Anti-Nazi group slams top Tory over Enoch Powell support

ANTI-FASCIST campaign group HOPE Not Hate have demanded the Conservative Party take action against Susan Hall, their alt-Right candidate for London mayor, after she liked a tweet praising Rivers of Blood hate-monger Enoch Powell.

Hope Not Hate launched the petition following the revelation that Hall liked an image of Powell alongside the words: “It’s never too late to save your country”, which was previously used by the far-right British National Party. She also liked a tweet saying that Powell should have been Prime Minister.

The controversy comes less than a month after the Tory candidate was criticised for her ‘offensive’ views about the Notting Hill Carnival, when she described the cultural celebration as “dangerous” and said there were “problems with crime” in the Black community.

That prompted Labour MP Dawn Butler to tell Tory party chairman Greg Hands: “Your mayoral candidate seems convinced of the innate criminality of Black people and has repeatedly implied that our community has a propensity toward violence and disorder, saying that Black people have a ‘problem with crime’.”

The Conservative leader of the London assembly group also got into hot water in 2020 after tweeting that Donald Trump should “wipe the smile off” Sadiq Khan’s face after the London mayor criticised the ex-president’s “hate-fuelled” campaign in the United States.

Hall has called Black Lives Matter protesters “worrying” and said that Metropolitan Police officers taking the knee was “embarrassing”.

Last week a poll by Redfield and Wilton gave Khan a wafer-thin one point lead over Hall, and showed that if ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn entered the race for City Hall as an independent it would hand Hall a decisive victory.

In an open letter to Hands today, HOPE not hate’s chief executive Nick Lowes wrote: “We are gravely concerned about what we have uncovered. HOPE not Hate’s researchers have found Susan Hall liking posts endorsing Enoch Powell, islamophobic tropes about Sadiq Khan, supporting the myth that the 2020 American election was stolen from Donald Trump and expressing a disdain for the press and democracy.”

Research by HOPE not Hate found that Hall had quote-tweeted an article from the notorious right-wing misinformation claiming the 2020 US presidential election had been stolen from Trump.

Hall also replied to a tweet from disgraced racist commentator Katie Hopkins calling Sadiq Khan “our nipple height mayor of Londonistan” with the endorsement “Thank you Katie!”. 

Fervent Brexiteer Hall is an enthusiastic supporter of failed ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss and enjoys the backing of current Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Hall called the arrival of small boats “an invasion.”

The research also shows Hall replied uncritically to a tweet describing Khan as a rat and suggesting the mayor “likes” female genital mutilation and violence against women and girls.

In June, Hall claimed that Khan “doesn’t like women”, which was condemned as an Islamophobic trope. 

She also attempted to link Khan to “electoral corruption” in Tower Hamlets in next years’ mayoral elections, even though the London mayor had nothing to do with voting in the borough and there has been no evidence of any voter fraud in the recent past.

In 2016, the former Tory candidate for London Mayor Zac Goldsmith was criticised for running a “dog-whistle campaign in a city with no dogs” after Goldsmith lost the election. His campaign had targeted Hindus claiming Khan, a Muslim, wanted to “steal their gold.”

Georgie Laming, head of campaigns at HOPE not Hate, said: “Susan Hall is not fit to represent London and all its diversity. She must be removed as a candidate.”

A spokesman for Hall’s campaign told The Times: “Susan engages with many people on Twitter without endorsing their views. Londoners want a mayor who listens to people and deals with the bread-and-butter issues that matter to them — making our streets safer and putting more money back in people’s pockets. As mayor, Susan will deliver that.”

In June, the London Conservatives rejected Samuel Kasumu, widely seen as progressive in Tory circles, in favour of Hall amid complaints of a stich-up in the selection process.