What McFadden did not realise at the time was that he was not being punched but stabbed. "I think it went on for a couple of minutes before I managed to get the door closed. I turned round and my daughter was screaming. It was only then, as I put my hand to my face and felt the blood, that I realised what had happened."
The attack, which left the long-time union activist with serious injuries, was the latest and most violent incident in a campaign of intimidation that has been waged against opponents of the far right in the UK over the past five years. Like hundreds of people who have spoken out against the rise of the British National Party and other extremist groups, McFadden's picture and home address have been collected by far right activists and posted on a website called Redwatch.
The site, which has links with the neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18 and a host of European fascist organisations, is hosted in the US but registered and run from the UK. It lists the personal details and shows the photographs of anti-racists - many taken during protests against the British National Party - alongside the slogan: "Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes." This month a delegation of MPs and union activists will visit the Home Office to call for the site to be closed down. It is a familiar refrain and in the past officials have argued that because the site is hosted abroad, there is nothing they can do. However, Redwatch's sister site in Poland, which was also hosted in the US, was recently closed down after collaboration between authorities in the the two countries, and Home Office minister Vernon Coaker has agreed to champion the campaign within government.
Redwatch was launched in 2001 and takes its name from a Combat 18 newsletter produced in London in the 1990s. For the first few years it was just another online talking shop for hardline racists and fascists, offensive and unpleasant but apparently not dangerous. However, in April 2003, those behind the site signalled that Redwatch meant business. Leeds school teachers Sally Kincaid and Steve Johnson had been involved in local campaigns against the BNP and other far-right groups for years. Then their personal details appeared on Redwatch following a demonstration they had attended in the Pudsey area of the city. A couple of weeks later they suffered a fire-bomb attack at their home, which left their car burned out.
The incident was a turning point. Those featured on Redwatch were no longer being subjected to threats and harassment but to physical attacks. In the months that followed, journalists, politicians and local anti-racist activists were listed on the website. Among those targeted was Peter Lazenby, a journalist on the Yorkshire Evening Post, whose picture now adorns the front page of the site. He has been a long-time opponent of the far right, and has won awards for his reports on the BNP, which gained its first councillor in Leeds in May.
"In some ways being on Redwatch is recognition that as a journalist you must be doing something right," says Lazenby. "But my overriding feeling is one of anger and resentment that these people feel free to try and intimidate me and my colleagues and threaten us with violence. There is a personal impact on your life. When it first happened, I didn't take much notice - I'd been getting threats of one kind or another from far right groups since I started reporting on them in the 1970s. But then they got hold of an old address of mine and I thought that wasn't fair on the people who had moved in, so I warned them and contacted the police."
West Yorkshire officers took the threats seriously and advised Lazenby to improve his personal security, telling him to vary his route home from work. "I have been on that site since it started and, apart from verbal attacks in the street, nothing has happened to me yet. But every time you hear of an attack it really makes you think. A young man whose details went up after he was spotted delivering anti-fascist leaflets was badly beaten. Then there was the stabbing [of McFadden] over on Merseyside, and there are plenty of other cases that don't make the papers. Each time an attack happens, it pulls you up. But you can't let it influence your work, you have to keep going."
The threat to reporters has grown steadily since Redwatch was launched. In most cases it follows a similar pattern. A newspaper reports on the activities of the BNP or other far right groups, then journalists' details appear on the site, and threats and intimidation follow. According to the National Union of Journalists, reporters who have published "fair, accurate and professional stories" on the BNP and other far right organisations have been targeted in Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Sunderland, Birmingham and Cardiff. The website even has a new section dedicated to "red journalists".
Campaigns of intimidation are also being waged against local anti-racist activists. "We sometimes find that, although a lot of people are worried about the far right in their area, they don't want to get involved because they are concerned about intimidation," says Nick Lowles of anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, "and that is due in part to Redwatch and the threats and violence that come with it."
The racists and fascists behind Redwatch are not deterred by the campaign to close the site. A notice on the homepage reads: "Due to a hysterical campaign by Marxist moaners against Redwatch, we use several domain names and multiple servers for this site." It adds: "While it is time to be legal we must stolidly endure whatever the puppets of the capitalist state see fit to inflict upon us, and when it is time to revolt we must be prepared to unleash all the furies of hell."
Sympathisers claim Redwatch is little more than an act of self-defence, insisting that they are only doing what anti-fascist campaigners who monitor the activities of rightwingers have been doing for years. But Lowles says this is a dangerous myth: "This is absolute rubbish. There is no anti-racist equivalent to this site. There is nothing that lists home details of fascists and certainly nothing that encourages attacks on them. Redwatch is not an act of revenge but something altogether more sinister. It is designed to intimidate and harass anti-racists and anti-fascists to the point where the individuals targeted no longer campaign against fascist groups. It is political intimidation and classic fascism."
The British National Party, under its leader Nick Griffin, has tried to distance itself from Redwatch - the blatant intimidation and violence sits uncomfortably with its attempt to portray itself as a mainstream, democratic party. But despite official denials, some anti-racist activists say their pictures have been taken by members of the BNP only to appear on Redwatch a few days later. "I was campaigning against the BNP before the local elections," says Carl Morphett from Kirklees in West Yorkshire, which now has three BNP councillors. "We were photographed by two BNP members in Yorkshire and a day later we appeared on Redwatch. There is no doubt that the BNP uses this site to try and intimidate people - to suggest anything else is ludicrous."
The BNP strenuously denies the claim. Yesterday a spokesman for the party said: "We are not involved, we have absolutely nothing to do with Redwatch at all." He added that, as far as he knew, no individual members had taken pictures that had subsequently appeared on the site. "If they are doing so, they should not be doing so."
Six months after the attack on the Leeds schoolteachers, an investigation by the Guardian and Searchlight shed light on the true nature of Redwatch, uncovering a secret hitlist of targets, including social workers, journalists and politicians. Only a handful of known neo-Nazis had access to the secure email network that listed the names and addresses of targets as well as plans for attacks on anti-racists in their homes or during public meetings. One subscriber, who called himself Mole Intelligence Bureau, wrote: "Redwatch has accumulated many names and addresses, along with pictures of the targets, many of whom have had nothing done to them. Now's the time to start a proper campaign of violence and intimidation towards those who seek to see us silenced or imprisoned for our beliefs."
One of the targets was Lazenby and numerous addresses were posted on the site for members to "check out". One message read: "We need to find this reporter fast. If we can scare this cunt off, then we might get an easier time instead of being slagged off and made to look a bunch of muppets." In another message, posted by a BNP supporter from Batley, the people behind Redwatch are asked if they will be attending an anti-racist meeting in Dewsbury in June. The event, which was addressed by Leon Greenman, a Holocaust survivor, was described as a "Holohoax meeting". One respondent advised: "The best place to attack the reds [is] just after the meeting finishes as they are walking to catch their buses or going for their cars."
The network listed dozens of people "for further research", including the divisional police commanders for Dewsbury and Huddersfield, the chief executive of Kirklees Council, the director of a West Yorkshire health authority and housing officers. For many anti-fascists this was final proof that Redwatch represented a serious threat. Known neo-Nazis with violent criminal pasts were planning to step up their campaign of intimidation and were planning attacks against specific targets. The evidence was passed to the then Home Secretary David Blunkett and officials declared that action was imminent. But after examining the details, the Home Office again said that because the site was hosted in the US there was little they could do - listing public information online is not a crime and the website is full of disclaimers.
Following an initial meeting in August with a delegation of MPs, trade unionists and anti-racists, Coaker agreed to champion the cause. According to Home Office officials, he is in discussion with senior police officers, and contact has also been made with the US authorities to see if it is possible to take joint action. That appeared to come a step closer recently when it emerged that a new legal opinion published in the US argues that the site is not protected under the first amendment. In a separate development, anti-racist campaigners say they have identified the main Redwatch organiser and have passed his details to the police.
But while the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic "look again", the intimidation goes on. Since the knife attack, McFadden has received a letter and a phone call warning him that if Redwatch is closed down his children will be shot. Liverpool Liberal Democrat councillor and anti-racist campaigner Robbie Quinn received death threats against him and his family after his details were posted on the site, as did singer Alun Parry, who has been targeted for performing at a refugee benefit concert.
Angela Eagle, who is the MP for Wallasey, McFadden's home constituency, and whose photograph also appears on the front page of Redwatch, argues that the website represents an unacceptable threat to people's democratic right to free speech. "The powers are available to take action against this site. What we desperately need now is the political will." Lazenby says there is growing frustration that Redwatch is still up and running. "I feel a degree of anger against the authorities that they have done nothing about this site. They have said repeatedly that there is nothing that can be done, but I simply don't believe them. We have quite rightly managed to close down paedophile sites and others that are deemed unacceptable, and I am sure that if Redwatch was targeting the richest 100 people in the country, it would be swiftly dealt with".
websites such as Redwatch.Home Office minister Vernon Coaker met with MPs and trade unionists yesterday in the wake of the latest incident, in which anti-fascist campaigner Alec McFadden, the president of the Merseyside TUC, was stabbed in the face after his details were listed on the Redwatch site.
Redwatch carries photographs of people it identifies as "traitors" - those opposed to racism and fascism - and seeks their addresses, telephone numbers and car registration numbers.
The personal details of politicians, trade unionists and journalists responsible for exposing the activities of extreme right-wing groups are listed with the slogan: "Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes."
Two years ago, the Guardian revealed that many of those featured on Redwatch had already suffered threats, intimidation and violence. A secret hitlist of targets on a secure email network attached to the site was uncovered and passed to the government.
A message on the website says that, while it is currently "time to be legal", activists must be prepared to revolt, at which point they will "unleash all the furies of hell on the capitalist state and its puppets".
Successive home secretaries have been repeatedly urged to close the site down and the police have drawn criticism from anti-fascist campaigners for not using powers already at their disposal.
Angela Eagle is the MP for Wallasey, Mr McFadden's home constituency, and her photograph appears on the front page of the Redwatch website, alongside that of the Yorkshire Evening Post journalist Peter Lazenby.
Ms Eagle attended yesterday's meeting and told the Home Office minister that the police were failing to do their job under incitement to violence legislation.
"There has been a lack of action by police and now ministers have undertaken to try and sort it out by getting a more coherent police response. The site is registered by two UK and one US citizen and the police know who they are", she said.
Ms Eagle added: "A Liberal Democrat councillor from Liverpool has had death threats and they threatened to burn his house down. This is illegal, yet the police are not acting on it. Police are very good at acting after something has happened. They are not so good at prevention."
A Home Office spokeswoman confirmed that Mr Coaker, who has responsibility for internet crime, would meet with representatives from the Association of Chief Police Officers on Monday.
"The meeting will discuss a strategy and we will be taking it forward," the spokeswoman said.
"Mr Coaker thinks that the existing legislative framework is sufficient to deal with the problem. Where violence is being incited, it is a criminal offence. If the website hosting the material in the UK, or is being operated in the UK or by individuals in the UK, then those responsible may be prosecuted."
Until now, there were doubts that the website could be closed down because it is hosted in the US.
But news that Redwatch's sister site in Poland has been shut down following cooperation between police there and in the US has given the government new hope.
UK ministers confirmed earlier this week they were in touch with the US authorities in relation to the UK site.
Should journalists, bloggers and activists be held responsible for what others do with the facts they make public?
Freedom of speech, when you agree with the speech in question, is an easy, black-and-white issue. Redwatch, however, is more of a grey area. Variously described as a far-right site (the BBC) or Nazi hate site, (Angela Eagle MP), it is a deeply unpleasant place, which sets its aggressive tone instantly with a crosshairs cursor and a banner ad for its sub-site, "Noncewatch". The ad consists of a single word, in blood red, complete with dangling nooses.
