To be upset that there are 3 Ukip posters up in houses down my road :(

[LEMmingaround]

It is a pretty working class street, some council, some privately owned houses. Not sure if that is relevant but WHY the fuck would you advertise the fact that you are a fuckwit? All of the people with the notices up are older people - older than me, which is 43 (im not older!!!! - ok, maybe a bit).

Its pretty worrying really that what i would normally see as very respectable folk have been sucked in by this bullshit?

This is a conservative ward, and although dissilussioned with the previous gov i have always voted labour - i am going to have to vote bloody tory in a half beat effort to keep Ukip out of the area :(

My DD lives in a town with a ukip counsellor - its fucking dire and getting worse :(

I suspect that even Churchill in his more mature years would concede that there are circumstances when reading those passages out would amount to clear incitement to racial hatred.

And, sundaypolitics, political correctness doesn't seem to have gagged the contributors to that forum you linked to. Rather the opposite.....

Icimoi - is Islam a religion or race? Not that I'm defending that speech but equally I have seen far worse spoken on the streets of the UK during protests and nothing was done about it. If we cannot speak out against religion then what next?

Martorana - I won't condone the behaviour of those contributors. People get away with far more online today, it's up to the site admin to monitor. On the street we should be able to quote a book.

Criticising religion is fine. Saying everyone who follows a religion has certain characteristics or personality traits, is wrong.

So I think it is fine for me to say the Catholic Church is evil. But to say all catholics are evil is inaccurate and wrong.

turgiday - The point is you are entitled to your opinion. Of course it is inaccurate and wrong. Does that mean you should be arrested for your views?

Just to clarify I don't mean your opinion is inaccurate and wrong - I mean the example you gave ;)

If you read the passage through it is an attack on Islam and the influence it has as a religion. Which sentence in particular is worthy of arrest in your opinion?

"On the street we should be able to quote a book."

Really? Any book?

If it simply a quote and the book has not been banned then yes. Offending people is not a reason to stifle free speech. If it incites hatred that is a completely different issue, in which case the book should be banned. Thoughts?

One of the the things I find most annoying about UKIP and their many fellow travellers is the faux naïveté. "I was only reading abound from a book by Winston Churchill- how can anybody be upset by that?"

Yeah, right.

Oh, and he wasn't initial arrested for the speech per se, he was taken into custody for not moving on when the police asked him to. The court will decide on the "incitement to racial hatred" charge.

Thanks for posting the Churchill except, Martorana. It's quite thought- provoking.

Incitement is about context; in this country we don't ban books, but we do set out where one person's freedom to read might encroach on someone else's freedom to walk down the street in peace.

So we don't ban The Tiger That Came To Tea, but if someone were to stand outside your house reading it out loud through a megaphone, that limits my freedom, and could constitute an offence.

In the same way, we don't live in a dictatorship. Anyone is free to read that Churchill passage - and in other contexts (say, an academic one), that would be fine. But when you're shouting it out in the street. The sole intention if making other people feel uncomfortable, that's where you cross the line.

If the boot was on the other foot, if someone stands in the street reading a text calling for death to infidels, that too constitutes incitement.

But that's the way UKIP work, acting like they're the victim if some giant PC conspiracy.

I note in the news today the UKIP candidate for West Hampstead has suggested reforms to extend the franchise to women and non-homeowners might have gone too far. And yet people honestly believe they're not just fascists in pullovers.

"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."

It is very interesting that the article in the Telegraph doesn't actually specify what bit of Winston Churchill this guy was reading. Leaving the less well informed to make the assumption that it was some fluffy bit of innocuous patriotism.
He had ....linteresting..........views on Ghandi too.

Martona - "Oh, and he wasn't initial arrested for the speech per se, he was taken into custody for not moving on when the police asked him to. The court will decide on the "incitement to racial hatred" charge."

So you believe the police should trample over what was a non violent protest? He has since been charged with incitement to racial hatred and this is acceptable?

