Ukip: Arrest people who call us fascists
Ukip have written to the police asking them to arrest anybody who calls them 'fascists'.
Three leading Ukip MEP candidates have released a statement saying they have "formally asked the chief constable to arrest any protestors who call our supporters 'fascists'," at a public meeting in Hove due to take place today.
"We therefore call on the police to confirm that they will prosecute under 'hate crime' any individual or group who seeks to intimidate our supporters and candidates or at least under the Public Order offence under Section 4, 4A or 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act," they added.
The statement by Ukip's South East chairman Janice Atkinson and her fellow candidates Patricia Culligan and Alan Stevens, has been released in advance of a public meeting in Hove, due to be attended by several anti-racist groups.
The party accuses groups such as Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate of "deliberately targeting Ukip, its supporters and elected officials to deliberately intimidate and stop democracy."
The party have previously stated that accusations that Ukip are racist or fascist amounts to a "verbal assault" which should be prosecuted.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage says he has had to hire bodyguards due to aggression from protestors.
Ukip's call for police action follows the revelation that officers from Cambridgeshire police had visited a blogger and asked him to remove tweets criticising Ukip policies.
The police said they had been asked to investigate whether the blogger, Michael Abberton, had committed any offences under the Representation of the People Act.
"They asked me to 'take it down' but I said I couldn't as it had already been retweeted and appropriated, copied, many times and I no longer had any control of it," Abberton wrote on his blog.
No further action was taken against him.
