Jail vow to tackle religious hate

Mr MacAskill said recent events had "scarred and shamed Scotland"

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has promised to introduce tougher laws which crack down on people who shout sectarian abuse in football stadiums or "peddle religious hate" online.

Mr MacAskill said prison sentences of up to five years would be possible under legislation planned by the new Scottish government. The SNP minister said recent events had "scarred and shamed Scotland".

He said he would work to bring in the changes "as soon as possible". Mr MacAskill's comments came after weeks of turmoil in Scottish football. Celtic manager Neil Lennon has been the target of parcel bombs and an assault inside a football ground. These high-profile cases have been accompanied by online hate campaigns against Lennon, a prominent Roman Catholic, and other figures in Scottish football.

Currently people who cause disruption at matches can be charged with breach of the peace, with a maximum one-year sentence. However the new laws would include behaviour that is threatening, abusive, disorderly or offensive, with a maximum jail term of five years.

Mr MacAskill said: "It is unacceptable to carry out sectarian disorder at a football ground or indeed to peddle sectarian hate over the internet or by tweeting. Strong action will be taken. It will be enforced because we cannot go on as we are."

"This is not a victimless crime," Mr MacAskill added. "It does affect people and action has to be taken to protect, not just people, but to protect whole communities and to protect the good name of Scotland in the 21st century."

The justice secretary said the policy was being pursued by Scotland's Solicitor General Frank Mulholland. He said the Scottish Parliament would need to pass new legislation to enforce some of the new proposals, such as dealing with people who posted comments on Twitter or Facebook.

Mr MacAskill said some might consider the new laws "draconian" but action was required to "stamp out" the small minority who carried out this "reprehensible" behaviour. He added: "Within my lifetime we have seen changes where racial epithets have been seen as entirely unacceptable and there are tough laws to enforce it. We have got to make it clear in Scotland in the 21st century that religious epithets and slurs are equally unacceptable."

BBC Scotland

Daddy's little drummer girl

This is Jennifer Matthys, daughter of the British National Party leader Nick Griffin, who is allegedly being groomed to take over from her father when he quits as chairman, dressed in the uniform of an Ulster loyalist "Kick The Pope Band".

Jennifer, who lives in the province so that she can work at the BNP's cash, sorry call centre, was doing more than "playing dress-up" for the cameras. The 24-year-old marched on 12 July along with thousands of others in parades celebrating Protestant ascendency that yearly lead to violent clashes across Northern Ireland between the Catholic and Protestant communities. Many Catholics object to the parades by the Protestant-only Orange Order on the grounds that they are sectarian.

Jennifer, on the far left of the picture, posed seemingly unaware that Searchlight has known for over a year that she is heavily involved in the Goldspring Young Defenders flute band, something that seems at odds with the BNP's supposedly non-sectarian all-embracing love of all things Christian.

Jennifer took the risk of being photographed as she thought she would be safe in the small loyalist village of Ballygowan, despite the fact that many members of the band object to the involvement of both her and family members of Jim Dowson, Nick Griffin's consigliere, who runs the BNP's Belfast call centre and has helped Griffin bring the BNP to its state of insolvency.

In recent years the BNP has attempted to make inroads into the Anglo-Irish community in Britain, partly by distancing itself from its past association with loyalist paramilitaries. In the north west in particular, the party has some high profile Irish members and has even taken to depicting the Irish tricolour on some of its banners.

The truth is, for the diehard BNP, old habits die very, very hard.

We are not identifying Dowson's daughters because of their ages.

Searchlight / HOPE not Hate by Matthew Collins

How sectarian hooligans are killing off Scots far-right

Scottish Defence League members recently met up in Edinburgh

Sectarianism lies behind the failure of the far-right Scottish Defence League to garner any public support in Scotland, its critics have claimed

Opponents of the anti-Islam group said that it was finished north of the border and cited religious bigotry as one of the main factors behind its failure. With the organisation apparently in meltdown, the Sunday Herald can reveal the group has only 25 members. Less than 100 SDL supporters attended a recent rally in Edinburgh where they were outnumbered by a coalition of more than 2,000 anti-fascists.

