Motherwell fans' sickening Nazi salutes at event to launch book on 'SS' hooligans

Grinning fans did Nazi salutes outside an SPL ground to mark the launch of a book glorifying football hooligans.

The notorious Motherwell Saturday Service - who call themselves the “SS” - organised the stunt on the steps at Fir Park. Last night, club bosses were examining the sick images and discussing whether to launch an investigation.

The SS initially hired a room at Fir Park for the launch of the book Dressers. But club bosses got wind of it and cancelled the bash. The ragtag bunch still managed to hold the event at the independent Fir Park Social Club, opposite Motherwell FC’s ground. Around 140 of the group posed for photos on the steps outside the Phil O’Donnell stand, with some doing “sieg heil” salutes.

Motherwell FC stressed that the event took part in the social club, which has no links to the football club. A spokesman said: “We are trying to be Scotland’s premier family andcommunity club and we are trying to portray a message that this the club is all welcoming to everybody – families and children. We condemn football violence in the highest possible way.”

The club do not know if the people at the event were regular fans. The spokesman added: “We don’t know any of these people. Because it’s outside the ground, it makes itdifficult for us to do anything. People can walk up and do anything.”

The spokesman added that the event was booked simply as a “book launch”. He said: “The club found out what the book involved was and cancelled the booking and told them to seek alternative premises. That was in the middleof the week leading up to the event.”

The Motherwell SS were named in tribute to Hitler’s ruthless Schutzstaffel squad, who carried out some of the worst atrocities of World War II. SS is also the initials of the name given for the book’s author, Stanley Smith. Promotional blurb for the book brazenly tells how it “chronicles the rise of one of Scotland’s original football casual groups, pioneering the fashion that was to become central to the Saturday afternoon fracas in town centres and at football grounds all over Scotland”.

Fir Park Social Club did not respond to repeated requests to comment.

Daily Record

Thanks to Anon for the heads-up

Nazi vandal shock in park

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Mindless vandals have daubed a park with Nazi slogans and signs in the week the country stops to remember its war dead.

A shelter in Anchorsholme Park has been painted with swastikas – the terrifying symbol of the German Nazi Party who were responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War – and the Nazi salute of sieg heil, meaning hail victory. The party, led by Adolf Hitler, was the main fighting force against British troops during the war, and with Remembrance Day on Friday, the graffiti has left one resident disgusted with the vandals.

Jamie Young, from Anchorsholme, said: “I think it’s very offensive being less than a week until Remembrance Day. We have had so many problems in this part of town next to the Norbreck Castle Hotel and it has been a problem for a number of years. It almost seems the police and the council are powerless to deal with the issue and it’s most times of the day.”

Mr Young claims the area has issues with school children coming to the area at their lunch and causing trouble. He added: “It was only ten days ago a group of kids had a fight in the park. It’s a nightmare. It used to be really nice round here but it has gone downhill.”

Ian Coleman, president of Blackpool’s Royal British Legion branch, delivered a petition to Downing Street last week to lobby the Government to hand out stronger punishments to those defacing war memorials. He told The Gazette: “They can have no idea about what harm they’re doing if they lived through the war. Millions and millions of people lost their lives under that swastika sign and it should never rear its head again, especially in this country. Now I find out our locals are doing this and I find it abhorrent.”

Mr Coleman is now calling on schools to do more to educate people about the evils of the Nazis. He added: “This isn’t just graffiti, it’s a slight on anyone who died from this country and it’s a slap in the face for anyone who stands up for democracy. It’s a lack of understanding and education, possibly through schools and their own families not passing down what has happened.

“Education is a must because millions of people were killed under that swastika and so many more suffered soul-destroying injuries.”

Blackpool Gazette

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Nazi salutes amid fiasco for EDL’s so-called ‘Angels’

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Angels Demo Degenerates into Homophobic Abuse and Nazi Salutes

The first national mobilisation by the English Defence League’s so-called “Angels” women’s division presented a farcical spectacle at Downing Street [last week], with women EDL members heavily outnumbered by men.

The EDL is an organisation of racists and fascists – and its “Angels” division is no exception – so UAF organised a counter-protest, led by women antifascists. But when the so-called ‘Angels’ arrived, they were only around 100-strong, despite pulling in EDL members from as far away as Coventry – and only around 15 or 20 of them were women!

The true nature of the EDL was on display as one of the fascists gave Hitler’s “sieg heil” salute.

On the counter-protest, women antifascists made up a majority of demonstrators, with young women, trade unionists and pensioners, black, white and Asian, all determined to voice their opposition to the racists and fascists of the EDL.

The national banner of the PCS civil servants’ union, RMT rail union flags, and banners and placards from women’s groups were on proud display on the upbeat and noisy UAF counter-protest. As it became clear that the “Angels” had failed to show on what was supposededly their own demo, the antifascsists began to chant “Where are the women?” and “Where’s your angels gone?” alongside “Black and white, unite and fight” and “EDL go to hell, take your Nazi mates as well”.