Redwatch is unquestionably the work of far-right, even fascistic individuals who seem to have very little regard for either the arguments of their political opponents or those individuals themselves.
Even though the site has been around for a few years, it is only in recent months that it has come under attack from politicians. Questions have been asked in the house about the UK site, and the home secretary, John Reid, is said to be investigating means of silencing it. Why? Because, according to pretty much all who have commented on the case, the website, mirrored on various servers and domains worldwide, incites violence.
The problem with this accusation is that the website very definitely, and very carefully, does not.
Redwatch's extensive disclaimer states several times that the information provided on the site is for informational purposes; that it is for lawful uses. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? But the information itself is certainly lawful: the website is essentially an archive of publicly available information, tied in to some photographs and biographical detail of political activists. Names, addresses, photos from demonstrations and newspaper reports: nothing, on the face of it, that could not be gathered from perfectly legal activities such as watching demonstrations and trawling the electoral roll.
There is, of course, plenty of abusive comment and argument that expresses contempt for the political views and activities of individuals. But there's no law against that.
So, sure, the site is offensive to anyone who is not a fan of the BNP or their ilk, but that's not a crime, and there is nothing that you could term criminal on the pages: no threats and no encouragement to violence. In fact, where an affiliated Polish site in the Redwatch network has directly threatened left-leaning journalists, action was taken. That site, hosted on Arizona servers, was shut down by the FBI last week.
It is true to say that activists named by the UK site have been attacked - hence the fuss in the Commons. But there is no smoking gun pointing at Redwatch. Without threats, without direct incitement, it looks as if Redwatch is acting within the law. Almost certainly, however, the same cannot be said of some of its readers, who in my opinion probably do break the law; who do assault and intimidate and knife.
So does that mean that the site should be banned and its authors prosecuted? Well, how can it be? Will the electoral roll be in the dock next to them? Will any local paper that reports the details of a far-left protest face similar prosecution? If simply publishing names and addresses were viewed as criminal in itself, where would we be?
Banning websites that hold legal material, collected legally and legally presented, but which may be used for criminal purposes, would set a lousy precedent. But it would also be counterproductive.
For example, here is another that collects personal but publicly available information about political activists; that urges readers to collect more information and contribute it; that publishes photos of opposition activists and describes them in hateful language; that encourages readers to confront and oppose these guys in every way possible, to "smash" their organisation. This is stopthebnp.com, the sister site of Searchlight. In its declared function - keeping track of the BNP and identifying its activists and leaders - it is an almost exact mirror of Redwatch. And it is very hard to see how one could, or should, be banned, but not the other.
This story does not end with the mutual hatred of far right and far left. The affair brings to mind the fuss a few years back over a US anti-abortion website, the Nuremberg Files. Again, no threats were on the site; it was simply a list of names and addresses of doctors who carried out abortions, intended, said the site authors, for lawful purposes such as letter-writing campaigns, and also to form the core of a future legal case for genocide (hence the "Nuremburg" tag). But when some of the doctors were murdered, and their names slashed out on the site, the suggested connection was too much for some. Despite the lack of illegal threats, the site was taken down and the authors prosecuted under a racketeering act. Appeals are still dragging on, and I suspect that eventually the judgment will be declared unconstitutional and the site will go back up.
Here in the UK, animal rights protestors have also been targeted by police in recent months for collecting and suggesting that they would distribute publicly available information about the directors and shareholders of companies that experiment on animals or export livestock. Again, those who publish the information are not being targeted because of what they have done but because of what others might do with that data.
This isn't just a slippery slope: it is practically a greased helter-skelter. Would pages from a phone book constitute an offence under this logic? What about going to Companies House with a notebook?
Some years ago, I spent a few days laboriously HTML-ing small stories from the newsletter Green Anarchist that had themselves been gathered from local papers around the country. These detailed arson attacks on, mostly, businesses associated with animal exports or foxhunting. The editors of Green Anarchist had been jailed for inciting arson by republishing that material. Now, in solidarity with the jailed citizen/journalists, and to publicise their case, I was keen to republish it. They were eventually released on appeal (although via a legal technicality rather than on grounds of freedom of the press), but the case still left the law in an unsatisfactory state that is worsening week by week as the blogger blurs the line between journalist and activist.
Can a journalist, blogger or activist really be held responsible for the individual actions of a reader when all the reader gets is the bare bones of a story - the who, what, where, when and why - and decides on his own course of action? When the writers in question are former Combat 18 members or animal rights obsessives, perhaps the mass media feels they are fair game; that their perceived motive outweighs their rights.
Sadly, the more partisan you are, the less of a "proper" journalist you are considered to be. But what about Melanie Phillips, or John Lloyd, or even George Monbiot? And when you are writing about controversial issues, readers' passions can be aroused no matter how mainstream you may be. Not every reader will content himself with a strongly worded letter. But is that a journalist's responsibility? When the words you are facing prosecution for are not threats or smears, but plain, unarguable, facts, is there ever a case to answer?
Censorship is easy; free speech, like everything underpinning democracy, is hard. Standing alongside neo-Nazis would be anathema to most people; even defending animal libbers' rights is a step too far for many. But start accepting the principle of "privileged" information - legal for some to possess and use, illegal for others - and the sphere of acceptable activism shrinks dramatically. The Nazis would have loved that.
From The Guardian. See http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frank_fisher/2006/07/whats_black_and_white_and_red.html for the article and comments by readers.
Angela Eagle (Wallasey, Labour)
After recent local elections, one of my constituents, Mr. Alex McFadden, was subject to a sudden violent attack at his home in front of his two young daughters. A stranger called at the house, and tried to barge his way in when the front door was opened. My constituent fought to keep him out while he was punched and hit on the face. His oldest daughter had the great presence of mind to call the police as the struggle continued at the front door. Thankfully, the police arrived at the scene within two minutes, but the man fled, leaving my constituent covered in blood. He had not been punched at all, but knifed about the head, arms and face. He had to attend the accident and emergency department at Arrowe Park hospital to receive treatment for his wounds. Goodness knows what would have happened if his assailant had got into the house.
Mr. McFadden is a well-known trade union activist who has just co-ordinated the campaign against the British National party in the north-west. His activism in the anti-fascist movement ensured that his name, home and workplace addresses and photograph feature on a nasty, extreme right website called Redwatch.
Angela Eagle (Wallasey, Labour)
My hon. Friend is right that there is widespread outrage on the Wirral as a result of the attack on Mr. McFadden.
That nasty, extreme right website is called Redwatch, and it carries hundreds of entries on anyone the authors believe should be intimidated or attacked. Indeed, there can be no other reason for providing that information, given the context in which it appears on the site.
David Taylor (North West Leicestershire, Labour)
A quick perusal of the site shows that some of that material is offensive and some is bonkers, as it speaks of
"the struggle against the spread of Marxist lies in the UK".
Although the site shows every indication of being created by people with a tenuous grip on reality, does my hon. Friend agree that they cannot escape its implications by including the disclaimer:
"I understand this web site contains no threats nor is it intended that the material should be used for any unlawful activity"?
They cannot do so, as the site targets individuals, incites hatred and encourages violence.
Angela Eagle (Wallasey, Labour)
I agree with my hon. Friend and I thank him for his intervention. The police ought to be looking into that.
The people targeted are routinely referred to on the website as "scum" and "retards", and other epithets that I shall not sully the House by repeating. There appears to be a pattern of violence aimed at the individuals targeted by this website that cannot be simply a coincidence. The site appears to be registered to the Nazi group, Combat 18, and features advertisements for Aryan Nations and other extreme Nazi organisations. Much of the information on it appears to be sent in by BNP activists.
The anti-fascist organisation, Searchlight, investigated the site in 2003 and found a sinister discussion group attached to it called the "mole intelligence bureau", which includes the following call to arms:
"Redwatch has accumulated many names and addresses along with pictures of the targets, many of whom have had nothing done to them. Now is the time to start a proper campaign of violence and intimidation".
That is a classic fascist intimidation tactic.
Rigorous action should be taken in respect of such incitement. The police have the power to monitor extremist chatrooms for the purposes of ensuring that criminality is not being organised. I certainly hope that that "mole intelligence bureau" and any of its successor chatrooms feature on the radar of the police in the monitoring role that they must perform to defend law-abiding citizens exercising their democratic rights.
Information from Searchlight details campaigns of intimidation,
such as the firebombing of anti-fascist activists' cars and frequent death
threats. A TUC dossier contains other examples of victims who have suffered
from having their details posted on t
In 2004, following violent attacks on some of their members, who also featured on that website, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Unison and the National Union of Teachers took a resolution to the TUC asking that the Government close down such sites. Since then, there has been a series of meetings at the Home Office and some parliamentary activity asking that action be taken to close the loophole that allows such internet-based incitement to continue seemingly unchecked.
Although the Government have appeared sympathetic, it does not seem that much of practical use has been achieved in the intervening two years. Sympathy and words of concern are of course welcome, but I believe that preventive action is now in the public interest and is long overdue. What is certain is that both the incitement to violence and the attacks are continuing, despite the fact that the existence of this website was exposed and caused widespread concern several years ago.
As a part of its response to the 2004 resolution, the TUC had a meeting with the then Home Secretary in March 2005, and he promised to consider what might be done to provide more protection from violent extremist websites. Although I understand that the general election then intervened, the TUC has still received no response. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister took this opportunity to update the House on the issue of hate websites, which appear to be operating with impunity.
Martin Salter (Reading West, Labour)
In studying Redwatch, my hon. Friend will have noticed that there is a link to a site operated by the same people called Noncewatch—"monitoring the perverted scum who prey on our kids!" It goes on to say:
"Nonces deserve nothing more than a decent British noose around their necks and a long drop. It's time to fight back and scare...these evil bastards that are a serious threat to our communities."
Does my hon. Friend agree that, if we go down the road of adopting the ill-thought out Sarah's law by putting the names and addresses into the public domain of everybody on the sex offenders register, the people behind Redwatch will use that as an opportunity to trigger violent vigilante action? Does she further agree that the Home Office needs very carefully to bear that in mind?
Angela Eagle (Wallasey, Labour)
I certainly agree with the important point that my hon. Friend makes. In dealing with such important and emotive issues, which often elicit understandable anger and disgust, we must be careful to protect innocent victims as well as children.
When people are attacked for exercising their democratic right, it is important that the police realise that we are dealing with a threat to our democracy in which violent political intimidation plays a part, and that that is more serious than has been recognised. Will my hon. Friend the Minister agree to meet a delegation from the TUC and others to discuss how the threat can be dealt with adequately? Will he consider taking action to close down hate sites, such as the one I have described?
In early 2004 Baroness Scotland replied to a question in the Lords from Lord Greaves. He was immediately featured on Redwatch for his trouble in raising the matter. Among other things, the noble Baroness emphasised the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and mentioned the Internet Watch Foundation. Government responses to previous parliamentary questions about Redwatch have also referred to protection from racial and religious harassment. That is right, but the protection offered in the harassment statute does not appear to fit well with incitement to what I call political hatred which leads to violent criminal acts. That is what this hate website appears to be co-ordinating.
Katy Clark (Ayrshire North & Arran, Labour)
Does my hon. Friend agree that if one of the explanations for the difficulty in taking legal action is that many such sites are based abroad, it is appropriate to see what can be done by working with international partners and other Governments to ensure that such activities are stopped, and that our own legislation should be reviewed? Internet crime of all sorts is becoming a greater threat to us all, and it is clear that racists and fascists are taking advantage of loopholes to operate their websites with impunity.
Angela Eagle (Wallasey, Labour)
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, which is very much to the point. She is right that any loopholes that exist because of the international nature of the internet and its rapid expansion need to be investigated carefully by the Government. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister agrees.