The rally was only the second time they had protested north of the border, and the low turn-out was in stark contrast to the English Defence League, which attracted more than 1,500 people to its last event in Stoke.

Amid allegations that some members were police informers, the SDL closed its Facebook page after the capital rally and directed supporters to a members-only website with strict instructions that anyone wishing to join must be known by at least two people in the SDL.

The SDL previously claimed it had 800 supporters but the new site lists only 25 members. One member called Mark1690 uses a picture of King William of Orange on a white horse while another uses the moniker God Save Our Queen. The site has a video of Enoch Powell giving his infamous Rivers of Blood speech in 1968. In England, the core of the English Defence League is football hooligan firms who have called an unprecedented nationwide truce to support the movement, but in Scotland this collective agreement has failed to materialise.

The Sunday Herald has learned that casuals who follow Hibernian and Celtic football clubs planned to attack the SDL in Edinburgh because it is made up mainly of protestant Rangers and Hearts football fans.

Members of the Capital City Service, a hooligan group that attaches itself to Hibernian, said Celtic fans had contacted them in advance of the SDL demo and asked to join together. “We were already making our own plans to ambush the SDL. The CCS would never support the SDL,” a CCS member said.

Luke Henderson, of Unite Against Fascism, said sectarianism had undoubtedly played a major part in denting support for the SDL. “The Scottish disease [sectarianism] meant that many football casuals refused to support a right-wing SDL comprising mainly of Rangers fans. There has also been a mass mobilisation against the SDL from the outset in Scotland and we have built a strong activist base.”

David Miller, Professor of Sociology at the University of Strathclyde and founder of the politics website Spinwatch, said that the failure of the SDL to garner support also reflected the political landscape in Scotland.

He said: “I think it is related to the more consensual approach of the political parties in Scotland. The political class in England has not been as united against the EDL. The sight of Tory Annabel Goldie addressing an anti-racist demonstration on Glasgow Green is one obvious contrast. Those associated with the David Cameron leadership in London, especially think-tanks like the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion, have been at the forefront of Muslim baiting and have limited the chances of a common response. There is also more support for the British National Party in England.”

Spinwatch revealed recently that some SDL leaders were members of the British National Party, but this claim was denied by the group.

Casuals United, a nationwide umbrella group of football casuals that supports the English, Scottish and Welsh Defence Leagues, admitted that it had not been possible to unite hooligan “firms” north of the border.

“The Scottish football lads seem unable to forget their differences and cannot get past the sectarian divide. We are speaking to various Scottish firms, trying to unite them, and we will not give up,” said Mickey Smith, a hooligan with Cardiff City’s Soul Crew, and spokesman for Casuals United. His colleague Jeff Marsh, founder of both Casuals United and the Welsh Defence League, was sentenced last week for causing an affray and possessing an offensive weapon. Marsh pleaded guilty and was given a four-month suspended jail term, 150 hours’ community service and ordered to pay £600 costs. He was also banned from football matches for five years.

Marsh was arrested in Cardiff last summer after attacking Celtic fans who had travelled for a friendly match with Cardiff City.

What remains of the SDL remains defiant, however, and the group claimed to have held a small vigil in Lockerbie last week. The meeting had been scheduled for March 27 in response to Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill’s decision to release Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi but was brought forward.

An SDL spokesman said: “The reason we changed the date was simple, we had no interest in bringing disorder and the red fascist circus to this lovely Scottish town. We wanted to remember those who were murdered [in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103] with dignity and without left-wing fascists charging around the town looking for confrontation.”

It was also claimed that EDL supporters were in discussions about visiting Northern Ireland for the annual July 12 Orange parades. The claim was made by the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, but denied by Alan Lake, an EDL leader in London, who said he had no knowledge of a Northern Ireland connection.

A spokesman for the Orange Order said anyone intent on violence should not travel to parades in Northern Ireland.

