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.

Hope not Hate: UKIP alleged sexual harrassment worse than Tory rape or Labour child abuse

The bits that Hope not Hate don't want to mention

Hope not Hate have tweeted 3 times this morning on the subject of UKIP general secretary Roger
Bird and his alleged harassment of female former Labour Party activist Natasha Bolter during her selection as a UKIP PPC.

As yet however there is no mention of Bird's response, despite it being carried online in many news outlets and having been tweeted by Channel 4 reporter Michael Crick: Bird states that he has texts and e-mails to prove that Bolter's story is not true, and that they were in a consensual relationship until the 2nd November.

UKIP's Roger Bird - a dignified response

Whichever way you slice it, Bird's response has been dignified and measured: in the Daily Telegraph article, he says, "I'm very sorry that a story like his should have arisen because it detracts from our [Ukip’s] central messages. The party had to respond in a formal way and conduct an appropriate investigation".

Texts from Bird's phone which appear to prove his
version of events is the correct one

We don't pretend to know what the truth of the matter is, although it would be strange if Bird claimed to possess exculpatory evidence which he then could not produce in his own defence. What is certain is that the matter is by no means as clear as it was presented by the Times this morning, although the Times carrying out a vendetta against UKIP on the basis of nonsense is hardly something new. For us, we hope that Bird's version is true and that he is vindicated: if it proves to be untrue, then he deserves whatever is coming to him. UPDATED - Some of the texts are now available on Guido Fawkes website and can be viewed by clicking on this link.Roger Bird appears to have been telling the truth, which begs the question - How could Natasha Bolter have thought she'd get away with it and he'd have no proof, and what game is she playing?




Hope not Hate - all accusation, no defence.

But what of Hope not Hate's newfound enthusiasm for protecting women in politics? A quick look back to their output on the 4th and 5th December shows that they tweeted exactly no times at all about the arrest for rape of Conservative MP Mark Pritchard so concerned are they about equality, women's rights and the repression of women in politics. On the same day as Pritchard's arrest, the former leader of Rotherham council, Labour's Cllr Barry Dodson, was arrested for the sexual abuse of a 13 year old girl. They had nothing to say about that either, while their carefully worded views on the wider Rotherham child abuse scandal managed to not mention the Labour Party even once, although it did spend some time explaining why Tory cuts were responsible.


Every day, Hope not Hate move just that little bit further away from their founding principles, and just that little bit closer to becoming an arm of the Labour Party and their union paymasters.

HnH's 'intimidated' Bradford man is anti-UKIP Twitter troll

Finan's letter, which makes no mention of his foul-mouthed
Twitter rants on behalf of the hard left

Hope not Hate's latest feeble attack on UKIP accuses the party of 'intimidation' by presenting a professionally outraged, foul mouthed anti-UKIP Twitter troll as if he was an ordinary member of the public.

In brief, a bloke in Bradford by the name of Peter Finan wrote to the Bradford Telegraph and Argus. Despite his local UKIP MEP being Amjad Bashir, and despite the highly publicised recent defections from Labour to UKIP of a number of British Asians, Finan trots out the old 'UKIP is racist' line. As 'proof', he cites a Facebook posting from that master of probity Nick Griffin urging people to vote UKIP, and mentions that Britain First - who polled 54 votes - urged people to vote UKIP in the Rochester & Strood by-election. He goes on to assert that Bradford will reject UKIP, a statement not entirely born out by last year's local election results in the city which saw UKIP narrowly miss taking a significant number of seats from Labour. Regular readers may recall Nick Lowles personal support for former BNP councillor (and friend of Nick Griffin) Paul Cromie after he narrowly held his seat against a strong UKIP challenge, such is Lowles' commitment to anti-racism.

