HANDS UP anyone who has heard of Pinocchio?
For those who don’t know, he was the creation of Carlo Collodi, an Italian children’s writer. The Adventures of Pinocchio was probably his most famous book. In it, Pinocchio – a wooden puppet carved by Geppetto – dreams of being a real boy. So far, so good. However, the peculiar thing about Pinocchio was that every time he told a lie his nose grew longer. (1)
So how does this relate to Margaret Hodge? Well, let’s just say that if she was appearing in The Battle for Barking (2) as Pinocchio, she’d be able to put your eye out at a hundred paces!
As we’ve noted already, Hodge seems to be an out-and-out liar (3). Her first big lies comes just around a minute and a half into the film when she declares that Nick Griffin “hates women, he hates Jews and he hates immigrants and I’m all of them.”
In our previous article Liar, Liar! (Part 1) we proved that Hodge lied about Nick Griffin ‘hating’ women. We’ll now move on to her allegation that he ‘hates Jews’.
We’ve looked at Laura Fairrie’s film again and didn’t come across anything that was said during the election campaign that indicated that he was anti-Jewish.
Neither did we see – or hear – anything in the run up to the election that would indicate this.
Can anyone show us one piece of official BNP literature – or point us to just one interview – in which he says that he ‘hates Jews’? Neither are we aware of anything like this being produced just before or during the General Election. Are you?
So where did Margaret Hodge get her information from? Surely as a responsible Member of Parliament – indeed an ex-Minister – she wouldn’t tell porkies. Would she?
One would have thought that Hodge would have been aware of the BNP’s position on Israel. After all, she has enough advisors!
So the question remains – why did she state that Nick Griffin ‘hates Jews’?
Ironically, the only person who commented on her race/ethnicity/religion was Hodge herself! (We understand that it was mentioned on a couple of web-based discussion groups – but that’s another story. However, keep your eyes peeled because we’ll be commenting on this in a future article).
And we’re not the only ones who noticed that the only person who mentioned Jews during the Barking election was Hodge herself.
In his article The Battle for Barking (More 4 30/11/10) Reviewed (4), Larry O’Hara notes:
“Hodge’s most telling evasiveness came in an exchange with a BNP supporter as she was getting into a 4×4 vehicle. He upbraided her for being a millionairess, one of those “thieving MPs” and having ignored paedophiles (an obvious reference to her tenure at Islington Council where she disgracefully swept allegations of child abuse in council-run children’s homes under the carpet). Her response was to ignore these points, but to say “and you dislike me because I’m Jewish”. As a BNP activist, he may well have been anti-semitic, so she might have a point–however (unlike him as far as I could see) Hodge deliberately racialised the encounter (as with the mixed-race couple earlier) to avoid addressing the arguments.”
Mr. O’Hara is an anti-fascist campaigner, so he’s hardly likely to side with Nick Griffin or the British National Party. Yet he notes that Hodge plays the anti-Jewish card here.
As this appears to be the only time Jews are mentioned, we’ve looked at this incident again. You should too – fast forward the film to about 1 hour 16 minutes. Here you’ll see a British National Party election worker who’s expressing the anger and frustration felt by ordinary English working folks.
The BNP worker is a straight-talking Cockney. He doesn’t look like the type of person who’s liable to mince his words. In terms of race, ethnic origin or religion, he had the opportunity to call Hodge everything under the sun. Yet he just makes mention of her German background. Once again, Hodge was the only one to mention Jews.
So much for Margaret Hodge’s claim that Mr. Griffin ‘hates Jews’.
Just like her first statement (that he ‘hates women’) a simple little research is all that’s needed to blow this lie right out of the water!
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio
(2) http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-battle-for-barking/4od#3150944