“Our parades celebrate our culture and tradition and are enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people across Northern Ireland. Anyone who wishes to attend these parades for other reasons than to celebrate Orangeism is not welcome,” he said.

The Rangers Worldwide Alliance, an official global network of supporters clubs, was contacted but declined to comment.

Sunday Herald

Beware “the Lure of Rome”: BNP writer says Catholics are the “Anti-Christ” and “Satanic”

“There can be no fellowship with Rome: for once the Protestant Church is entangled in the web there is no escape, for sudden destruction will come upon it. Jesus came to give life, but Antichrist Rome administers the kiss of death ... There must be no compromise with Rome, and no appearance of compromise”

- BNP activist and writer Colin Farquhar

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Hexapla. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

The Kiss of Death

In our fourth article on anti-Catholic bigotry within the BNP, we expose the rancid anti-Catholic article, The Death Kiss of Rome on the Protestant Church, written by BNP activist Colin Farquhar. The BNP does well to hide its anti-Catholic bigots in the sectarian closet. But, every so often those bigots manage to prise open the closet’s door in order to propagate their message of sectarian hate fused with extreme race-based nationalism. Before we carry on, our previous articles on BNP anti-Catholicism are below:

BNP accuses Catholics of “heresy” and “blasphemy”

The Whore of Revelation and the BNP speaker who wants to destroy Catholics

BNP candidate in anti-Catholic claims: the indefatigable Alan Girvan strikes again!

Colin Farquhar pops up every so often in the letters section of the Northern Echo newspaper to tell readers of the benefits of a BNP-ruled Britain (only to be rebuked by other readers for his political propaganda. See link). But, Colin Farquhar does not tell readers that he, along with a fair number of BNP members, harbour a distinct anti-Catholic streak. Indeed, Colin Farquhar is quite notable for his anti-Catholic activism. Back in 2002, Colin Farquhar personally hosted the anti-Catholic preacher Pastor Frank W. Dowsett of The Covenant Vision Ministry in his tour of Britain.

The whore of Babylon

In highly emotive and polemical language, BNP writer Colin Farquhar provides a perverted reading of the Bible’s Book of Revelation when he condemns the Catholic faith as the fabled whore of Babylon or as he puts it, “the harlot Mother Church of Rome”. This provides Colin Farquhar with the justification to denounce aspects of Catholic belief as “totally false” and a “sham”.

Catholics kill and torture Protestants

Unfortunately, history can be a political tool, malleable in the hands of extremists and bigots. Indeed, BNP writer Colin Farquhar shows this is the case: he reifies Christian history by compressing it into a dubious sectarian metanarrative that transposes Catholics as the historical persecutors of their Protestant counterparts:

“When we remember the origins of this church, from as far back as the tower of Babel in Babylon; and the countless idolatrous and blasphemous satellite churches of Rome; and those millions of Protestants that have been tortured and slaughtered by this same church, is there need to say more?”

Colin Farquhar goes on to condemn his fellow Protestant believers who fail to give countenance to his rather scurrilous reading of western Europe’s fraught history of Catholic-Protestant relations:

“However, in defiance of historical fact, Protestants continue to succumb to the Lure of Rome”

The European Union: an evil Catholic plot against the UK and Protestantism

How does Colin Farquhar’s ‘historical fact’ play out? Like his fellow BNP writer and activist, Alan O’Reilly, Colin Farquhar claims that the European Union is an evil Catholic plot to destroy Britain and the Protestant faith:

“An up-to-date example of the attraction of evil is the fascination of our leaders with Europe and their willingness to sacrifice the independence and self-sufficiency of our great nation as they lust for power in the forthcoming Superstate of Europe ... As our politicians are transfixed with the political manifestation of Rome, that of Europe, so our church leaders are enchanted with the ecclesiastical manifestation, the Roman Catholic Church. This great edifice of unimaginable wealth, pomp and splendour has caused so many of our church leaders to capitulate to the grandeur and influence of this mighty satanic institution. What power and authority could be theirs if only they bow the knee to Papa”