Finan goes on to complain of 'intimidation' because the following day there was a letter in the Argus from Jason Smith, UKIP's hard-working Bradford chairman, pointing out the idiocy of Finan's position. The day after that, there was a letter from a UKIPper of Bradford origin who now lives in Southampton also criticising Finan's tired arguments. On the same day as the second letter was published in the Argus, Finan received a letter from one of Bashir's staff, accompanied by a polite letter and a couple of UKIP leaflets and inviting him to a UKIP meeting to hear what UKIP is really about. And that's it. This is what Finan considers intimidation, and he is now 'seeking legal advice' because he was accused of a smear. Finan denies it is a smear when he talks of 'the sort of people UKIP attract', but he's not talking of Amjad Bashir, Winston MacKenzie, Mohammed Islam or Owais Rajput, is he?


Peter Finan

So who is Finan? To read his complaint which is lovingly reproduced on Hope not Hate's website, you'd be forgiven for thinking that he was just a political innocent who was strangely horrified by people disagreeing with him. In fact, Finan is a well known anti-UKIP twitter user as Chemical Punnage - @uncleskinny -  noted for his foul mouthed tirades against UKIP and his close association with the watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) tendency of the Green Party. His exchanges with hard left anti-UKIP campaigners, his intimidatory tweets towards any who dare support UKIP, his ready use of epithets like 'racist' & 'fascist', his unquestioning support for convicted forger and fraudster Jasna Badzak's increasingly insane campaign against UKIP are all a matter of public record for any who care to look at his Twitter. Or you would be able to, except he's suddenly locked down his Twitter account (it's alright, we'd saved the worst already) presumably to hide the more shameful of his tweets and to maintain the fiction that his complaint is genuine and he is the wronged innocent persecuted by two letters disagreeing with him in a local newspaper and a polite letter. 

Do Hope not Hate know who Finan is? Of course they do. Its just another of the increasingly clumsy set-ups Lowles organisation has been reduced to in the face of UKIPs rise. Its a pretty sad day when an organisation which is supposed to be anti-racist supports the sort of white, middle class 'class warrior' who would allegedly call Amjad Bashir and his fellow British Asians 'coconuts' for supporting UKIP. But then there's a lot of that around Hope not Hate's offices.

A final twist of irony. Finan appeared on Mastermind a in 2003, making it through to the quarter-finals. His specialist subject was Indie band 'The Smiths', describing frontman Morrissey as 'superb' in an article in the Argus. We wonder if he is still as enthusiastic nowadays. In Morrissey's words last May, "I nearly voted for Ukip. I like Nigel Farage a great deal. His views are quite logical – especially where Europe is concerned". Bloody racist. That's the sort of people UKIP attract.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UAF, Unions & Labour in Portsmouth and their links to a convicted ISIS terrorist

Regular readers may recall that earlier this week we looked at Unite Against Fascism's thinly disguised 'anti-UKIP coalition' in Portsmouth which largely comprised people who stood to lose financially in the event of further UKIP advances: Labour and Lib Dem politicians, trade union activists who haven't had a proper job in years and 'community activists' who have long been supported on the Council payroll while genuine public services went down the toilet.

You may recall that we mentioned Zuber Hatia, who is invariably described as 'a prominent figure in Portsmouth's Muslim community and a community activist' in newspaper reports covering UAF's demonstrations in the south coast city - a helpful description which makes it sound like the Muslim community is steadfastly behind UAF's efforts.

Zuber Hatia urging attendance at a UAF event on the
Portsmouth UAF Facebook page

The truth is rather different. For a start, Hatia is a member of the local UAF branch, and has helped
with the organisation of events in the past: the screen grab shows Hatia talking about 'we STILL need' and 'more of us' as he exhorts people to sign up for a UAF march in Portsmouth last month on the event page.

All of this begs the question 'to what extent is Hatia representative  of the local Muslim community'? While genuine Muslim community leaders in Portsmouth such as Abu-Suyeb Tanzam condemned the young men who had travelled to Syria and said, "If anyone belongs to those groups they should be punished’, Hatia was nowhere to be seen or quoted, certainly not in the local newspapers. When news broke that 6 men from Portsmouth had travelled to Syria in November 2013, the Portsmouth News ran an article entitled 'City's Muslim leaders condemn Syria fighters'. The article named the leaders, and said,

"Speaking yesterday, leaders from the city’s Jami Mosque said the men had made the journey without the knowledge of their parents, the mosque, and the Muslim community.
Jami Mosque committee members Abidur Rahman Chowdhury, Mosud Ahmed, Aziz ur Rahman, Abu-Suyeb Tanzam and chairman Abdul Jalil said the mosque has been working with the police after it emerged the group of men had made the journey.’