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Internet Watch Foundation deals with child abuse, obscenity and racial hatred, but it does not seem to deal with other kinds of hatred, including inciting hatred for reasons of political beliefs, gender or sexuality? That is a loophole in protection in our domestic law, which the Government should move to close.
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Public Order Act 1986 applies to online material in the same way as it would to written material, notwithstanding any disclaimer on the website? Does he agree that the public order statute should offer protection from deliberately compiled lists of so-called targets, against whom incitement to violence is discussed in extremist chatrooms? If so, why has no action been taken to date to deal with Redwatch? If the Public Order Act is not appropriate to catch this sinister activity, will my hon. Friend undertake to review the protections that currently exist in domestic law to see how the gaps can be closed?
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the fact that the hate
website is hosted abroad does not shield it from prosecution if it incites
violence, as
There will be those who argue that the existence of hate sites such as Redwatch is an expression of our freedom of speech that should be tolerated even if we disagree with it, but that argument is profoundly mistaken. When this House passed the Public Order Act 1936, Oswald Mosley's blackshirts were terrorising the east end of London and Hitler's brownshirts had brought him to power in Germany, and tolerance did not feature noticeably on their agenda. In that time of great peril, this House realised that there are limits to freedom of expression and that those limits lie in ensuring that ideologies of hate and violence are not given free reign. Such ideologies must be curbed in the interests of all and for the public good. That remains as true today as it was in the dark days that led to the second world war and the death of millions of innocent victims. Hate websites do not deserve the protection of the principle of freedom of speech when they seek to prevent others from exercising their democratic rights.
My constituent was subjected to a vile attack in his own
home for daring to be active in the battle against the far-right fascist threat
in the north-west. His details continue to be posted on the Redwatch website
alongside those of many other ordinary people who care enough to defend our
democratic values. It is not tolerable that a practical instrument for criminal
activity, violent assault and political intimidation should be allowed to
remain undisturbed and easily available. I look forward to my hon. Friend
the Minister's reply, which I hope will outline what he intends to do to
deal with that sinister threat.
7:37 pm
I congratulate
The Government deplore extremism of that kind, and strongly condemn websites such as Redwatch. I am sure that we all agree that although freedom of expression and open debate are cornerstones of British democracy, there is no place within the wide spectrum of British politics for organisations that encourage violence or intimidation against those whose views they disagree with. I was particularly sorry to hear about the cowardly attack last month on my hon. Friend's constituent, Alec McFadden. My sympathies are with him and his family, and I wish him a speedy recovery from his injuries.
It may be helpful if I set this issue in the wider context of the Government's work on hate crime. Hatred, violence and incitement to violence are deplorable in any circumstances, but when that hatred is founded on some belief, difference or characteristic of the victim, as is the case with the Redwatch website and as it is with racists and homophobes, it is particularly deplorable.
A Home Office working group is currently considering how to deliver a number of objectives in connection with the issue. The first objective is increasing the public's confidence in the criminal justice system and improving the way in which the criminal justice system responds to hate crime. The second objective is increasing the reporting of hate crime. The third objective is improving the proportion of hate crimes that are brought to justice. The fourth objective is improving the local response to hate crime, particularly in areas with high rates of hate crime. The fifth objective is increasing our knowledge base on hate crime.
This work is currently focusing on crime motivated by race, faith and homophobic hatred, but the parallels with the topic that we are debating today are clear. A successful outcome, as measured against those objectives, will be a blow to the far right. Indeed, it could in some ways be regarded as indicative of positive changes in society that Redwatch feels so threatened by the anti-racism activists whom it targets that it feels the need to take such drastic action against them.
Redwatch is a far right website with roots in the Combat 18 organisation. It publishes personal details such as names, addresses and pictures of people whom it believes to be anti-racist activists or demonstrators.
Vernon Coaker (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office)
Many of the pictures that appear on the Redwatch website are taken at anti-racist rallies. Although there is no direct incitement to commit any criminal offence against the people publicised on the website, the language used to describe them is highly offensive and insulting, and the possible consequences very grave. The degree of intimidation that the website's targets feel as a result of being pictured or having their personal information published must be considerable. There must be a genuine fear of attack from supporters of the far right, spurred on by comments on the website.
I can confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey that an arrest has been made for suspected public order offences relating to the Redwatch website, and a man is currently on bail pending further enquiries. Obviously, that is an operational matter for the police, and Members will understand that I am unable to comment further on that particular case.
There is a framework of laws that may be used to tackle websites that incite hatred or publish threatening or abusive material. It is an offence to incite others to commit an offence such as assault or criminal damage. Under the Public Order Act 1986, it is also an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or to distribute threatening or abusive material with the intention of causing another person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against them. Under the Protection From Harassment Act 1997, it is an offence for any person to behave in a way that they know, or ought to know, amounts to harassment or causes someone to fear violence. Under the same Act, victims of harassment may apply to the High Court for a civil restraining order. Such an order has in the past successfully been obtained by victims of animal rights extremists. It can include a requirement for the removal of information about individuals from websites.
Vernon Coaker (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office)
I cannot confirm whether that is the case, but I will clarify that and write to my hon. Friend with the information.
It can also be an offence under the Data Protection Act 1998 for a website to publish a person's name and address if that information is not in the public domain. I want to respond to an important point that my hon. Friend raised. Anything that is illegal off line is also illegal online. Therefore, if a UK-based website publishes material that is not only offensive but illegal under the above framework, action can be taken against the person who owns the website, exactly as with somebody who might have published a leaflet or a poster. However, operators of some websites have been careful to try to avoid overstepping the conduct that the legislation has defined as criminal.
The difficulty occurs when the website is hosted outside UK jurisdiction, as in the case of Redwatch, which is hosted in the United States. In those circumstances, we do not have the power to close down that website, or, in some cases, to prosecute the people responsible for it if illegal material was not distributed in or uploaded from the UK. However, the offence of inciting others to commit crimes would not be exempt from prosecution in those circumstances, regardless of whether the perpetrator had used a website hosted in a foreign jurisdiction. That is a genuine challenge, which calls for greater international co-operation and collaboration. We seek to do that whenever we have the opportunity, and we have initiated inquiries with the US Department of Justice to establish whether hosting such a website constitutes a breach of US law, regulations or industry good practice.
For UK-based websites, there is positive co-operation between internet service providers in this country and law enforcement agencies. Examples of that are the "acceptable use" policies, which most service providers put in place. They vary between companies, but will generally enable service providers to remove material from their site not only if it is illegal but in other circumstances. They may include complaints from people whose details have been published without their consent.
I can inform my hon. Friend and other hon. Members who are present that I shall raise all those issues with the internet service providers the next time I meet them.
Angela Eagle (Wallasey, Labour)
I thank my hon. Friend for his positive response. Will he ask whether the internet service providers can extend the protections that they apply to the use of abusive photographs of children to the sort of content that we are considering? If so, they could filter out and close down the websites that can be accessed from the UK if they contain such criminal content. That would be a great step forward. Will he meet a delegation from the TUC and others to discuss the prospect of making progress on this matter?
Vernon Coaker (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office)
As I said, I will raise all the issues that have been mentioned in the debate with the internet service providers the next time I meet them. I shall be happy to meet my hon. Friend, and a delegation, as soon as we can match diaries.
I can also answer my hon. Friend's question about the Internet Watch Foundation. It has a remit to minimise the availability of potentially illegal internet content pertaining to images of child abuse hosted anywhere in the world, criminally obscene content hosted in the UK, and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.
It is for the police to investigate complaints and decide whether there is evidence that website operators have committed offences—for example, because of the content of their websites or links between such sites and other harassment or attacks against individuals. It is the approach of the police that if any person becomes aware of any threatening, racist or other hate material on a website, they should report it to their local police force. It is vital to report such material; otherwise the police cannot investigate it. I would encourage the police to continue their vital work of enforcing the law in this respect.
Looking to the future, the Association of Chief Police Officers is working with the Home Office and the police national high-tech crime unit and will review its position on that sort of crime.
Martin Salter (Reading West, Labour)
I am delighted that my hon. Friend has stated publicly that he would encourage the police to take action. Will he especially encourage West Yorkshire police to take action, given that Redwatch is based in Leeds and run by three individuals who are known to West Yorkshire police through a history of extreme political violence stretching back many years?
Vernon Coaker (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office)
I can confirm to my hon. Friend that we will be pleased to raise these issues with the police to see what their advice is on taking all these matters forward.
The Home Office and police are also undertaking separate but related work on animal rights extremists' use of the internet. A consultative seminar with practitioner stakeholders is being planned, which will look at the current guidance to police forces and seek to agree procedures and identify any gaps. Issues raised by hon. Members in the course of this debate will also be taken on board at the seminar.
I am aware that the TUC did indeed write to the then Home Secretary in June 2005, following a meeting in March that year. May I apologise for the fact that the TUC did not receive a response to that letter? That was an unfortunate administrative oversight. I assure my hon. Friend that the TUC will now be updated on the matter as soon as possible.
I hope that I have been able to provide some assurance to hon. Members that the Government are committed to tackling hate crime and incitement to violence wherever it is found. In conjunction with our broader work on hate crime, we are planning to review and strengthen the police response to this type of activity, and to take the appropriate measures to ensure the safety of the public.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes to Eight o'clock.
A FAR right website with alleged links to Nazi groups is targeting public figures from Bolton.
The Redwatch site publishes the names and addresses of many left-wing minded people.
And among the hundreds of names on the website is that of Jason Travis, a leading campaigner for asylum seekers' rights who is at the forefront of the Bolton Evening News' backed fight to allow the Sukula family of Great Lever to stay in Bolton.
Dr Brian Iddon, Labour MP for Bolton South-east, Chris Davies, a Lim Dem Bolton MEP, and Barry Conway, secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in Bolton are also named.
The details came to light when Redwatch came under fire in the House of Commons after union activist Alec McFadden who is named on the website narrowly avoided being blinded in a knife attack at his home.
The victim's Wallasey MP Angela Eagle urged ministers to take action against the site, which she claimed was linked to Nazi group Combat 18.
But the Home Office said it was difficult to close down websites like Redwatch since they were usually hosted abroad.
Mr Travis believes his name and picture were added to the website when he was campaigning against fascism in Oldham with the NUT five years ago.
He said today: "It's a website used by fascist groups and its intention is to intimidate people who are taking a stand against racism."
Mr Conway's names appears on the website due to his backing of the Unite Against Fascism statement issued by UNISON.
He believes many of these kinds of sites were linked with British and European far-right neo-Nazi groups.
He said: "If I was worried about it then I would not be able to do anything in life.
"People need to stand up and be counted. I am utterly opposed to any organisation that spouts racism. There are some real problems in society and I think they can only be tackled when people are united."
He added: "The answer is to take on these groups and expose them for what they are: a bunch of right wing thugs."
Two years ago, the Home Office promised action against Redwatch after a series of representations from MPs. It is now working with the Association of Chief Police Officers to try to tackle the sort of incitement on the Redwatch website.
The Sukala family are
fighting against a government decision to refuse them asylum. They are battling
to avoid being deported back to their homeland, the war-torn Democratic Republic
of Congo.
Europe
Condemns Poland
Warsaw regime’s violent homophobia singled out amidst rightist wave
Gay City, June 22 - 28 2006
The European Parliament at Strasbourg last
week voted to condemn Poland and its government for homophobia. The condemnation
came in a resolution regarding the increase in racist and homophobic violence
in Europe which was offered by the Socialist group, the EuroParliament’s
second largest political formation.
The resolution passed by a vote of 301 in
favor to 161 against, with 102 abstentions.
The condemnation specifically cited “the declarations
by a leading member of the League of Polish Families inciting violence against
GLBT people with a view to the march for tolerance and equality.” The League,
a notoriously homophobic and anti-Semitic party, is a member of the ultra-conservative
ruling coalition government in Poland led by President Lech Kaczynski and
his twin brother Jaroslav, who controls the Polish Parliament.
