INDEPENDENCE supporters in Fife have been targeted by a ragtag group of holocaust deniers and far-right activists, seemingly furious at their Christmas decorations.
Last Thursday, the BNP-linked A Force For Good staged a protest outside the Crossgate Centre, a volunteer run “indy hub” in Cupar.
The demonstration by Alistair McConnachie, and Max Dunbar was the start of a tour of Scotland’s Yes hubs, described by the men as “hubs of hate” or “sedition centres”.
Their action in Cupar seems to have been triggered by a picture of Santa in the centre’s window.
In a Youtube video, uploaded by A Force For Good, McConnachie can be seen telling passers-by: “They put up a Santa Claus and they put up a snowman in order to beguile little children at the Christmas light switch on to go into their office to be propagandised with SNP propaganda.”
“What an absolute disgrace,” he adds.
The campaigner then goes on to suggest the centre putting up Christmas decorations is “kinda creepy behaviour”.
“These people are not Dr Barnardos, they’re not Save The Children, this is an SNP propaganda outlet that wants to destroy the UK, what’s that got to do with Santa Claus.”
Police were called at around 12.30pm, though no action was taken.
The next day the group went to the Yes hub in Kirkcaldy.
Roy Mackie, an activist from Yes Kirkcaldy, who spoke to McConnachie, said the effect was more funny than threatening.
He told The National: “We all found it sadly amusing, they came over as just sad clowns,”
His advice to other hubs who find themselves being targeted by McConnachie was to “engage them in conversation and and video it, it’s the best thing you can do because it just shows them what they are”.
“I don’t know how they think we’re hubs of hate,” he added. “We invite everybody into our hub. You’ll get a cup of coffee, you’ll get a chat, it’s just ridiculous.”
McConnachie was expelled from Ukip in 2001 after claiming that there was no evidence of gas chambers being used by the Nazis to murder six million Jews during World War Two. He and his group, A Force For Good, have long protested pro-independence marches.
This summer they branched out and staged counter-demonstrations in support of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon.
Earlier this year, McConnachie told the Sunday Herald he stood by his comments about the holocaust.
The 53-year-old from Castle Douglas, who was Ukip’s Scottish organiser from 1999 to 2001, told the paper: “I say what I say, and I stand by the things that I say. I’ve no time for regrets. Life’s too short.”
Dunbar, is a former treasurer with the Glasgow BNP, and current treasurer of breakaway group, the Britannica party, which, according to Hope Not Hate, is “essentially the core of the BNP Glasgow branch under a new name”.
Britannica’s last manifesto called for all asylum seekers to be kicked out of Britain, the end of “homosexuality promotion" in schools, and the re-landscaping of Glasgow’s George Square with “trees and flowerbeds”.
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