Hope not Hate bruiser
Dan Hodges has been
active in the Telegraph recently, demanding that funding be cut off to
anyone that disagrees with him the BNP and other European nationalist parties. As usual in the Telegraph, the comments are more interesting than the articles. And, through them, some interesting information came to light about Mr Hodges, much of it courtesy of the former contributor to this blog Johnny Rottenborough. He provided an interesting link that tells us much about the mentality of Dan Hodges and those like him. Here Hodges describes campaigning against the BNP a few years ago:
I started working with Hope not Hate on the media campaign for the 2009 Euro elections. It was no-holds-barred, bare knuckle, PR. We used every dirty, underhand, low down, unscrupulous trick in the book. Then when the book had been used up, we tore it to shreds, set it on fire, and stuffed it down Nick Griffin’s underpants.
Source
Another commenter provided the following information about Hodges' past. I can't say whether this is all true or not but it certainly sounds plausible.
Hodges has also worked for 'Searchlight Magazine, which was founded and edited by Gerry Gable: failed Communist candidate and a convicted burglar. Searchlight has a sordid history of false accusations and links with extremist groups.
Hodges charged Searchlight £600 a week for ‘providing PR and communications support for the campaign including drafting articles, drafting press releases, producing press briefings, providing media comment, assisting in media event management and providing general strategic media advice’.
* Gable was a member of the Young Communist League and the Communist Party of Great Britain.
* He started as a trainee journalist on the Communist Party’s Daily Worker.
* After a year he left for what became a career as a Communist Party trade union official.
* He stood for the Communist Party on Thursday the 10th of May 1962 at Northfield Ward, Stamford Hill, North London.
* These links remain. In 1986 Searchlight was distributed by
‘Central Books Ltd.’, a Communist Party front that distributes various
Marxist literature.
Two interesting new (for me, anyway) facts about Hodges came to light in the course of the comments. The first is that he is the son of the actress Glenda Jackson. The second is that he lost one of his eyes in a fight. I had noticed his severely beaten-up appearance before. I thought stealth jihadi
Mehdi Hasan might have been responsible, after bitchslapping him out of the New Statesman. But it seems Hodges lost his eye long
before. Does anyone know how? Did he lose it, perchance, while engaging in
brutal assaults on human rights promotion with
Europeans who don't want their civilisation to be extinguished fascists?
9 comments:
Allegedly he lost it defending a negro from 'racists' in a pub brawl.
Says Anonymous, rifling through all his paper files:
The April 1994 issue of Searchlight had on its back page an advertisement for the "Anti-Nazi League" listing 'Anti-Fascist Fightback' (formerly entitled Anti Fascist Action with contact address) under which were local 'anti-racist' addresses, mostly those of AFA. This ad ran from February 1993 to August 1994. An advert on the back of the April 1988 issue of Searchlight urged their readers to 'Join Anti-Fascist Action' with AFA's address in London. AFA are extremists originally led by Red Action and Direct Action. RA are violent Marxists, unequivocal in their support of the IRA and its bombing of civilian targets. Two of their members were jailed for planting IRA bombs in London . In 1983 a bomb exploded at Harrods, killing 6 including 3 police officers and wounding 75. The terrorists responsible were Jan Taylor and Patrick Hayes. Hayes was also the East London organiser of AFA. When the police swooped on his Hackney flat they found AK47 assault rifles, ammo and bomb making equipment. Interesting organisation, Searchlight, did DT's Head of Blogs look into Hodges before appointing him, or did he assume the DT readership was as uninformed as most DT bloggers?
According to this biography of Glenda Jackson, Hodges ‘lost his left eye when a broken beer glass was shoved in his face after he stood up for two black men who were being taunted by whites in a south London pub.’ The Daily Mail says it happened in 1992.
Hodges ran two pro-aviation lobby groups, Freedom to Fly and Flying Matters. Both are now defunct but they’re mentioned on this chart of New Labour’s incestuous relationships.
Sounds suspiciously worthy, doesn't it? I mean if you lose your eye in a random fight/mugging someone/robbing a bank/attacking a political opponent and have to justify it to everyone you meet for the rest of your life, it's exactly the kind of story you would make up. "There were these innocent, defenceless negroes. They were surrounded by these evil racists. They had white hoods and burning crosses and everything. I just had to step in..."
Flying? Weird. What's that about? Flying in materiel from Moscow? Chucked it when the wall came down?
Rather oddly, a piece written in 1992 about Glenda Jackson ‘in her latest role: running for the House of Commons’ has this to say about Dan Hodges losing his eye: ‘On the night of Feb. 21, Daniel reportedly stood up for two black men who were being taunted by whites in a south London pub.’
The piece was written less than two months after the incident and yet they hedge their bets with ‘reportedly’.
A more likely explanation would be that a drunken Hodges approached two black men in the hope that he could praise them for the depth of their enrichment and trade pleasantries over their shared love of diversity when he was instead met with an appropriate and predictably violent response.
He was drunk and kept throwing peanuts at the group of white/mixed group and one of them punched him with the pint glass
Are you guys kidding? Did you even Google it?
http://courtnewsuk.co.uk/crime_archive/?id=25975
I seem to remember that he got glassed in the Lord Northbrook Pub on Burnt Ash Raod SE12. Can't seem find it on Google though.
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