UKIP candidate’s support for Franco called out by anti-fascist group

Martin Shipton

The anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate has called out UKIP’s lead spokesman for Wales after he told an election hustings meeting that he admires the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

Stan Robinson, who jointly runs the far right video blog Voice of Wales with convicted fraudster Dan Morgan, was recently promoted to lead spokesman status and is also UKIP’s general election candidate in Llanelli.

The hustings meeting was in uproar after Labour councillor Gary Jones raised his arm in a fascist salute three times as a protest against Mr Robinson and his supporters. This led to Cllr Jones, who represents the village of Llangennech on Carmarthenshire County Council, being asked to leave the meeting.

Nazi salute

An observer at the hustings meeting, which was organised by Llanelli Chamber of Trade & Commerce, said of Cllr Jones’ depiction of a Nazi salute: “It was finger under the nose – the whole thing.”

The councillor faced calls for him to be suspended by the Labour Party, but Cllr Deryk Cundy, leader of the county council’s opposition Labour group, posted a message to a Labour WhatsApp group, saying he understood why Cllr Jones had behaved the way he did and supported him.

There is a wealth of evidence to back up the case that Franco, who ruled Spain after the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 until his death in 1975, ran a regime that hunted down its enemies before torturing and killing them.

Mr Robinson is a notorious far-right activist who has made numerous offensive comments on social media about those he regards as his enemies or left-wing. He has called, for example, for the castration of Sky presenter Adam Boulton with a “rust [sic] blade” . Two days later Mr Robinson re-posted an online news article which inaccurately claimed a Muslim terrorist was responsible for the stabbing of two people in London. along with a highly derogatory statement about people from Pakistan.

Heckling

Cllr Jones admitted doing the Nazi salute, saying: “I did, after his admiration for Franco, I shouldn’t have done it .He repeatedly attacked Nia [Griffith, the long-serving Labour MP for Llanelli who is seeking re-election], didn’t listen to the adjudicator etc. I lost it, his fans were heckling all the time. They asked me to leave, and I did voluntarily, and apologised to the security.”

Now the Llanelli branch of Hope Not Hate has defended Cllr Jones, posting a message on Facebook that states: “So Mr Robinson UKIP Wales. What is it about Franco that led you to saying at a public hustings that he is your political hero?

“Do you actually understand the history of the Spanish Civil War and the number of people from South Wales – including #Llanelli who fought with the International Brigade?

“Franco was a murdering fascist. Franco supported Hitler and Mussolini.

Franco is your hero?”

Cllr Jones himself posted a message on Facebook that said: “During WW2 Franco supplied resources to Hitler and refuelled U-boats, that preyed on our ships.”

Another Facebook user, Jonathan Williams, wrote: “There used to be a plaque on the building where the tattooist is in Bres Road [Llanelli] which remembers some of the Llanelli volunteers that went to fight against Franco [in the Spanish Civil War]. Ironically VoW [Voice of Wales] have their HQ in the same building so Stan could have seen it many times.”

Racist

Facebook users have also expressed concern about Mr Robinson’s decision to post a picture from the racist, neo-fascist and white supremacist channel Radio Genoa that depicts a blond-haired white family beneath a caption that states: “There’s no battle more important in our lifetime than the fight to save our people.”

Sue Hegerty wrote: “That image has strong Aryan race vibes”. She went on to post a similar picture from Nazi propaganda in the 1930s and 1940s.

Mr Robinson has also posted bizarre and disturbing messages, including one with a caption that reads: “Revelation 13:11-18, the second beast, later known as the false prophet , comes ‘out of the earth’ and forces everyone on earth to worship the first beast. Here is the SECOND AntiChrist.” Below is a photograph of Pope Francis.

In another post, Mr Robinson reproduced a photograph he said was of journalists being hanged after World War 2. His caption stated: “All the Welsh media are busily engaged in bailing out their paymasters @WelshLabour @WelshGovernment in the matter of the best steel in the World coming to an end in Wales .”

A picture of hangings is then shown, with a caption stating: “Members of the Media who lied and misled the German People were executed, right along with Medical Doctors and Nurses who participated in medical experiments using living people as guinea pigs.”

A Llanelli Labour source said: “These kinds of posts are disturbing – all the more so when Stan Robinson is both the leading spokesperson for UKIP in Wales and a candidate in the general election. The racism he represents has no place in Welsh politics and we hope he is roundly defeated in Llanelli on July 4.”