The advert for the 'Stand up to UKIP' rally - all allegedly
knew convicted ISIS terrorist Mashadur Choudhary

You will note that Hatia is not mentioned in the article despite being a self-proclaimed 'prominent figure in Portsmouth's Muslim community and community activist'. He is not mentioned in another article on the 29th October this year 'Leaders condemn those radicalising young Muslims' either. In an article in the Guardian, local mosque leaders said,

"Choudhury had been under pressure from within his community because he was being blamed for encouraging the group to travel to Syria. Leaders of the Jami mosque in the city feared that as Choudhury was a youth worker, his actions might overly influence vulnerable young people."

So what did Zuber Hatia have to say about Mashadur Choudhary, the man sentenced to 4 years yesterday for travelling to Syria to fight for ISIS? In May this year, he was complaining on Facebook - reposted on the 'Portsmouth Anti-Fascists' blog - about how unfair Choudhary's conviction was as he hadn't done anything:

"There is no reason to assume that with such convictions in British courts as Mashudur Choudhary’s – who clearly went to Syria as plenty others have done so and who clearly did not join any combatant group and returned back to the UK having committed no crime, either abroad or here"

Hatia - knew Choudhary
through 'community
activism'

In other words, in spite of long-standing fears amongst genuine leaders of the Muslim community in Portsmouth that Choudhary was radicalising young men with a view to encouraging them to join ISIS, Hatia feels he 'has committed no crime'. We have spent some time attempting to find anyone in the Portsmouth Muslim community who agrees with Hatia, but without success. His view is emphatically not representative of the local mosque or the local Muslim community, and it is clear that while he is prominent, he is hardly an acknowledged mouthpiece for anything or anybody other than the hard left.

So what of his links to Mashadur Choudhary? Choudhary had worked previously as a racial harassment case worker for the local authority, which regularly brought him into contact with Hatia's self-appointed status as a 'community activist'. Sources in the Portsmouth Muslim community tell us that Hatia and Choudhary were 'not close, but knew each other fairly well and worked together on various causes'.

Woods - knew Choudhary through
union activities

So what of the other UAF people involved in the 'Stand up to UKIP' event?  Choudhary was a trade union member, which brought him into personal contact with Portsmouth Trades Council president and UAF activist Jon Woods, the organiser of last weeks anti-UKIP protest and the local chairman of UNISON, the union to which Choudhary belonged. A UNISON member in Portsmouth who didn't wish to be named because of career repercussions accused Woods of 'cosying up to the most radical views he could find' and said Woods 'had no wish to be associated with Choudhary now, but didn't have that problem when he thought that Choudhary could help sign up new members to Woods' various causes a few years ago'. Woods is also the Portsmouth North PPC for the TUSC, and previously was closely associated with the SWP in Portsmouth.



Labour PPC Sue Castillon - knew
Choudhary through youth work
in Portsmouth

Finally, of the advertised speakers, we have Sue Castillon, Labour's PPC for Portsmouth North and a Hope not Hate activist. Castillon previously ran two youth schemes in Portsmouth which brought her into frequent contact with Choudhary during his time as a council youth worker. At least 2 of the other Portsmouth men who travelled to Syria to join ISIS may have been known to her, according to our source. Using the Twitter handle @eurosue, she has also frequently shared a platform with both Woods and Hatia as part of their anti-UKIP campaign.

A final twist of irony is that for 6 months, Choudhary was employed as an outreach worker as part of the government's 'Prevent' strategy designed to halt the radicalisation of young Muslims by groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. Choudhary, who is in his 30's, travelled to Syria with a group of young Muslims who, according to media reports, he had encouraged to sign up with ISIS and travel to Syria. His secondment to the Prevent group was organised by the then Liberal Democrat controlled Portsmouth City Council. Former Lib Dem council leader and Portsmouth South PPC Cllr Gordon Vernon-Jackson also attended the launch of the anti-UKIP group.