Of course Colin, of course. Do keep up the good work; you chaps in the BNP are doing a sterling job.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is a Catholic agent in service of the anti-Christ

Colin Farquhar’s ‘historical fact’ also plays itself out in a different way. Perniciously, Colin Farquhar’s conspirital pen drubs the collective leadership of the Protestant faith as irredeemable traitors:

“Today we are experiencing a similar betrayal by the leaders of our Protestant Churches. Not only are they willing to come under the authority of Rome but they move heaven and earth to take as many with them as they can. The Reformers and great Christian leaders of the past identified the Roman Church as the Church of Antichrist. Antichrist they believed was to be found in the succession of Popes. The term ‘anti’ in this sense meaning ‘another’. The Popes therefore, each in turn were Antichrist, or in other words Another-Christ”

But, BNP writer Colin Farquhar reserves especial venom for the admirable head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams:

“Haven’t we just witnessed this crawling to Rome of our present Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams? He just the other week in his attempt to promote ecumenical relations knelt before the Pope and kissed the ring on his hand as the Cardinals present chuckled with delight at their moment of triumph. There was the representative of the Protestant Church of Great Britain submitting himself in subservience to the Antichrist. What shameful behaviour: if ever a man deserves to be removed from office, it is he. The treachery of such an act is unbelievable considering how his predecessor Archbishop Cranmer was burnt at the stake at the hands of this same church. Where were the voices of condemnation within the Protestant Church, and the calls for his resignation for this and other issues that have brought disgrace on the church and dishonour to the Lord?”

Anti-sectarianism is evil! The “curse” of ecumenism

It is clear that BNP writer Colin Farquhar, without a doubt, burns Archbishop Rowan Williams at the metaphorical stake. This is the fate of those brave individuals who attempt to cross the bridge of sectarian difference and apathy. This is the process of what is known as ‘ecumenism’. And, it is something that Colin Farquhar, tout court sectarian extremist, loathes. In the most strident terms, Colin Farquhar denounces attempts to reconcile sectarian difference as yet another wicked Catholic trick to debase Protestantism:

“In my youth .. union with other denominations was inconceivable ... Yet the process of ecumenism is centuries old and no surprise to the Roman church, for this baby was conceived in the Vatican. It is part of the Jesuit Counter-Reformation plot to cause the downfall of the Protestant church and to bring the whole world under the domain of the Pope. For the Reformation was such a deadly blow to the apostate ‘Mother Church’ of Rome”

Thus, for Colin Farquhar anti-sectarianism is a “curse”. Based on this twisted logic, hate must be, conversely, a blessing. This perhaps explains why Colin Farquhar, and others like him, are members of the BNP. After all, the BNP rejoices in its own form of race-based anti-ecumenism to which it can add an anti-Catholic component. The wicked have truly inherited the earth.

Convert those wayward satanic Catholics

It is only the chosen few like Colin Farquhar who are endowed with racially-privileged spiritual insight. The Catholics are heathens whose lost souls must be prayed for. As Colin Farquhar concludes in his childish article:

“Let us be faithful witnesses toward Catholic people and others that are carried along by deceitful and deadly satanic organisations and institutions. Let us be diligent in prayer that God will be merciful toward them that the light of the gospel might shine in their lives and dispel all darkness and falsehood. Let us warn them especially regarding the deceitfulness, error and darkness of the Antichrist Roman Catholic Church; and those organisations such as the World Council of Churches and Churches Together that seek to bring about unity with this Satanic institution”

Conclusion

Colin Farquhar’s sectarianism is little more than an exercise in unapologetic hate. Should he be condemned, refuted or pitied? I leave it to the reader to answer this question. But, regardless of who you are - Catholic or Protestant, Christian or non-Christian, believer or atheist - we must all make the stand against fascism, racism and sectarianism. This is our common truth that binds us all irrespective of our backgrounds. It is only through our individual and collective apathy that the BNP can succeed. And, we should never let this happen.

¡No Pasarán!