A vice-president of the League, Wojciech Wierzejski,
a front-bencher in the Polish Parliament, had notably targeted the Warsaw
Gay Pride March for Equality held June 10, saying, “If the deviants will
start demonstrating, they need to be bashed with a thick club.” (For full
background on the rising climate of homophobia in Poland, see this reporter’s
story “Poland’s Criminal Probe of Gays,” in the June 8-14 issue of Gay City
News.
An editorial in the June 11 New York Times,
“Poland’s Bigoted Government,” condemned the country‘s “right-wing nationalist
government that seems intent on violating the rights of minority groups, beginning
with an attack on gays.” The newspaper cited Wierzejski’s declaration and
actions by President Kaczynski’s regime as evidence that the “government’s
actions give an official wink to bigotry.”
The EuroParliament’s resolution also demanded
that European Union representatives at the upcoming G8 summit meeting “raise
the issue of human rights with Russia as a matter of urgency, in particular
the right to demonstrate peacefully.” This was a reference to the Moscow
mayor’s ban on the May 27 Gay Pride March in the Russian capital, which was
violently broken up by police and fascists, with its organizers arrested.
The resolution included a list of recent homophobic,
xenophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and racist murders and violent attacks
in Europe, saying the Parliament “condemns” all such attacks, and “expresses
its solidarity with all victims of such attacks and their families.”
Among the other incidents specifically condemned
by the EuroParliament was “the horrific torture and murder of Gisberta, a
transsexual living in the Portuguese city of Oporto, in February 2006, by
a group of adolescent and pre-adolescent minors.” The Parliament “urg[ed]
the Portuguese authorities to do everything in their power to punish those
responsible and fight the climate of impunity with respect to this and other
hate crimes.”
Also mentioned in the resolution was “the
attack against Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, which took place
in Warsaw.” Schudrich was beaten in the street by a Polish nationalist yelling
anti-Semitic slogans the day before Pope Benedict XVI visited the homeland
of his predecessor, John Paul II, last month.
The Polish government has recently multiplied
its homophobic actions, including the launch of a criminal probe of all Polish
gay organizations and their financing at the demand of the League of Polish
Families. Just ten days before the EuroParliament passed its resolution,
Poland’s minister of education, Roman Giertych—president of the League of
Polish Families—fired the head of his ministry’s department of teacher training,
Miroslaw Sielatycki, for having published and distributed a Polish-language
version of an official teacher training manual from the Council of Europe
which contains a section on how to educate against homophobia and how to better
understand the subject of homosexuality. The manual urged collaboration between
schools and LGBT groups that could lead to representatives of those organizations
speaking to student assemblies.
The largest Polish teachers union, the ZNP,
defended Sielatycki and his distribution of the training manual as legitimate.
Following the firing of Sielatycki by Giertych,
the secretary-general of the Council of Europe, Terry Davis, officially demanded
an explanation from the Polish government, and expressed his regret that Poland
and other member countries of the Council of Europe had done nothing to combat
and eradicate homophobia within their borders.
Last week, the League of Polish Families’
youth arm, the All-Polish Youth, filed a legal proceeding with the minister
of justice against the Warsaw Pride-Equality March for “creating a danger
for the inhabitants” of Warsaw. Giertych was the founder, and remains honorary
president, of the All-Polish Youth, many of whose members are skinheads,
and which is noted for its violent homophobia and its thuggish physical assaults
on gay demonstrations and events.
The Pride-Equality March, Poland’s largest
ever, drew between 6,000 and 10,000 participants on June 10, including many
from other European countries, among them more than 1,000 Germans, mostly
from Berlin, and delegations from Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Italy, the U.K., the Czech Republic, and Latvia.
Twenty members of the EuroParliament from
various countries also joined the Pride-Equality March.
The Polish press last week reported that another
notoriously homophobic member of the Polish Parliament affiliated with the
League of Polish Families, Krzysztof Bosak, led a group from the League’s
All-Polish Youth in taking photographs of the gay marchers and their supporters
in the Warsaw Pride-Equality March. This is not the first time that the extreme
right has taken hundreds of photographs of participants in gay and anti-fascist
demonstrations, and some Polish media are asking whether there is a link
between Bosak’s photo-taking and the Web site Redwatch, which has published
names, photos, and addresses of gay and left-wing activists and called for
their murder.
A Labour MP today joined critics of Home Secretary John Reid's suggestion that parents could be given information on where paedophiles live, saying this would trigger "violent vigilante action" by extremists.
Labour's Martin Salter (Reading West) was speaking during a Commons debate on a far-right website, Redwatch, which is registered to Nazi group Combat 18.
He told MPs that Redwatch links to another site operated by the same people called Noncewatch, which tells its readers that "nonces deserve nothing more than a decent British noose around their necks and a long drop".
Intervening on a speech by Labour former minister Angela Eagle (Wallasey), he said: "Would you agree that if we were to go down the road of adopting the ill thought out Sarah's Law and putting the names and addresses into the public domain of everybody on the sex offenders' list, people behind Redwatch would use that as an opportunity to trigger violent vigilante action and it is something that the Home Office needs to bear very carefully in mind?"
Ms Eagle agreed with his "important point".
"In dealing with these important and emotive issues, which often raise understandable anger and disgust, we have to be careful to protect innocent victims as well as children," she said.
Earlier, the Government-appointed Children's Commissioner said that introducing a so-called Megan's Law in this country could put children at risk by forcing paedophiles "underground".
Megan's Law was introduced in the USA following the murder of a seven-year-old girl by a known paedophile.
Mr Reid's initiative - which was also criticised by a police chief - follows a six-year campaign by the News of the World for "Sarah's Law" since the murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne.
Ms Eagle told MPs that her constituent Alec McFadden, a trade union activist who has campaigned against the British National Party, was injured when he was stabbed on his own doorstep last month.
His details had been posted on Redwatch, she added.
Ms Eagle said that Mr Salter had received death threats and had his constituency office vandalised as a result of his opposition to far right groups.
And Mr Salter himself warned that it was likely that everyone who took part in the debate would have their details posted on the site, which he said was based in Leeds and run by three people known to police, within 48 hours.
Calling on the Government to take action to close such sites, Ms Eagle said that those who argued in favour of allowing them to operate were "profoundly mistaken".
"Hate websites do not deserve the protection of the principles of freedom of speech when they seek to prevent others from exercising their democratic rights," she said.
"I don't believe it's tolerable that this practical instrument for criminal activity, violent assault and political intimidation should be allowed to remain undisturbed and easily available".
Junior Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said that there were difficulties clamping down on websites hosted outside the UK.
Redwatch is hosted in the USA, he added.
"In these circumstances, we would not have the power to close down that website, or in some cases to prosecute the people who are responsible for it if illegal material was not distributed in or uploaded from the UK.
"The offence of inciting others to commit crimes would not be exempt from prosecution under these circumstances, however, regardless of whether the perpetrator had used a website hosted in a foreign jurisdiction," he said.
More international cooperation was needed in this field, Mr Coaker added.
He also said that a man was currently on bail over suspected public order offences relating to Redwatch.
union activist.
Alec McFadden narrowly avoided being blinded in the attack, which resulted in cuts to his face and hands.
Labour MP Angela Eagle (right) urged ministers to take action against Redwatch after the attack at her constituent's home.
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said it was difficult to close down websites like Redwatch which are hosted abroad.
But he said action could be taken against people who incited others to violence.
A man was currently on bail over suspected public order offences relating to Redwatch.
'Don't preserve them'
Wallasey MP Ms Eagle said Mr McFadden had coordinated a campaign against the British National Party.
He was one of hundreds whose names, pictures and addresses were put on the Redwatch website.
"There appears to be a pattern of violence which is aimed at individuals who are targeted by this website which cannot simply be a coincidence," she said.
The website appeared to be registered to Nazi group Combat 18, said Ms Eagle, who called for "rigorous action" against such incitement sites.
"Hate websites do not deserve the protection of the principles of freedom of speech when they seek to prevent others from exercising their democratic rights," she said.
"I don't believe it's tolerable that this practical instrument for criminal activity, violent assault and political intimidation should be allowed to remain undisturbed and easily available".
'Existing laws enough'
Two years ago the Home Office promised action against Redwatch "very soon" after a series of representations from MPs.
A Home Office spokeswoman told the BBC News website at the time: "We are aware of the anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet.
"We have had representations from many MPs about this matter and will be responding to their concerns very soon."
Speaking on Wednesday, a spokeswoman said the Home Office was working with the Association of Chief Police Officers to try to tackle the sort of incitement on the Redwatch website.
"We believe the existing legislative framework is enough for tackling this," she added.
In the Commons, Mr Coaker said there were problems clamping down on overseas websites.
"In these circumstances, we would not have the power to close down that website, or in some cases to prosecute the people who are responsible for it, if illegal material was not distributed in or uploaded from the UK," he said.
"The offence of inciting others to commit crimes would not be exempt from prosecution under these circumstances, however, regardless of whether the perpetrator had used a website hosted in a foreign jurisdiction."
Mr Coaker said more international cooperation was needed.
Sarah's Law fears
Labour MP Martin Salter used the debate to warn that Redwatch linked to another website called Noncewatch.
It said "nonces deserve nothing more than a decent British noose around their necks and a long drop".
Mr Salter said the website showed the dangers of calls for the names and addresses of sex offenders to be published.
The government has said it is looking at the calls for a Sarah's Law, named after murdered school girl Sarah Payne.
<>But Mr Salter warned: "If we were to go down the road of adopting the ill thought-out Sarah's Law... people behind Redwatch would use that as an opportunity to trigger violent vigilante action."Champagne
'socialist' MacFadden's background is interesting. He was a founder member
of TWAFA in Newcastle, so his whimpering about not taking photographs and
gathering info' on members of political parties is wearing a bit thin. That
is all TWAFA do as proxies of Searchlight in the North East. He was based
at the Cloth Market in Newcastle and was also a major player in the local
Trades Council. He moved to Liverpool and was the leading candidate for Scargill's
SLP in the last Euro elections in the North West. Whilst in Liverpool he has
thrown himself into similar work, usually funded by the taxpayer, hence his
rather nice lifestyle. All seems like crocodile tears to us.
Labour
councils in the North East were always investigating the groups that McFadden
was involved in for financial irregularities dating back to the eighties and
some people in the North East Left wing reckon that's why he legged it pretty
sharpish to Liverpool. The 'Derek Hatton of Newcastle' is how he's now regarded
up there sources tell us. McFadden would boast about the number of parking
tickets he had acquired and never personally paid. The fines were paid by
the taxpayer no doubt. How he has managed to get away with his privileged
lifestyle whilst claiming to be a champion of the working man for so long
stretches the imagination.
Redwatch is a magazine and website, published in the United Kingdom, that displays photographs and personal information of people perceived to be political opponents of its ideology, white nationalism. Their slogan is Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes.
Redwatch was originally published in paper form by the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 in March 1992, when its slogan was "oderint dum metuant": "let them hate as long as they fear". (Searchlight magazine, April 1993.)
The website in its current form was set up by Simon Sheppard, a former BNP member who was expelled after circulating a leaflet which the BNP leadership regarded as a prima facie breach of the race discrimination legislation. On May 1, 2005, Sheppard's home in Hull was searched by police investigating incitement to racial hatred.
The information is indexed by cities or regions. Many of the people listed are members of the Anti-Nazi League or other anti-racist/anti-fascist and left-wing groups, although there are some Labour Party and Liberal Democrat members listed. Trade Unionists, in particular teachers and journalists, figure prominently in the listings.