Mrs Blackthorn - Clearly you don't get out much if you honestly believe people are always arrested for saying offensive things. Have you never heard of the EDL or Ansar al Sharia UK? When they go out to protest often a handful of people are arrested, many will preach loudly about things you and I might find offensive. I doubt this individual was a UKIP member/supporter and for the record as you both assume I am some 'UKIP victim', I have only ever voted for two parties in the past, both of whom sit in government today.

Like I said if you read the passage through the criticism is directed at the religion not the followers.

"Clearly you don't get out much if you honestly believe people are always arrested for saying offensive things."

Which is plainly not what I said. I've said that police action is dependent on context - the EDL and Ansar al Sharia frequently find themselves arrested for their actions, but it depends on what they're saying and where.

But it is clearly not true that people are arrested for innocently standing in the street and reading out a bit of Churchill. He was reading out something with the intention if pissing others off, then refused to move when the police asked him to. Moving him on is hardly a great liberal conspiracy to stifle debate - and the same would have happened if he was a beardy Muslim man doing the same.

Read and digest!!!!

www.politics.co.uk/news/2014/05/13/strip-public-of-the-vote-says-ukip-candidate

Totally undemocratic IMHO.

"So you believe the police should trample over what was a non violent protest? He has since been charged with incitement to racial hatred and this is acceptable?"

He was asked to move on by the police and refused. They tried to persuade he to move on for 40 minutes. He has since been charged- and bailed- for inciting racial hatred, and the court will decide.

Have you actually read that passage? Why would anyone read that aloud in public if one wasn't trying to incite racial hatred??????

Yes, it would be a nightmare if people were getting arrested for exercising their right to free speech in a democracy. UKIP would never stand for that sort of...

Oh no. Wait a minute.

To be fair, I can see you might feel intimidated by people protesting against your fascist policies outside the hall you were meeting in.

But obviously, a party so committed to free speech would let people say whatever they wanted on Twitter, right?

Oh. Not that either.

Well, this bodes well for all this 'saying what you think' we're going to suddenly be allowed under UKIP.

"So we don't ban The Tiger That Came To Tea, but if someone were to stand outside your house reading it out loud through a megaphone, that limits my freedom, and could constitute an offence."

Mrs Blackthorn - I presume you've never been or witnessed a protest, otherwise you would know EVERYONE uses a megaphone! Protesting in the street is often a muddied affair, bordering on the edge of law and in some cases overstepping the mark. 'Pissing someone off' is not an offence however nor justification for arrest. It is a nuisance but then so are many other things in life. Contrary to your beliefs there are countless cases of offensive demonstrations not being moved on, instead only monitored by the police. The reasons - it is simply a numbers game. One man can't put up much of a protest against 5-6 officers when asked to leave. A large group of men can. I'm not saying this man was right to choose that quote but I am saying he should be allowed to speak out against a religion.

Martorana - 40 minutes, where did you read that? It was more like a few minutes go and read a number of sources and watch the 15 minute video. As for your last question, I ask again racial hatred against who? Islam is not a race, we are going round in circles. No doubt it would be offensive to followers of that faith. The point he is making is that he believes it is no longer possible to openly criticise this religion.

Sundaypolitics- he has been charged with potentially inciting race/religious hatred. I don't think anyone could read that passage and not find it deeply offensive whatever their faith. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be a Muslim and hear such things being shouted through a megaphone from the town hall steps. Or the effect it would have on the mindless racist thugs that sadly inhabit our cities. "Winston Churchill said it- it must be true"

I go the 40 minutes figure from the Telegraph article you linked to- I haven't read anything else.

Precisely. The passage itself is not illegal. Nor is the Satanic Verses, a book many Muslims find very offensive.

If I were to stand on the town hall steps reading out a text similarly offensive to Christians, I might find myself on the wrong side of the law too.

Typical of UKIP, though, to present this as a bloke innocently reading out "we shall fight them on the beaches" for no apparent reason, and being prevented from doing so by dark forces attempting to bring in Sharia Law, than what it actually is, which is someone deliberately trying to offend Muslims, being asked to move on my the police, and refusing to do so.

I see UKIP's former youth spokesman has quit the party as she now believes they are racist.