hope not Hate Facebook page appear to have been removed, it is interesting to note that what remains of HnH's participation is hedged by 'allegedly' and 'apparently':

Note the use of the word 'apparently'

We have been unable to find another example where Hope not Hate while condemning the web postings of someone they claim to be far-right hedged their libel bets in such a way. The suggestion must be that 'Simon Cressy' - a pseudonym for HnH staffer Carl Morphett - had some idea that the quotes were not genuine, and yet was prepared to use them anyway. Wood may well prove to be guilty of other offences through his association with failed Tory candidate Joshua Bonehill, but on these, he appears to be innocent, the victim of a 'frame up' which Hope not Hate appeared aware of and yet chose to ignore.

If those who at first glance appear responsible for these actions were not behind them, the question must be 'Cui bono', or who benefits?

It is not difficult to imagine that the pictures of 'UKIP' scrawled on an Islamic grave alongside a swastika will appear in Labour Party election literature, and quite possibly in Lib Dem and Plaid Cymru as well, and even the Tories wouldn't surprise us.

Alex Wood was used by the Daily Mirror (who part fund Hope not Hate along with a number of trades unions) and Hope not Hate just before polling day in the local elections once it became clear that Labour were also suffering badly at the hands of UKIP.

It would appear that the 'beneficiary' of these actions though is primarily Labour. There are undoubtedly ties between senior Labour Party figures and the 'hard left' anti-fascist groups, including HnH and UAF. And as HnH features the Newport story on their webpage, we see the first of the 'dog-whistle' political comments appear:




From Hope not Hate's facebook page
 

Sarah Evans also operates a blog, just in case you thought this was a random comment from a concerned member of the public - Sarah Evans Labour - and was the Labour Party candidate for North West Hampshire in the 2010 general election. She frequently features Hope not Hate on her blog.

So who is responsible? We suspect we'll never know. There are unlikely to be any arrests, but already we see Labour Party activists using the attack to make political capital. It is not difficult to imagine that whoever was behind the desecration has some ties to the anti-fascist movement. Such fascist tactics are increasingly a part of their repertoire.

Racist 'UKIP' profile: A thick wannabe, or a Hope not Hate creation?

Yesterday, the Hope not Hate website lead with the story of Mick Parker of Fenton, Stoke on Trent, and called on UKIP leader Nigel Farage to "to put his money where his mouth is and deal with a Stoke on Trent UKIP supporter we have discovered who has bigotry oozing from every pore."

The article, written by someone using the pseudonym Simon Cressy, included screen shots of Parker's Facebook wall which featured such gems as 'get theres shit scum fuckin muslims out of my country'(sic). There were plenty of other examples since the account was created on the 5th January this year - in fact there were almost no posts which were not clearly an attempt to tie UKIP to the EDL and other similar racist organisations.

Clearly, this is not the page of someone UKIP would wish to be involved with. And inquiries with the local branch proved that, in fact, UKIP was not connected with him. Mick Parker contacted the local branch on the 9th May expressing a desire to 'get involved locally'. He was invited to attend the next branch meeting, but did not turn up. This was the only contact between UKIP and Parker, despite his Facebook page having the UKIP logo as his image since the account was formed at about the time UKIPs latest poll surge began.

There are two options here. The first is that a chap called Mick Parker came along on the 5th January - shortly after UKIP began their rise in the polls - decided it was time to have a Facebook account, signed up and then posted items almost exclusively about UKIP and the EDL, with the odd, semi-literate comment interspersed. All this despite not being a member of UKIP, and having no contact with UKIP whatsoever until 4 weeks ago.

The second option is that the Parker Facebook account is one of many maintained by Hope not Hate as they attempt to shift their focus away from fighting racism and onto fighting UKIP. What better way to achieve this than creating straw man profiles to knock down at a later date? There was a time when Hope not Hate were more than happy to call UKIP and discuss individuals posting material which implied that UKIP was racist, but sadly under Lowles those days appear long gone: the facts come a distant second to his attempt to persuade his supporters - who remain far from convinced - that UKIP is a worthwhile target.

It would be nice to think that Hope not Hate would remove their article, which is clearly untrue. They may or may not, but in any case they will feel that the damage is done: even if they remove it, they will have reinforced the impression their distortions, half-truths and outright lies are designed to create in the minds of their less than enthusiastic band of supporters.