Anyone listed on Redwatch may be at increased risk of violence from neo-Nazis. According to Searchlight Magazine, a Leeds teacher who complained about a neo-Nazi leafleting his school was listed on Redwatch, allegedly enabling other neo-Nazis to firebomb his car. Another instance, according to Indymedia, is of an anti-fascist reportedly followed and attacked on 16 May 2006 after the recent appearance of his personal data on the Redwatch website. The assailants reportedly shouted "We'll kill you, you leftist motherfucker!" .
Liverpool TUC organiser Alec McFadden received death threats shortly after his details appeared on the site. At precisely the same time Joe Owens, an official Merseyside BNP candidate with several convictions for violent offences (see above) began sending him e-mails gloating that he had photographic details of his house, car, and family. Since standing as a Respect candidate in the May 2006 elections, McFadden has been physically attacked at his own home.
Redwatch justifies its content as a tit-for-tat reaction to leftist-oriented websites displaying similar content: Photographs and information about the reds who attempt to harass and assault British Nationalists and their families. The red scum target us, Redwatch plays them at their own game.
However, Redwatch have been unable to provide details of any such websites. One of their few attempts to justify these claims has been to cite a press release published in August 2001 by the Anti-Nazi League, a British anti-fascist organisation, containing the home addresses of both Nick Griffin (leader of the British National Party [BNP]) and his mother.
There have been many reports to the police of people suffering death threats after their details have appeared on the site. These have included Members of Parliament and their families.
In 2005, Australians active on the far right announced that they would be setting up an online version of Redwatch listing their opponents in Australia and New Zealand, to be known as 'Leftywatch'. This seems to have been largely in response to an ongoing campaign against them by the group Fight Dem Back. The site did eventually go up, on an individual's Blogger blog, however it has been something of an anti-climax, with some active racists distancing themselves from it (seemingly for fear of legal reprisals), and with Fight Dem Back managing to pose as sympathisers and give false information which went up on the site.
One of the more bizarre sections of the Redwatch Website is "Noncewatch". This section claims to identify child sex offenders at large in the community, but actually consists of conspiracy theories against senior members of the British government, and smears against individuals whom the author, Ian Gomeche, dislikes. Gomeche has himself become a target for Nazis in Britain after he gave out personal information about a fourteen year old girl living near Burton-upon-Trent, and made telephone calls to her house.
Noncewatch has largely backfired, with its mendacity bringing doubts about the accuracy of information on the rest of Redwatch and spawning its own nemesis Gomechewatch. Gomechewatch is named after Noncewatch's contributor, Ian Keith Gomeche. Gomeche was sectioned last year under mental health legislation at Cornhill Psychiatric Hospital in Aberdeen. He has since been released and is awaiting an upcoming court date.
In January, 2004, questions concerning the legality of the Redwatch site were raised in the House of Lords. Legal recourse against the website is limited because the site is hosted in the United States.
The site has been heavily criticised by the Trades Union Congress and many of its affiliate unions, which have introduced policies calling for Redwatch to be closed down. Following the TUC's annual Congress in September 2004, where an anti-Redwatch resolution was passed, the TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber wrote to the then Home Secretary David Blunkett requesting a meeting to discuss the issue. Further discussions and correspondence with government members ensued, and in March 2005 a meeting took place with the then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke. The TUC have promised to provide the Home Secretary with examples of experiences which trade unionists and anti-racist campaigners have had as a result of having their details published on Redwatch, whilst the Home Secretary promised to hold discussions with the police about what could be done to stop the activities of the website.
Allegations have also been made linking Redwatch with the BNP, prompted by prominent member and youth leader of the BNP Tony Wentworth taking photographs of anti-fascist protesters which later appeared on the site. In a BBC documentary, Mark Collett, who is the former leader of the Young BNP openly boasted that peoples photographs would appear there.
The BNP leadership published a statement in April 2004 banning their members from providing material to the site.
Posted: 23 September 2004 By: Kevin Shepherd
Email: kshepherd123@yahoo.co.uk
The UK's National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is again pushing for government action to close the websites of far-right groups in the UK that have encouraged violence against journalists and anti-fascist campaigners.
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and NUJ put forward a motion at last week's Trades Union Congress (TUC) to press the home secretary for the immediate closure of sites such as Redwatch, which has links with far-right groups including the British National Party, Combat 18 and Blood and Honour.
Set up in 2001, the Redwatch site publishes photos and 'hit lists' of journalists, trade unionists and campaigners along with their personal details. The NUJ says the site has encouraged intimidation of those listed.
Several members of the NUJ have been targeted by Redwatch, including Yorkshire Evening Post journalist Peter Lazenby who has investigated and campaigned against racism and fascism in Yorkshire.
Several addresses for Mr Lazenby have appeared on Redwatch, alongside the message: "We need to find this reporter fast. If we can scare this cunt off then we might get an easier time instead of being slagged off and made to look a bunch of muppets."
In March 2004 the NUJ compiled a dossier of information on the activities of Redwatch and how they target journalists. The dossier was sent to Mr Lazenby's MP, Hilary Benn, to raise with the Home Secretary David Blunkett. In June the NUJ's parliamentary committee met and resolved to write to the home secretary again, but no action has yet been taken.
On 21 September, the NUJ wrote to the TUC to confirm that trade union leaders whose members had been targeted by such sites would lobby the government for swift action. Redwatch operates through at least three different domain names all hosted outside the UK, making it difficult to close the site down.
Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the NUJ told dotJournalism: "The NUJ's prime concern is the threat that these sites present to freedom of speech and free expression, both in newspapers and the web."
"People can't be intimidated into not writing about and exposing these people - and these sites are designed to shut people up."
Mr Dear was targeted in March when a threatening letter referring to the Redwatch site was delivered to his home address at night. The incident followed demonstrations by the British National Party outside the NUJ's offices in London.
'Far-right' website investigated
BBC NEWS - 15 March, 2004
Anti-Nazi League protestors have been targeted
by Redwatch
The Home Office is investigating a website
that publishes the home addresses and telephone numbers of anti-racism campaigners,
politicians and journalists.
The website, Redwatch, publishes photographs
and contact details of individuals under the slogan "Remember places, traitors'
faces, they all pay for their crimes".
A Home Office spokeswoman told BBC News Online "We are aware of the anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet"
"We have had representations from many MP's about this matter and will be responding to their concerns very soon."
One of the Redwatch internet domain names is registered to the National Front.
A spokesman for the NF said "we are a law-abiding political party and have nothing to do with Redwatch or its owners".
New Legislation
Anti-fascist campaigners Searchlight believe Redwatch could be prosecuted under legislation covering incitement to racial hatred.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Greaves has raised the issue in the House of Lords and believes that there is a need for legal action.
"We need to test existing legislation to prosecute these people and if it's not strong enough we need new legislation.
"People started phoning me and saying
'we're going to kill you' and that sort of thing."
Photographer David Hoffman
"There's a great reluctance by the police to prosecute anyone under incitement to racial hatred legislation as some tabloid newspapers might fall foul of it.
"I think that politicians and the police need to stand up to these people."
The Home Office argues that as the material is hosted by computers outside the UK, where British police and courts have no jurisdiction, there is nothing that can be done under current legislation.
It also argues that if hosted in the US, such material would be protected by the first amendment, that guarantees the right of freedom of speech.
Since raising the issue, Lord Greaves has had his picture posted on Redwatch.
Menacing Calls
Photographer David Hoffman has been taking pictures of racist groups at demonstrations for 25 years.
Soon after his details were published on Redwatch, he began to receive menacing phone calls.
"People started phoning me and saying 'we're going to kill you' and that sort of thing. I believe that some of the people who put this stuff up there are actually mentally ill"
"To be honest, I wasn't that worried as I thought that if someone was going to kill me, they wouldn't call me and let me know first."
Hoffman was concerned enough, however, to have a "firebomb-proof letterbox" and bullet-proof window glass installed.
Despite the threats, police told him there was not much chance of gaining a conviction against the callers and that there was little they could do.
Freedom of speech
Comedian and activist Mark Thomas has also been featured on Redwatch but believes that the website is the work of a few extreme individuals rather an organised campaign.
"I believe that some of the people who put this stuff up there are actually mentally ill.
"I get strange phone calls everyday but nothing threatening - I refuse to get wound up by it and just get on with things."
Thomas is wary of pursuing calls for legislation to tackle Redwatch as he is concerned about any new laws that curb freedom of speech.
"We need the Home Office investigation to find out whether there is a direct correlation between these calls and Redwatch before we act"
'Redwatch' Intimidation of Anti-fascists
BNP-linked right wing extremists have targeted
Liverpool activist, Alex McFadden, also noted for his anti-fascist work here
on Tyneside.
Alex's photo along with two others engaged in the anti-fascist struggle, has been posted on the Redwatch website. The site has 'direct links to the extreme right wing groups Combat 18, Aryan Unity and Order of White Knights.'
Liverpool Echo: Targets of right wing extremists
"Redwatch is the scourge of anti-racists everywhere. It is a nazi website that reproduces photographs and home details of anyone who does not share their racist outlook. Some of those targeted are called “scum”, others “retards”, but all are being set up for intimidation and in some cases violence. In this special investigation Searchlight uncovers the secret group behind Redwatch and exposes their violent agenda."
Tyne & Wear AFA site
Nazi threats to journalists
THE BNP’s members’ bulletin in January this year asked its members to collate information on journalists who expose the party.
There have already been threats to journalists on websites run by the neo-Nazi Combat 18 and Blood and Honour groups, and on a site called Redwatch.
Headed with the slogan “Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes”, Redwatch, linked to Nazi group Combat 18, is being used to compile a hit list of opponents of the BNP and other far right groups.
It carries more than a 1,000 photographs of anti-fascists, along with their addresses, telephone numbers and even car registration numbers. The site targets journalists, including photographers Tom O’Neill, Treasurer of the NUJ’s Birmingham branch, and David Hoffman, who was supported by the NUJ in a legal case against Redwatch.
Three journalists on the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, referred to throughout the site as Searchlies, are listed. Publisher Gerry Gable, director of research Nick Knowles and editor Steve Silver all get a mention.
Yorkshire Evening Post journalists Peter Lazenby and Paul Robinson have also been targeted for their campaigning. One message about Pete Lazenby reads: “We need to find this reporter fast. If we can scare this cunt off then we might get an easier time instead of being slagged off and made to look a bunch of muppets.”
Redwatch is hosted on three separate sites
overseas to avoid being shut down. Eleven links to other fascist websites
are listed, including The Pro-Democracy League, who also publishes photographs,
addresses and car registration plates of anti-racism campaigners.
Melanie Falconer
The Home Office is investigating the Redwatch sites – but five months after the NUJ presented a dossier to Home Secretary David Blunkett, details of union members are still listed.
The Home Office argues that as the material is hosted by computers outside the UK there is nothing that can be done.
A spokesperson told the Journalist: "We are aware of the anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet. We want to do all we can to block access to illegal sites and are currently seeking views from interested parties and the internet industry.”
Searchlight campaigners believe Redwatch could be prosecuted under legislation covering incitement to racial hatred.
NUJ Website
Redwatch closes ranks but the threats continue
The net is beginning to close in on the men behind the notorious Redwatch internet site. The site, which reproduces pictures of anti-racists, and a closed email discussion group where participants plan and discuss violent attacks are now the subject of a police investigation.
Last month Searchlight exposed the men behind Redwatch and the vital part it plays in the British National Party campaign to silence its critics. Our revelations, together with the fact that several trade unions have taken up the case, are forcing the authorities to act.
Even the nazis at Redwatch are getting nervous. “We need to STOP posting the messages on this site about Reds,” posted Tony White, one of the three men behind Redwatch. “Its going to be a nail in the coffin for many people, these need to be held, selectively shared for security purposes of course but not shared with the opposition so they are alerted. What’s the point in warning them that they ARE KNOWN.”
