Standing up to Ukip

By New Worker correspondent

AROUND 120 anti-fascists gathered in Marsham Street, Westminster, last Wednesday evening to protest at a public meeting to be broadcast featuring the extreme right-wing xenophobic leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage.

The protest has been organised by Stand Up To Ukip initiated by Unite Against Fascism and other anti-fascist and anti-racist group.

Around a dozen protesters had managed to infiltrate the meeting where Farage was speaking before it started but they were ejected before Farage arrived.

They reported to the protesters outside that the Ukip supporters inside were narrow-minded, reactionary and xenophobic. They tried to keep their racism undercover but it keeps slipping out.

One journalist commented that they seemed to have come straight from Monty Python’s [Twit of the Year] sketch.

Speakers at the protest rally included UAF joint general secretary Weyman Bennett.

The extreme neo-Nazi group calling itself Britain First had promised to supply protection for Farage against protesters involving “an armoured vehicle and military trained personnel”. But only two of their members turned up and had to be removed by police after photo-journalists protested when the police tried to put them in the press pen.

Evicted from the pen and confronted by the anti-fascists, the two BF members are reported to have “run away”.