The overwhelmingly male EDL members showed what they really think of women – and gave the lie to their claims to support LGBT people – with chants of “lesbian scum” and “back to the kitchen”. Individual antifascist women were called “dykes” by EDL members in a further display of sexism and homophobia.

The EDL’s poisonous politics have nothing to offer women – or men. Last Saturday’s fiasco shows what a lie it is when the EDL claims to support women’s rights.

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Pics by Kelvin Williams

Unite Against Fascism

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Stetchford soldier in "Nazi" picture storm admits being in BNP

BNP soldier Anthony Phipps still AWOL

A runaway Birmingham soldier condemned as a “Nazi” broke his silence to insist he would give himself up within days

BNP member Anthony Phipps, aged 21 and from Stechford, went on the run after being accused of having a tattoo in honour of the Third Reich and of making Sieg Heil-style salutes in internet pictures. Despite criticism of his political views, Phipps insisted: “I’m not a racist or a Nazi.”

Speaking as he laid low in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the Iraq veteran added: “I do follow the BNP, that I don’t deny. But I didn’t join it to be racist. I can’t go back to the Army because I feel threatened.”

Phipps, a member of 3 Mercian Regiment (Staffs), said he fled his barracks in Fallingbostel, Germany, last weekend after a Sunday newspaper revealed pictures of his “Nazi tattoo”, which was originally posted on social networking website Facebook. He was also being hunted by Military Police officers and the Ministry of Defence urged him to give himself up. Phipps said he would hand himself over to the authorities within days. But he claimed the coverage he had received had made it “impossible” to return to his military duties.

“They’ve put me at risk and my family,” he said.

Phipps’s sister Andrea, a 24-year-old mum-of-two, said the picture of him appearing to make Nazi salutes was taken out of context.

She said: “He’s far from a Nazi. The photo was taken at his grandma’s funeral. They were pointing to a picture of his grandma. So what if he is a member of the BNP? He has every right to express his views. He’s a soldier fighting for his country and people are stabbing him in the back. It’s not fair.”

But Hall Green Labour MP Steve McCabe said: “Membership of the BNP is inconsistent with the values of the British Armed Forces. Army personnel are supposed to uphold the values of the Crown and the BNP’s views conflict with those.”

An MoD spokesman said Army personnel were allowed to join political parties as long as their membership did not “conflict with core values and standards”. The spokesman added: “Members of the Armed Forces are entitled to their beliefs provided their practice does not conflict with the Services’ core values and standards. Soldiers who are AWOL are urged to contact their units and to make arrangements to return to military service of their own accord.

“Advice is available from the Services Confidential Support Line – 0800 731 4880. Safeguards have been put in place to ensure those arrested are treated in a sensitive manner. There are many reasons why service personnel go absent and all absentees are afforded Army welfare and duty of care provisions upon return.”

Birmingham Mail

Giving the BNP air-time

The question of how best to deal with the British National Party raised its head again earlier this week with the news BNP leader Nick Griffin will be asked to appear on Question Time in October.

The arguments for and against the BBC’s decision range from giving the BNP enough rope to hang themselves and starving them and their supporters of the oxygen of publicity; the optimum solution, as always, being a combination of the two.

Groups like Searchlight, Hope Not Hate and Unite Against Fascism work tirelessly on the latter, disrupting BNP activity, squaring up to them and campaigning against them on the doorstep, street-by-street and town-by-town, often at great personal risk - some even receiving death threats from the “democratic” BNP.

Forensic analysis of their policies and line-by-line rebuttals of their lies, however, have been less prevalent, enabling the BNP’s racist propaganda to go virtually unchallenged, though steps are, belatedly, being taken to rectify this. Last month Quilliam, the counter-extremism think tank, published a report cataloguing the BNP’s raft of anti-Islamic smears and quashing them.

The third part of the strategy takes us back to the media, and how best they should cover the BNP. This is probably the most important aspect, with the press in particular conducting many in-depth investigations into the BNP. A recent example of this is News of the World’s exposé of a BNP “family festival” in August which revealed the true face of the BNP.

Among the shocking incidents which took place included gollywogs being thrown onto braziers; people throwing wet sponges at a man in a Barack Obama mask locked in stocks; BNP officers making speeches describing Jadaism and Islam as “cancers”; BNP supporters giving “Sieg Heil” salutes; BNP members threatening an anti-Fascist protester with hammers and axes; skinheads boating of how they’d driven black families out of their villages… the list goes on and on.

The media at its best, but the BBC’s invite to Nick Griffin to take a seat on their flagship news and current affairs programme will be considered by many to be totally unacceptable. The BBC have already given Griffin countless platforms to spout his bile, from Newsnight interviews to radio phone-ins, but Question Time, Question Time, in front of a live studio audience???

Inside Desi