A more furious response came from the man we could only identify as MIB. Fortunately several readers contacted Searchlight and provided his real name: Tony Foy.
Posting on the Redwatch guestbook, he wrote: “After a minor set back IE a jew sticking his big nose into our business, namely The Mole.Intelligence.Bureau, we have had to take effective action in other words the group has ceased to exist. Instead we have decided to move operations else where all the original intelligence on red scum from the mole has been filed to a new archive.
“The reds are now on a counter offensive 4 pages of lies to try and silence us or draw ZOG attention to our activities.”
Realising that their inner group had been infiltrated, White, Foy and the main person the website, Kevin Watmough, belatedly decided to throw out the majority of those registered on their secret Yahoo discussion group.
Several trade unions are demanding that the authorities take action. The Leeds branch of the National Union of Journalists has compiled a dossier, which it has sent on to the police. The union acted when two of its journalists were targeted after they wrote articles exposing the criminal nature of local nazis.
Now the TUC is beginning to take action after several of its members were featured on the site. One TUC official told Searchlight: “The Redwatch site is clearly designed to intimidate decent people from protesting against racism and fascism. This is unacceptable and it is time it got brought to an end.”
In Oldham, several anti-BNP activists have complained to police after Tony Wentworth, the BNP youth organiser, took pictures of them during the Failsworth by-election and promised to post them on the Redwatch site.
However, it is events in Liverpool that have been instrumental in forcing the authorities to look into Redwatch. In the past few weeks there have been two serious threats against an individual and a newspaper that highlights the role and purpose of Redwatch.
The first was a verbal threat left on the mobile telephone answer service of one leading Anti Nazi League activist. The mobile was a contact number for people wanting to get involved in the anti-BNP campaign.
Addressing the anti-fascist by his real name, the caller gave him a tirade of abuse and said: “This call is from the BNP and we stand for the white people of Great Britain. If you ever go to Liverpool city centre again we will cut you up.”
A week later, a new Liverpool section appeared on the Redwatch site, containing photographs and personal details of those behind the newly formed Merseyside United Against Racism and Fascism.
When the Liverpool Echo contacted the local BNP organiser for his comments, he had little to say. Literally hours later a letter was delivered to the offices of the local paper threatening to blow up the building if the paper continued to run anti-BNP stories.
For the local BNP organiser, this was personal. It was, after all, the Liverpool Echo that had put a picture of him on the front page in April with the headline: “Vote Scum”.
The letter was written in the name of the Aryan Martyrs Brigade. This is the same group that sent a threatening letter to a journalist from Wales on Sunday, whose crime had been to write an article about the BNP.
The group does not exist. Its name is just a cover for the Redwatch and BNP thugs who are setting out to silence media critics.
There is now a clamour for action. It is deplorable that so far the police have not moved against those behind Redwatch. Given the evidence that the perpetrators also discuss and plan violent assaults, it can only be hoped that action will finally be taken.
The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is studying a dossier on Redwatch and several MPs have promised to take up the issue. But the matter must not be left there. Searchlight readers need to continue to write letters of complaint to their local MPs and support anti-racist campaigners, journalists and newspapers under attack.
Searchlies
Hate site under investigation
p2pnet.net News:-
Redwatch warns it's a web site, "designed and intended for people who are involved in the struggle against the spread of Marxist lies in the UK" and that it shouldn't be accessed by anyone who, "does not wish to be exposed to material that discusses the problems of sovietisation in the United Kingdom".
It's not a lot different from any of the of other hate sites you'll find everywhere online; except for one thing - it has an extensive dbase of anti-racism campaigners, politicians and journalists and it publishes their home addresses and telephone numbers, together with pictures taken at rallies and elsewhere.
It also has a 'retards gallery' featuring, among others, outspoken UK singer-songwriter Billy Bragg.
Now, says a BBC story here, Redwatch is being investigated by the UK Home Office. "We are aware of the anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet," a Home Office spokeswoman told BBC News Online. "We have had representations from many MP's about this matter and will be responding to their concerns very soon."
Photographer David Hoffman has been taking pictures of racist groups at demonstrations for 25 years and he's one of the people singled out by Redwatch. After his details were published, he began to receive menacing phone calls, says the Beeb story, quoting him as saying:.
"People started phoning me and saying 'we're going to kill you' and that sort of thing. To be honest, I wasn't that worried as I thought that if someone was going to kill me, they wouldn't call me and let me know first."
Hoffman was concerned enough, however, to have a 'firebomb-proof letterbox' and bullet-proof window glass installed.
Website linked to far right hit list
Home secretary under pressure to clamp down on fascist groups. Matthew Taylor on a campaign of violence via the internet
Matthew Taylor
Guardian - Wednesday December 17, 2003
The home secretary, David Blunkett, is coming
under increasing pressure to shut down an extreme rightwing website following
the discovery of a secret hitlist of targets - including social workers, journalists
and politicians.
The Guardian has seen documents from a secure
email network which show hardline fascists are planning a campaign of "violence
and intimidation" and are swapping information on bomb-making and details
of possible targets.
The group is linked to the Redwatch website which carries hundreds of pictures and details of anti-fascists - many taken during protests against the British National Party - alongside the slogan "Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes."
Only a handful of known neo-Nazis have access to the network which has been infiltrated for the first time by researchers at the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight.
Many of those featured on Redwatch have already suffered threats, intimidation and physical assaults and campaigners fear the discovery of the new email group, nicknamed Mole Intelligence Bureau, signals a worrying escalation in far right violence.
A dossier on the website has been compiled by the National Union of Journalists in Leeds and sent to the police and a local MP who passed it to the home secretary.
A spokesman for the Home Office told the Guardian: "We are very aware of the anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet. The Home Office has had representations from many MPs about Redwatch and we will be responding to their concerns very soon."
Unions, anti-fascist groups and MPs are looking at ways of closing the site and prosecuting those involved.
"This email network is a very sinister development," said a spokesman for Searchlight. "There are explicit threats against people who have stood up to the far right and this is nothing more than political intimidation and classic fascism."
Many of those featured on the site are people who have spoken out against the rise of the British National Party in the north of England. During anti-fascist meetings and protests in the runup to last year's local elections many BNP activists took pictures of anti-fascist campaigners which appeared on Redwatch.
Next June the BNP, which has sought to position itself as a respectable, mainstream political party under the leadership of Nick Griffin, is expected to field a record number of candidates in the local and European elections. In many parts of the country all the seats on local councils are being contested following boundary changes and anti-fascists are predicting the biggest electoral push by the far right in recent British history.
In the private email network fascists list names and addresses of targets and plan attacks on anti-racists in their homes or during public meetings.
One subscriber, who calls himself MIB, wrote: "Redwatch has accumulated many names and addresses along with pictures of the targets, many of whom have had nothing done to them. Now's the time to start a proper campaign of violence and intimidation towards those who seek to see us silenced or imprisoned for our beliefs."
The site has details of how to make plastic explosives and bomb designs.
One of the targets of the Mole Intelligence Bureau has been Yorkshire Evening Post journalist Peter Lazenby, who has campaigned against racism and fascism in Yorkshire. He was singled out after an expose of the British National Party in the runup to last year's local elections.
Numerous addresses for Mr Lazenby were posted on the site for members to "check out." One message read: "We need to find this reporter fast. If we can scare this cunt off then we might get an easier time instead of being slagged off and made to look a bunch of muppets."
The National Union of Journalists said Mr Lazenby was one of many members who had suffered at the hands of Redwatch. "The site is about intimidation and it's intended to stop our members doing their job, particularly when they are exposing fascism. We have talked to our lawyers about trying to get this site closed down but it is very difficult legally."
The MP for Reading West, Martin Salter, received a death threat from a BNP supporter this summer after speaking out against the far right, and believes it is crucial to tackle Redwatch.
"There are sinister elements within the far right of British politics who are prepared to use violence and intimidation in order to silence and discourage their opponents. They are the new model army of fascism and Redwatch is at the centre of this evil."
In Leeds last year two teachers, Sally Kincaid and Steve Johnson, had their car firebombed after their details - including photographs, address and car registration number - were posted on the site. Another target was an Anti-Nazi League activist from Halifax.
A couple of months later a leaflet including the man's home address was distributed in his neighbourhood trying to link him and other local activists to the mass murderers Fred West and Dennis Nilson.
In another message, posted by a BNP supporter from Batley, the people behind Redwatch are asked if they have any intention of attending an anti-racist meeting in Dewsbury in June. The event, which was addressed by Leon Greenman, a Holocaust survivor, was described as a "Holohoax meeting".
One respondent advised: "The best place to attack the reds [is] just after the meeting finishes as they are walking to catch their buses or going for their cars." Police attended the meeting and ensured there was no trouble.
In early August, a message on the Mole Intelligence bulletin board listed dozens of people in Yorkshire for further research, including the divisional police commanders for Dewsbury and Huddersfield, the chief executive of Kirklees Council, the director of a West Yorkshire health authority and housing officers.
The Redwatch website, which also lists the home addresses of some MPs and councillors, was launched in 2001 and has more than 1,000 photographs. In most cases the pictures are unidentified but names, addresses, car registrations, phone numbers and even workplace details are linked to others.
It operates under the auspices of Combat 18, the neo-Nazi group, and takes its name from a news sheet that C18 leaders in London produced in the early 1990s. Like now, it listed names and addresses of anti-racists and encouraged other rightwingers to ring them up or pay them a visit.
To prevent internet attack and police action, Redwatch is hosted on three separate sites all based abroad. One is registered in the name of the National Front and the other two in the name of the White Nationalist Party which is thought to be the political wing of Combat 18.
Alec McFadden, president of Merseyside TUC, appeared on the site with his name and address after being followed home last month.
"In 1988 the fascists tried to kill me when my car was fire bombed," Mr McFadden told the Guardian.
"Since then I have lived in secrecy and sometimes under police protection. But now they have got my details again I'm having to have CCTV installed and I have two children to think of. My wife, who has died, was a German Jew and I speak to her family about this and, as they say, it is classic fascist tactics and they know more than most that we mustn't give in to these people."
YORKSHIRE EVENING POST - TUESDAY 30 JULY 2002
Outcry over
race- hate
Internet site
More Media bullshit:
Pictures
of children
on fascist
site
By Owen Mcateer , The Newcastle Evening Chronicle Jan 17 2003
Far Right extremists have published pictures of Tyneside kids on a website dedicated to revealing details of anti-Nazi campaigners.
Two Newcastle children were pictured in photographs put on the net by white nationalist organisation Redwatch.
The site publishes names, addresses, phone numbers and work details of anyone it deems to be Reds, or rather anti-racism campaigners, local councillors and journalists.
An outraged mother from Newcastle spoke out after seeing the pictures of her two daughters among more than 20 demonstrators at a protest in Manchester against the British National Party.
Above the pictures it states: "Any further information on the freaks below will be gratefully received."
The woman, known as Bobby, said her daughters were aged just 12 and 15. She said: "I have appeared in pictures before and as an adult I accept that, but these are pictures of children.
"The details published on the site are obviously like a hit-list, whatever those running the site say."
Although no organisation claims responsibility for the site, Redwatch contains internet links to white supremacist organisations including the Ku Klux Clan, Combat 18 and Aryan Unity.
Checks by the Chronicle have revealed the site is actually run through a branch of the National Front in Hull.
Those writing the website are very careful not to make any specific threats.
However, before accessing the pictures, site visitors are told, `Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes'.
A PRESTON student has found himself listed on a neo-Nazi website after researching into the far-right for his course.
Andi Ali, a 35-year-old postgraduate student at the University of Central Lancashire, said he was shocked to find pictures of him had been posted on the website Redwatch.
