Patriotic Alternative have now raised almost £15k for their fund to help the families of ‘political prisoners’ jailed for their part in last month’s racist riots. And needless to say, those they are presenting as victims of unfair ‘two-tier justice’ are nothing of the sort.
First (and so far, only) actual handout from the fund has gone to the family of Lewis Carver, a 31-year-old landscape gardener who got 26 months for his part in the riots in Hull.
According to PA his sentence was completely disproportionate to his offence which, they say, only amounted to “throwing a traffic cone towards police and holding a riot shield over his head”.
Well, that’s not quite all of it. Carver, completely drunk, actually threw the traffic cone into a police officer’s face, inflicting a ‘nasty injury’ very near to his eye and hospitalising him. The officer will, the court was told, probably be scarred for life. He also threw a bicycle at other police officers. In court, he pleaded guilty to violent disorder and assault on an emergency worker (the police officer).
And what are the odds that the next recipient of PA’s largesse will be the family of Bradley McCarthy (below) from Bristol, aged 34, who got 20 months for his role in riots in the city on 3 August.
PA fuhrer Mark Collett has already waded in to defend him, comparing his treatment unfavourably with that of BBC news presenter Huw Edwards who got a six-month suspended sentence for possessing pornography featuring appalling sexual abuse of young children. In comparison, says Collett, McCarthy was banged up simply for “shouting at a police dog”.
Dropping to floor level and screaming at the dog was merely the most bizarre part of McCarthy’s behaviour. He had already been arrested once that day, but instead of taking this as a warning to clear off home, he returned to the scene and threatened counter-protestors, used racist slurs and goaded the police.
He pleaded guilty to violent disorder, and the judge will certainly have taken into account a long list of previous convictions for violence, public order and weapons offences.
No one will want to speak in defence of Huw Edwards, who is a disgrace, but that doesn’t excuse Collett misrepresenting his counter-example as a man who simply shouted at a dog when, according to police, McCarthy “played a key role in encouraging shocking abuse towards police officers and members of the public and the wider violent disorder…”
Neither of these specimens is exactly our idea of a political prisoner. They’re just racist thugs getting their comeuppance. And of course PA know that.