Journalist Peter Lazenby has spoken out against the far-right after a photograph from outside NUJ conference appeared on the extreme nationalist website Redwatch.
The picture (above), taken by NUJ student David Hedges, was taken without permission and appeared on Redwatch yesterday afternoon.
Mr Lazenby, who has been involved in investigating the extreme-right since the 1970s, wants the website shut down. He said: “The NUJ wants the site banned as it’s picking on journalists in particular. It’s incitement to bloody violence, but the government say they can’t do it because it’s sourced in the United States. But we know who runs it locally.
“One is Kevin Watmough, who is a Bradford based Nazi, now associated with a group called the British People’s Party, and the other is a bloke called Simon Sheppard, both of whom have spent time in prison.”
Intimidation
Redwatch is used as a resource to compile personal details and images of suspected anti-fascists and other political opponents. Although the site claims this is for the sake of information gathering only, there have been several incidents of violence in the past.
Mr Lazenby’s image appears on Redwatch as an alleged “Red Journalist”. He said: “I’m not paranoid and I’m not going to let these people affect my life but things do happen.
“In Leeds there were two teachers who were active anti-fascists. Their details appeared on the site and three nights later their car was petrol bombed. A guy in Liverpool also had his details published and somebody turned up on his doorstep and stabbed him in the face.”
As a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post and Chairman of the NUJ’s branch in Leeds, Mr Lazenby has none-the-less been a target for Redwatch activists in the past: “They once published an address that I have lived at previously. At that point I had to get in touch with the police and tell them that this place might come under attack. Since then I have moved several times and fortunately they have never found me.”
The appearance of the photograph on Redwatch initially caused dismay among some NUJ delegates, who called yesterday for a general ban on photography whilst conference was in session.
Such fears were countered this morning in a speech by student-journalist Elizabeth Houghton. She said: “I am not one of those student photographers but I, like the rest of you, stand by them. If you say that photography must be banned because Nazis may, at a later point, use any photo to intimidate journalists, you might as well grab their cameras now and throw them on the funeral pyre of freedom of expression.”