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 under reports Euro campaign expenditure by £22k on consultants alone

Hope not Hate Ltd director Lowles -
another incorrect return to the
Electoral Commission

We discussed at the beginning of this year about how one way or another Hope not Hate escaped paying £70,000 in VAT after consultants Blue State Digital failed to include the government's slice on their invoices, thus illegally reducing their bills by the then VAT rate of 17.5%.

It now seems that once again Hope not Hate are playing games with BSD invoices on their electoral returns. This year, the company itself appears to escape the taint of scandal which always surrounds Nick Lowles' electoral declarations of expenditure as the interesting bit is the lack of BSD invoices submitted as a part of HnH's overall expenses. Included in this batch are just two, totalling some £14,000. At least this time they contain the appropriate amount of VAT. Blue State Digital, as explained in our earlier article, also provide consultancy services to the Labour Party and several trade unions, and many of the senior management have close links to Labour. In their own publicity material, they boast about how they act only on behalf of 'progressive' causes. Belonging to Euro-fanatic Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP group, BSD sprang from Howard Dean's failed presidential bid in the US, and specialise in running online campaigns.



Blue State Digital - at least they remembered to add VAT

For the European elections, the 'regulated period' of expenditure set by the Electoral Commission ran from January to May this year, and yet HnH have submitted BSD invoices for only March and April. Both of these feature 'Strategic Consulting - European Parliament Elections Retainer' for £ 5166.66 per month, plus VAT. One features monthly technology licensing fees at £900/month, while the other doesn't - did they stop using the technology for campaigning? Did BSD decide they could have it for nothing? - in which case, where is the donation report relating to it? And what happened in January, February, and May? BSD are retained consultants of Hope not Hate, and have historically charged around £6,000/month for their services in addition to the technology fees. HnH's website and e-mail tools are maintained by BSD, and nobody could deny that their website formed a major part of their campaign against UKIP, so why did Lowles fail to declare this expenditure to the Electoral Commission? By our reckoning, Hope not Hate should have included Blue State Digital costs of £36,399.95 in their return rather than the £13,479,98 they actually declared, an under-reporting of £22,919.97.

HnH Witch-in-Chief Ruth Smeeth,
charged with magicking up the
entire campaign with no donations

We're not certain why Hope not Hate submitted such a laughably low return to the Electoral Commission. Despite boasting the 'largest ever' campaign against UKIP including 2.5m leaflets and an 8 page, full colour wrap around on the Daily Mirror, they claim to have spent just over £129,000 during the entire controlled period while receiving no donations whatsoever. If you remove the true cost of their consultants - £36k - then they claim to have run this campaign for just £93,000!! Remove 5/12th of Lowles reported £60k salary - £25k - and the rest of the campaign cost £68,000. Witchcraft, particularly given that they claim to have received no donations in excess of £500 during the controlled period. In the 2010 general election, they claimed expenditure of over £319,000 and a full list of donations from Unions and others for a much smaller campaign.

What we can't quite work out is what the point is of all this. The largest trade unions still admit to funding Hope not Hate - UNISON boast of the 'joint campaign' on their website - so what is the point of pretending that they don't have big money behind them unless it is a trial run ahead of the introduction of the 'Lobbying Act' (the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill) to see what they can reasonably expect to get away with in terms of concealing expenditure and donations from disclosure. We're at a loss as to what the alternatives are, unless they are attempting to play down their 'big money' links as they continue to try and raise un-needed donations from private individuals, but even that would be connected to the Lobbying Act: this was the reason for their 'become a supporter for a quid' campaign.

We're well aware that the Electoral Commission has a history of bullying the smallest boy in the playground, as previous focus on UKIP has proved: most recently, Nigel Farage was fined £200 for failing to specifically declare his constituency office even though it appears on his European Parliamentary declaration, while the Liberal Democrats have still not been forced to return the £2.5m of stolen money they received from a jailed, non-resident donor. Will they act on this? Several people have indicated a willingness to submit complaints and we expect them to be with the Electoral Commission within the week, but we suspect that vested interests within the big unions and the Labour Party will prevent much happening.