Lies, damn lies and Labour

The three 'non-political' members of the public who just
happen to have close links to the Labour Party

Hope not Hate have been busy circulating the Manchester Evening News story from yesterday in which three innocent, non-political members of the public were used in a UKIP leaflet. As was revealed on another blog late last night, these three innocents - Bernard Caine, Irene Lawrence and her daughter Rachel - are in fact Labour Party activists. UKIP has confirmed that all three gave their permission for their image to be used, while sources tell us that pretty much everybody involved with the story also knew that it was fundamentally a lie, although that did not stop the Manchester Evening News running it.

Bernard Caine, the gentleman pictured, said he "has no party political affiliation but on this occasion has picked Labour candidate Mike Kane via

The 'non-political' Mr Caine not at all urging people to
vote Labour on his friend Mike Kane's behalf

postal vote, added: “It is diabolical.”". His choice of Mike Kane was not entirely unexpected, as he was a fellow director of the multi-million pound Parkway Green Housing Trust a few years ago, a position to which he was nominated by the local Labour Party. He was also pictured with Mike Kane and Harriet Harman - a photograph which appears on the latter's website - at the beginning of the Wythenshawe & Sale East by-election attending a Labour Party meeting. He also appears to have forgotten his presence amongst a carefully selected audience of Labour supporters who got to meet Ed Milliband during the campaign.

The non-political Bernard Caine not listening to
Labour leader Ed Milliband

Irene Lawrence - who "only went to the meeting because her housing association asked her to go" - has a similarly short memory. She was the chairwoman of the multi-million pound Willow Park Housing Trust for 11 years and also worked closely with Mike Kane and the Labour administration who nominated her.

And for Ms Lawrence's daughter Rachel? Well, she also appears to have got to meet Ed Milliband as one of the carefully pre-selected audience members when the Labour leader 'meets the public, although as it is difficult to be certain, we have not reproduced the photograph here. 

It is worth asking whether with former directors of two of the largest local housing trusts in Wythenshawe being prepared to lie about their association with the Labour Party if this is the source of local resident's complaints that they were told to take down UKIP posters and placards from their social housing? Were Labour tacitly supporting threats to the security of working class people in housing association properties?

UKIP will face many more of these set-ups over the coming months. We should not underestimate the depths to which the Labour Party will sink, or the lies which will be told by otherwise ordinary people. It is no wonder that Hope not Hate are pushing the story so hard. Increasingly though HnH are finding that even their supporters are seeing through their lies: