Labour links of 'non-political' residents featured in UKIP leaflet

A row erupted in the Manchester Evening News today over the inclusion of three local residents in a photograph used in a UKIP publication. The three residents - Bernard Caine, Irene Lawrence and her daughter Rachel - claimed that the photograph was used without their permission. The article says,

"Mr Caine, who says he has no party political affiliation but on this occasion has picked Labour candidate Mike Kane via postal vote, added: “It is diabolical.”

Irene, 67, said she only went to the meeting because her housing association asked her to go."

That Mr Caine should vote for Labour candidate Mike Kane is not entirely a surprise as they were both directors of the Parkway Green Housing Trust back in 2006/7 and worked closely together. There are a host of other organisations which Mr Caine has occupied senior positions and in which he would have worked closely with Kane.

As for Mrs Lawrence, she is far from a stranger to Mr Kane either. She was a director (for 11 years) and chairman of the Willow Park Housing Trust, and also worked closely with Kane for many years, most recently over the building of a skate park on the estate in 2010 - as featured in the Manchester Evening News which ran the story about their 'lack of political affiliations' while relegating the story about vandalism and theft from the UKIP office to a side bar.

It is not of course just Mike Kane that Bernard Caine has worked with. He was also a fellow director of the Manchester Tenants & Residents Federation Ltd with Labour councillor David Royle.

Now, it may well be true that neither Bernard Caine nor Irene Lawrence belong to the Labour Party, although I have my doubts about their innocence in that regard. Be that as it may, what is undoubtedly clear is that in an area where the Labour Party vote is weighed rather than counted it would be almost impossible to reach the chairmanship of a Housing Trust without having the whole-hearted support of the local Labour administration. Such support would hardly be forthcoming unless it was reciprocated, and they wholeheartedly supported the Labour administration.

It may also go some way to explaining why certain Labour activists were telling those who displayed UKIP posters in the windows of their social housing that they were 'their' houses, and they couldn't display UKIP posters their. Are the housing trusts as corrupt as the Labour administration? We couldn't possibly comment.
 STOP PRESS! :D

Have a look at these two pictures. Is that Bernard Caine - 'local non-political' resident - on the right at a meeting with Mike Kane and Harriet Harman at the beginning of the  by-election campaign? The second picture is definitely of Mr Caine, taken at the funeral of Paul Goggins, the former MP where he was widely quoted, not least by the BBC - "Bernard Caine said Mr Goggins was always there for his constituents" - in a strictly non-political sense.

What would have Peter Mandelson and Nick Griffin working together? Wythenshawe, of course

Whilst doing some digging around, I came across some quite interesting information about the groups currently ranged against UKIP.

In the current Wythenshawe & Sale East by-election, UKIP have seen leaflets put out by a variety of organisations, including Unions Together and Solidarity. There is also a host of online campaigns, including Hope not Hate, Action2014 and British Influence and even a comedy tour, the 'StopUKIP' tour which is currently playing to rows of empty seats across provincial theatres.

There are several interesting points to note about these groups. Firstly, with the exception of Hope not Hate, none of them are registered with the Electoral Commission despite their spending being high enough for registration to be required by law. Search their on-line database, and you won't find entries for Unions Together, Solidarity, Action2014, British Influence or Stop UKIP.

So who are they all?

Hope not Hate we already know: funded by a mixture of unions, central government and outside trusts and campaign bodies such as Peter Mandelson's 'Progress' group and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation - with some help from Lord Ashcroft for their increasing anti-UKIP workload - they are targeted against UKIP. Their on-line campaigning is handled by Blue State Digital, whose political director Gregor Poynton is the husband of Labour MP Gemma Doyle. Poynton was a former employee of the Labour Party. Their managing director, Matthew McGregor, is a former Hope not Hate and Labour Party activist who worked on Ken Livingstone's London Mayoral campaign. Blue State Digital are the company who helped Hope not Hate evade up to £70k in tax as described in an earlier post.

Unions Together are an umbrella groups for political campaigning by trades unions: their membership comprises ASLEF, Bectu, BFAWU, Community, CWU, GMB, MU, NUM, TSSA, UCATT, Unison, UNITE, Unity and USDAW, but of course is dominated by the largest. Ostensibly set up to act as a pressure group within the Labour movement - "we campaign within the Labour Party because we want to help make sure that Labour stands up for the needs of our members" - their forays into electoral politics are relatively recent. A disclaimer at the bottom of their website reads 'website hosted by Blue State Digital'. One of Unions Together's tasks is harvesting of postal vote forms for Labour, as discussed in my previous post: such actions are questionable, if not directly illegal.

Then we have British Influence and Action2014 - the latter being wholly owned and operated by the former. The co-presidents of British Influence are Danny Alexander, Kenneth Clarke and Peter Mandelson, which tells you all you need to know about its political views on Europe and UKIP. British Influence don't use Blue State Digital for their on-line campaigning, they use a company called Mass1. Mass1 include amongst their clients the Labour Party and several unions including the TUC, Unite, GMB and PCS. There are three directors of MASS1, who are:

Mark Epstein - who worked with Blue State Digital director Matthew McGregor on Ken Livingstone's campaign
Tom Gutteridge - who also runs 'The People's Operator', a mobile phone company which donates part of its profits to campaign organisations, and runs a scheme for large unions and campaign organisations including GMB, Unite and the Labour Party
Peter Luff - who is also a director of the European Educational Research Trust Limited, a 'charity' which has failed to file returns with the Charity Commission for over 3 years, and which in 2008 donated almost its entire income to the European Movement.

Finally, we have leaflets put out by "Solidarity". Originally I had assumed that these were from the 'Revolutionary Socialist' group as they were so full of bile against UKIP, but closer examination reveals that the issuer is actually the 'Solidarity Trade Union' set up by the BNP in 2005 and not recognised as a trades union by anyone apart from the BNP. Nowhere on their leaflets does it mention the BNP, and given their attempt at class based attacks they are likely only to be of use to Labour as it tries to pretend it is still interested in the working man. Once again, Labour and the BNP seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

All of these organisations have a single aim in common: to ensure a Labour victory. With the exception of Hope not Hate, none of these organisations are operating legally: they are not registered with the Electoral Commission, and therefore are not entitled to take part in an election as a 'third party'.

So where are the Electoral Commission in all of this? Springing into action? Of course not: nothing has been heard from the organisation which is supposed to police all of this. And how about Hope not Hate? Are they shouting as loudly as they usually do about the BNP's fake trades union? Of course not: there is a deafening silence from Lowles and co.

In some respects, this should be regarded as an accolade. The threat of UKIP in a safe Labour seat has brought together the far-right and the far-left in their attempts to halt the UKIP juggernaut. A plethora of left wing advertising agencies back them up with all the power that the champagne socialists of Islington can muster. In a week, we'll know how well they succeeded.