As part of his research Andi went to Anti-Nazi League demonstrations where far right groups were present.
"The police have told me to be careful and make sure that I'm not followed."
The website was set up by racist group Combat 18, which at one time had links with the British National Party.
Its slogan is: "White revolution is the only solution."
Combat 18 is a highly secretive group but it is thought the idea for Redwatch came from American Nazis who set it up to monitor and target Jewish people.
Andi, whose late father was Pakistani and late mother was Irish, said: "I have regrets in that once my thesis is finished I will still have to watch my back.
"It only takes one lunatic to pop out and shoot you. But I am not going to stop my research simply because a group of fascists are opposed to it."
British nazis
exploit internet freedom
by Gerry Bagel
Leeds Crown Court heard how Tony White, 31, had deliberately set out to seduce schoolchildren politically with material that the judge, James Stewart QC, described as "filth" and just the type of hate material that had appeared between the Oldham and Bradford riots further inflaming the situation.
White, a security guard, has bounced around various nazi groups since the mid-1990s, including the terrorist Combat 18 and the National Front.
He had boarded a bus going to a school that he knew was experiencing racial problems. To attract attention he put up stickers proclaiming "Combat 18 Whites Only Area". He then handed out his race hate material to the children.
The children also spotted a weapon in the bag White was carrying. The police recovered the weapon when they searched his home. He was jailed for six months.
The nazis fire-bombed the teacher's car parked outside his house while he, his partner and their five-year-old daughter slept inside. Details about the teacher, his family and their car were on a nazi website set up at the start of the new millennium under the title Redwatch.
The website is a product of the sick mind of Simon Sheppard, a twice convicted hate criminal who lives outside Hull in Yorkshire. It started out by listing the names of a few anti-fascists in Yorkshire but over the past three years has grown to include hundreds of names, addresses and photographs of people whom hard-core nazis see as their enemies.
A recent addition is a section headed "Noncewatch" (nonce is criminal slang for paedophile). For the thugs who run and sustain the site, this is a way of describing anyone who is gay and some who are not gay. But the nazis also know that such accusations can cause hysteria and result in attacks on people and their homes.
During the recent Halifax council by-election campaign, Mark Collett, the Hitler-loving former British National Party youth leader, shouted from the safety of a car on a number of occasions how he would have the details of trade unionists campaigning against the BNP put on Redwatch or Noncewatch.
The site can be entered through Sheppard's web address or via a link from various other nazi websites. In what presumably passes as nazi humour, you then have to move the cross hairs of a rifle sight over a picture of the head of Searchlight's publisher, Gerry Gable, and click on it.
The roots of the hate site lie in the arrival of Combat 18 on the British political scene in March 1992. The Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire at the time described C18 in a World in Action television documentary as a terrorist group on the grounds that it targeted its perceived enemies, gathered intelligence on them, made threats to them and then acted upon those threats.
In those days Redwatch was a tatty duplicated newsletter listing a few names of anti-fascists. A year on it had grown, as had the reign of terror against anybody it singled out. Its targets included anti-fascists, trade unionists, mixed race couples, people in the peace and anti-apartheid movements and interestingly enough a school teacher in Leeds, who worked at a multiracial nursery. Her name had been obtained when White and a gang of fellow nazis stole a contact address book from the offices of the local radical publication Leeds Other Paper. Threats were made to harm her and the under-fives who attended the nursery.
As opposition and exposure of C18 grew, so did its lists, which even included police and Special Branch officers. Eventually the C18 magazine Stormer, which now published the lists, attracted the attention of the police. A number of key figures in C18 were convicted for possession and distribution of this violent hate material.
C18 suffered a split which eventually led to the murder of a fellow nazi by Charlie Sargent, C18's former leader. But even before that, its magazines had become infrequent and often omitted the hitlists.
Sheppard, an oddball character who hates women and enjoys a weird interest in cannibalism, returned to Britain after being convicted in The Netherlands for producing hate material. After serving a prison sentence there he was deported to Britain and welcomed with open arms into the BNP.
He was soon up to his old tricks again. So extreme was his hate material that the BNP dropped him like a hot potato just before he was jailed again on hate crime charges.
On his release he threw himself totally into the job of turning C18's hitlists into a website. He exploited the fact that the law in this area was weak and confused and that, as much as some police officers wished to shut down hate websites, they were constantly hampered either by non-cooperation of the web host companies, often based in other countries, or by lack of effort by the Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service to tackle this growing criminality head on.
For example, Searchlight discovered that the internet service provider for Sheppard's various enterprises is Stargate Inc, a US-based outfit. He registered with the company using a post office box number in Hull. However, according to the postal authorities, this box has been shut down, which means anyone who wants to seek legal redress against Sheppard has no way of contacting him.
Some of the victims currently named and pictured on the Redwatch site are children in terms of the law. Surely police child protection teams should step in? For all the nazi attacks on "nonces", perhaps the "nonces" are among the nazis, if they put children at risk in this way.
Sheppard, operating under the aegis of the Heretical Press, has built up a dubious reputation for setting up hate websites for all sorts of people on the far right. He has attracted the attention of well known nazi thugs, such as Kevin Watmough, and helped Eddie Morrison create his latest new movement, the White Nationalist Party, which has depended almost entirely on its internet output to gather momentum over the last year.
Others serviced by Sheppard include the nazi music umbrella group Blood and Honour, Combat 18, the Hitlerian November 9th Society, the National Front and the Spearhead site run by John Tyndall, the founder and former leader of the BNP. He also helped to create a website for those nazis, old and young, who still look up to the late and unlamented Sir Oswald Mosley.
One of his achievements has been to convince Colin Jordan, Britain's postwar nazi godfather, to abandon his fear of all things modern and allow him to place on the internet not only his current works and commentary on his present activities, but also years of hardcore hate material, so it can be viewed internationally.
Sheppard's internet activities have given him, a diehard hater of humanity, a free hand to try to terrorise those whom the far right has not got the guts to confront face to face. He also acts as mentor to many nutcases and nazi terrorists, fully-fledged or in the making, helping them to use their websites to make the most obvious violent threats. Their enemies are named, threats are uttered and descriptions abound of how to make and deliver home-made bombs and other lethal devices.
Searchlight and other nazi-watchers constantly inform the authorities of the appearance of such material. Sometimes official intervention results in the removal of some of the most obvious threats from potential killers' websites, only for them to reappear on another site.
Several years ago the Home Office set up a working party on internet crime. A few years later another working party appeared with no knowledge of the first one's existence.
A few weeks ago Abdullah el-Faisal, a 39-year-old London-based Muslim cleric who preached sermons advocating the killing of Jews and others, was sent to prison for nine years. Searchlight's reaction was to welcome the fact that a court took such death threats seriously. But why is it, in the wake of Sargent, the London bomber David Copeland and David Tovey who amassed terrorist equipment, the nazis appear to have such a free hand to do much the same thing?
If there is any doubt about the threat that these nazi terrorists pose, one need only look at their own stark warning headed: "To the reds and their supporters in the media".
"REDWATCH will continue to survive no
matter what. Comrades in the USA, Poland and Serbia to name but a few countries
make copies of all of the REDWATCH pages and should the security services
manage to close our British site REDWATCH will instantly reappear from one
or all of those countries. REDWATCH is not a hitlist, it is a warning to the
reds and their fellow travellers that whatever they know about us, we know
a hell of a lot more about them ... and unlike them we have the guts and
means to act on that information effectively!"
FROM THE ANaL website:
Firebomb attack
on
Leeds anti-Nazis
The Redwatch site is run by Combat 18, the violent Nazi terror group that provides "security" at BNP rallies. It contains of photos and personal details of ordinary people who oppose the Nazis, together with threats against them and racist abuse.
Leeds-based BNP Nazi Mark Collett recently had to resign as the party's youth leader after being caught on camera boasting of his admiration for Hitler's regime. The Channel 4 documentary "Young, Nazi and Proud" showed Collett threatening anti-Nazis with violence and vowing to publish their details on Redwatch.
Tony Wentworth, Collett's replacement as BNP youth leader, was recently filmed by Yorkshire TV taking photos of anti-Nazis. Sure enough, these photos later appeared on Redwatch.
The firebomb attack on the Leeds anti-Nazis is yet more evidence of the BNP's direct links to the Nazi terror groups behind Redwatch. It makes a mockery of the party's claim to be a "legitimate democratic party". The BNP is neither democratic nor legitimate. It is ruthless Nazi organisation that has no place in civilised society.
The BNP is standing eight council candidates in Leeds next May, with other Nazis standing in Bradford, Dewsbury, Halifax and Wakefield. The Anti Nazi League is determined to oppose the BNP's agenda of race hatred and terror – in West Yorkshire and across the country.
Home secretary under pressure
to clamp down on fascist groups.
Matthew Taylor on a campaign
of violence via the internet
Wednesday December 17, 2003
The Guardian
The home secretary, David Blunkett, is
coming under increasing pressure to shut down an extreme rightwing website
following the discovery of a secret hitlist of targets - including social
workers, journalists and politicians.
The Guardian has seen documents
from a secure email network which show hardline fascists are planning a
campaign of "violence and intimidation" and are swapping information on bomb-making
and details of possible targets.
The group is linked to the Redwatch website which carries hundreds of pictures and details of anti-fascists - many taken during protests against the British National Party - alongside the slogan "Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes."
Only a handful of known neo-Nazis have access to the network which has been infiltrated for the first time by researchers at the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight.
Many of those featured on Redwatch have already suffered threats, intimidation and physical assaults and campaigners fear the discovery of the new email group, nicknamed Mole Intelligence Bureau, signals a worrying escalation in far right violence.
A dossier on the website has been compiled by the National Union of Journalists in Leeds and sent to the police and a local MP who passed it to the home secretary.
A spokesman for the Home Office told the Guardian: "We are very aware of the anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet. The Home Office has had representations from many MPs about Redwatch and we will be responding to their concerns very soon."
Unions, anti-fascist groups and MPs are looking at ways of closing the site and prosecuting those involved.
"This email network is a very sinister development," said a spokesman for Searchlight. "There are explicit threats against people who have stood up to the far right and this is nothing more than political intimidation and classic fascism."
Many of those featured on the site are people who have spoken out against the rise of the British National Party in the north of England. During anti-fascist meetings and protests in the runup to last year's local elections many BNP activists took pictures of anti-fascist campaigners which appeared on Redwatch.
Next June the BNP, which has sought to position itself as a respectable, mainstream political party under the leadership of Nick Griffin, is expected to field a record number of candidates in the local and European elections. In many parts of the country all the seats on local councils are being contested following boundary changes and anti-fascists are predicting the biggest electoral push by the far right in recent British history.
In the private email network fascists list names and addresses of targets and plan attacks on anti-racists in their homes or during public meetings.
One subscriber, who calls himself MIB, wrote: "Redwatch has accumulated many names and addresses along with pictures of the targets, many of whom have had nothing done to them. Now's the time to start a proper campaign of violence and intimidation towards those who seek to see us silenced or imprisoned for our beliefs."
The site has details of how to make plastic explosives and bomb designs.
One of the targets of the Mole Intelligence Bureau has been Yorkshire Evening Post journalist Peter Lazenby, who has campaigned against racism and fascism in Yorkshire. He was singled out after an expose of the British National Party in the runup to last year's local elections.
Numerous addresses for Mr Lazenby were posted on the site for members to "check out." One message read: "We need to find this reporter fast. If we can scare this cunt off then we might get an easier time instead of being slagged off and made to look a bunch of muppets."
The National Union of Journalists said Mr Lazenby was one of many members who had suffered at the hands of Redwatch. "The site is about intimidation and it's intended to stop our members doing their job, particularly when they are exposing fascism. We have talked to our lawyers about trying to get this site closed down but it is very difficult legally."
