Organisations from the left of the political spectrum protested outside Hove Town Hall last night, Monday June 3, where Nigel Farage MEP, the leader of Ukip was speaking.
Groups present included: Brighton, Hove & District Trades Union Council, Sussex Labour Representation Committee, PCS South East Region, PCS DWP East Sussex Branch, Brighton University UCU, Brighton Defend the NHS, Brighton Queers Against the Cuts, Brighton Love Music Hate Racism, Varndean College Against the Cuts, Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Brighton International Socialism Network, Brighton Socialist Resistance, Brighton SWP, Brighton UAF and West Sussex Coast UAF.
The protestors were noisy but good tempered. Ukip supporters were welcomed with chants of “racist scum”, “homophobes” and “where are you Nigel” as they arrived at the meeting.
Policing of the event was very low key.
UKIP has become the natural home for disenchanted right wing Tories and have been outspoken opponents of Equal Marriage.
UKIPS views on homophobia as researched by Brighton Unite Against Fascism include:
In December 2012 The Guardian reported Farage’s links with anti-gay, far-right European politicians amid claims he backed a populist Polish priest who describes homosexual men as “sodomites”. More recently, The Pink News reported Farage as saying he would not expel UKIP members for voicing “old-fashioned” views about homosexuality, including those who describe it as “disgusting”.
UKIPS views on xenophobia and racism as researched by Brighton Unite Against Fascism include:
According the Daily Mirror (May 18) Ukip’s leader on Lincolnshire Council and East Midlands Chair, wrote: “Have you noticed that if you rearrange the letters in ‘illegal immigrants’, and add just a few more letters, it spells, ‘Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, non-English-speaking ********* and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-********, raghead ******** with you.’ He also objected to foreign doctors working in the NHS writing: “We don’t want them taking all the jobs in the local community and we certainly don’t want them working in our hospitals!” The Mirror story also reported UKIP’s party Chair in Bury writing of Barack Obama: “I bet he’s a closet ‘Imam’ as well! ”If I ever see him on a Greyhound bus wearing a rucksack, I’m getting off!!” During the council elections last month a Ukip candidate in East Sussex was suspended after reportedly posting anti-Semitic comments on a conspiracy theory website including a claim that the second world war was “engineered by the Zionist” (The Guardian 26th April). A UKIP candidate in Kent, referred to risk of tuberculosis after barriers to Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants are lifted next year on his blog “I would suggest not going to London after January 2014 unless you absolutely have to and if you do, adopt the Japanese practice of wearing a face mask,” (Daily Telegraph 26th April) and there are reports of BNP and EDL members joining UKIP. The chair of the Hillingdon UKIP branch boasted on his blog that he “joined my friends from March for England to tag along on the EDL Tower Hamlets demonstration”.
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