The MP for Reading West, Martin Salter, received a death threat from a BNP supporter this summer after speaking out against the far right, and believes it is crucial to tackle Redwatch.
"There are sinister elements within the far right of British politics who are prepared to use violence and intimidation in order to silence and discourage their opponents. They are the new model army of fascism and Redwatch is at the centre of this evil."
In Leeds last year two teachers, Sally Kincaid and Steve Johnson, had their car firebombed after their details - including photographs, address and car registration number - were posted on the site. Another target was an Anti-Nazi League activist from Halifax.
A couple of months later a leaflet including the man's home address was distributed in his neighbourhood trying to link him and other local activists to the mass murderers Fred West and Dennis Nilson.
In another message, posted by a BNP supporter from Batley, the people behind Redwatch are asked if they have any intention of attending an anti-racist meeting in Dewsbury in June. The event, which was addressed by Leon Greenman, a Holocaust survivor, was described as a "Holohoax meeting".
One respondent advised: "The best place to attack the reds [is] just after the meeting finishes as they are walking to catch their buses or going for their cars." Police attended the meeting and ensured there was no trouble.
In early August, a message on the Mole Intelligence bulletin board listed dozens of people in Yorkshire for further research, including the divisional police commanders for Dewsbury and Huddersfield, the chief executive of Kirklees Council, the director of a West Yorkshire health authority and housing officers.
The Redwatch website, which also lists the home addresses of some MPs and councillors, was launched in 2001 and has more than 1,000 photographs. In most cases the pictures are unidentified but names, addresses, car registrations, phone numbers and even workplace details are linked to others.
It operates under the auspices of Combat 18, the neo-Nazi group, and takes its name from a news sheet that C18 leaders in London produced in the early 1990s. Like now, it listed names and addresses of anti-racists and encouraged other rightwingers to ring them up or pay them a visit.
To prevent internet attack and police action, Redwatch is hosted on three separate sites all based abroad. One is registered in the name of the National Front and the other two in the name of the White Nationalist Party which is thought to be the political wing of Combat 18.
Alec McFadden, president of Merseyside TUC, appeared on the site with his name and address after being followed home last month.
"In 1988 the fascists tried to kill me when my car was fire bombed," Mr McFadden told the Guardian.
"Since then I have lived in secrecy and
sometimes under police protection. But now they have got my details again
I'm having to have CCTV installed and I have two children to think of. My
wife, who has died, was a German Jew and I speak to her family about this
and, as they say, it is classic fascist tactics and they know more than most
that we mustn't give in to these people."
ANTI-RACISM COUNCILLOR CAUGHT IN FAR RIGHT WEB
04 January 2004
The Picture and details of a leading anti-racism campaigner and councillor have been posted on a website linked to violent and neo-Nazi groups.
Turn to page 3 Chris Wood's photograph has appeared on the Pro-Democracy League website which is run as a far right spoof of the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) website.
Mr Wood is chairman of North Staffordshire Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (Norscarf) and Labour group deputy leader on Stoke-on-Trent City Council.
Under the headline: 'Who are Britain's Anti-Democrats?', Mr Wood appears alongside various organisers from the ANL.
The site also carries a commentary on the activities of Norscarf which recently pledged to knock on the doors of every house in North Staffordshire where the British National Party is campaigning. The Pro-Democracy League says it will make a poster available on the internet to print and display in a window to tell Norscarf they are not welcome.
The Pro-Democracy League site publishes the photographs, addresses, car registration plates and regular haunts of hundreds of anti-racism campaigners.
The website is also listed on a far-right website called Redwatch which provides links to 12 other websites including the White Nationalist Party, Aryan Unity and Combat 18. The Redwatch website has the slogan "Remember places, traitors' faces, they' ll all pay for their crimes."
Photographs on Redwatch include individuals and crowds who have taken part in demonstrations against the Iraq war or against the British National Party (BNP).
The anti-racism organisation Searchlight says some people whose details have been posted on Redwatch website have been subject to violence and intimidation and the Home Office says it is looking for ways of responding to public concerns.
Mr Wood said: "This is an attempt at intimidation. The site is linked to Redwatch which is clearly an attempt to intimidate people into not campaigning against groups like the BNP. It will not stop me or put me off doing what I do, but there is still a worry there. As a councillor it is very easy to get my address and contact details. I have two sons aged 19 and 21 who live at home with me and I have concerns in case they are bothered.
"There have been attacks on other people or on their cars in other parts of the country, so I have informed the police about it. These people are just cowards and they won't intimidate me."
A Home Office spokesman said: "We are very aware of the anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet. The Home Office has had representations from many MPs and others about Redwatch, and we will be responding to their concerns very soon. The Government has for some time been in discussion with police, the Crown Prosecution Service, internet service providers, the Internet Watch Foundation and others about criminal activity on the internet and ways of tackling it."
The Pro-Democracy League website offers 'education' on Trotsky, Marx, Lenin, Stalin and the impact of Communism on the former Soviet Union. It describes Marx and Lenin as "idols of the ANL" and says: "The ANL is a Marxist/Communist front. Its 'supporters' are recruited in the main from universities where red dross are not only students, but lecturers promoting anti-democratic propaganda like Marxism."
Julian Waterson, national organiser of the Pro-Democracy League, said the organisation had been launched in 2001 in response to anti-racist organisations who campaign specifically against the BNP.
He said it had no link to the BNP or Redwatch, apart from being listed by the site.
He said: "The Pro-Democracy League is exclusively committed to peaceful means."
Mr Waterson said the site was intended to provide another view to the campaigning of anti-racist groups.
He said: "The public needed to be made fully aware of the true nature of these groups which are mostly made up of far left groups who oppose democracy and free speech, and despite their claims of being peaceful have a violent edge to them."
He said anti-racism groups "seek to sabotage and pervert the course of democracy by circulating crude, factually inaccurate, misleading leaflets about a particular political party which could ultimately affect the result."
Mr Waterson said Mr Wood was trying to have it both ways by complaining at his picture being published when at the same time the Anti-Nazi League publishes a page of photographs under the headline: 'Who are Britain's Nazis?'
He added: "Many people who belong to right wing parties have had their houses attacked, have themselves been physically attacked, cars tampered with, attempts made to burn down their business premises, and much of this can be attributed to the emotions stirred up by these groups."
Searchlight says concerns have been repeatedly expressed about the contents of Redwatch, which also provides links to the violent racist group Combat 18 and other organisations called the White Nationalist Party, Aryan Unity, Aryan Baby Drive and the Racial Volunteer Force. Redwatch lists "reds" by town and city and justifies publishing names and addresses because the Anti-Nazi League has previously circulated personal details of BNP leader Nick Griffin and his family when planning a counter-demonstration to a party rally.
The website says: "The infantile goons
of the SWP/ANaL [Socialist Workers' Party/Anti Nazi League] circus recently
published the addresses, telephone numbers and work details of a leading British
nationalist and his family. Fight back - send us details of your local red
scumbags - we want their names, addresses, phone numbers, photographs, work
details - anything and everything about them to publish here in the same
way as they are doing to our people. We are going to give them exactly the
same treatment as they are giving us - and we'll give as good as we get!"
House of
Lords
Wednesday, 7 January 2004.
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
2.42 p.m.
Lord Greaves asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they intend to take
action to deal with threats and intimidation arising from websites which
provide personal details of active opponents of fascist and racist parties.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): My Lords, we have discussed this with the police, the Information Commissioner and the Internet Watch Foundation, all of whom are aware of these websites. It is important that the provisions of the Public Order Act 1986 and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 be used when breaches occur. Anyone with concerns should make them known to the relevant authorities and to the Internet Watch Foundation. We are currently working on an e-crime strategy that will include consideration of issues such as these.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. The website concerned, Red Watch, was set up about two years ago by Combat 18, a Nazi hit group. It is registered by the National Front and the White Nationalist Party. A great deal of the material upon the website appears to be posted on it and sent to it by active and leading members of the British National Party. The material consists of more than 1,000 photographs of anti-Nazi, anti-racist activists with their addresses, telephone numbers and, where applicable, car registration numbers. I believe that the Minister confirmed that the security and police forces are looking at the matter. Will she reconfirm that? Will she also tell us whether they are devoting sufficient resources to this particular problem which quite clearly involves breaches of the law, incitement to violence against individuals and their property and incitement to racial hatred? This is a serious matter. Just because the people concerned are on the Left does not mean that they deserve less protection than if they were businessmen or other people. Will the Minister confirm that?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I confirm that all proper steps will be taken if any person is found to be in breach of the law. The difficulty that we have experienced is that operators of certain websites have sought to avoid overstepping the conduct that the legislation defines as criminal. They fly very close to the wind. I reassure the House that although we intend to keep the position under review we do not believe that the absence of charges so far against any particular website has yet established that we need new offences or safeguards. However, I confirm that the matter will be kept under close scrutiny.
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth:
My Lords, I am very grateful for the noble Lord's Question. The Chief Rabbi
drew attention to the growing threat of racism on Radio 4 last November
following the bombing of synagogues in Istanbul. It seems to me that the
matter goes beyond present legislative abilities. Do the Government agree
that the precious gift of freedom of speech is being abused and that action
needs to be taken to protect very vulnerable people, including some young
people, and to make clear to those who are just getting on the thither side
of existing legislation, but not quite, that there are limits to the toleration
that the rest of the community can extend to them?
The Lord Greaves
Liberal Democrat
Son of late Geoffrey Lawrence Greaves and of Moyra Louise Greaves
DATE OF BIRTH: 27 July 1942
MARITAL DETAILS: Married Heather Ann Baxter 1968 (2 children)
EDUCATED: Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield
FURTHER EDUCATION: Hertford
College, Oxford (BA geography 1963)
PROFESSION:
Teacher;
Lecturer;
Organising secretary, Association
of Liberal Councillors;
Manager, Liberal Party Publications;
Book dealer
By Simon Dudman
Three prominent city socialists have been included on a menacing Nazi hitlist which calls for anti-racism campaigners, politicians and trade unionists to be beaten up.
The far-right website, called Redwatch, has targeted city councillors Dave Nellist and Karen McKay along with former city councillor Rob Windsor.
The site includes a photograph of each of the three and details their home addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses and also gives the councillors' surgery times and locations.
The sinister site, believed to be hosted from a US address to escape prosecution in Britain, carries their details under the slogan "Remember places, traitors' faces, they all pay for their crimes".
The website reads: "Redwatch is not a hitlist, it is a warning to the reds and their fellow travellers that whatever they know about us, we know a hell of a lot more about them... and unlike them we have the guts and means to act on that information effectively!".
Cllr Nellist said he had not been aware he was the target of "incited violence" until the Evening Telegraph contacted him.
And speaking on behalf of his socialist colleagues, Cllr Nellist (St Michaels) said: "I would support legal measures against anyone who attempted to incite racism or violence.
"I understand people have been attacked as a result of this website and it is distressing to think that our details are on there.
"If any council members' names or addresses are used in this context it is a real concern."
Also on the site is a Coventry folk musician who is in his mid-30s and from the north of the city. We have chosen not to name him.
The Home Office is investigating the site after receiving complaints.
A spokesman told the Evening Telegraph: "We are very aware of the anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet. The Home Office has had representations from many MPs and others about Redwatch. We will be responding to their concerns very soon."
She said that with regards to internet incitement, what is illegal off-line is illegal on-line.
She added: "In other words, at present, material placed on net servers based in the UK which appears to reproduce information or opinions which, however unpalatable, are already published legally in the UK, would not be falling foul of the law.
"The real difficulty in this area is dealing with material which may originate in the UK but which is posted on computers based abroad.
Coventry Evening Telegraph July 22 2004
Ben Chapman (Wirral South, Labour) 
