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UK Tories Take the PiS in New Euro Political Group of Anti-Gay, Racist Parties
 

UK Gay News Commentary

It is now official.  After a few years of rumours and a year of speculation following David Cameron’s announcement that he was pulling his MEPs out of the centre-right EPP-ED group, the British Conservatives have jumped into the European Parliament “bed” with two other major Eastern European right wing parties.

And one of them is the gay-hating Law and Justice (PiS) Party from Poland headed by the country’s president Lech Kaczyński, who when Mayor of Warsaw banned gay prides in the capital, and his equally homophobic twin brother Jarosław, a former Prime Minister.

The other major political party in the new group, the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, is the ODS party from the Czech Republic, which is not seen as homophobic but whose ‘report card’ on LGBT issues could be seen as “could do better” following President Vaclav Klaus’ veto of both civil unions for same-sex couples and the law prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of age, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.  Both had passed through the Czech Parliament, which later over-ruled the President’s veto.

Vaclav Klaus is from the ODS party.

To gain recognition as a political group, the European Conservatives and Reformists Group had to have 25 MEPs from seven member states.  The group is way past the minimum number of MEPs, but has just scraped through the states qualification – eight are represented in the new Euro party.

Speaking to the BBC this afternoon, Tory William Hague pointed out that the Polish PiS party had “changed their attitudes to gay rights”.

But this was news to gay activists in Warsaw this evening.  “Unbeliveable  – nothing has changed,” said one activist. 

Fifty of the new group’s MEPs come from three countries – UK (26), Poland (15) and Czech Republic (9).  The remaining five – one from each country – are from Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Latvia and the Netherlands.

Among these minor parties is Roberts Zile of the Latvian National Independence Movement which borders on the Nazi – they support the Waffen SS veterans and were the only Latvian party to publicly state that they were against same sex marriage during the European Parliament eclects at the beginning of the month.

So the group just managed to meet the criteria for recognition, not to mention the European Union grant of almost €4million a year.  In addition, the EU will assign a staff of up to 70 civil servants, EU Observer reported.

The head of the British Conservative delegation, Timothy Kirkhope told EU Observer that talks “are still continuing and we believe that more will be attracted to join our ranks in the near future”.

The UK Conservatives have defended their new alliance with the PiS.  They point out that the UK Liberal Democrats are in the same European Parliament group, the ALDE, as the Latvian First Party/Latvian Way, which has regularly demonstrated against gay pride parades in Riga, using hate speech against gays.

Peter Tatchell hit out this afternoon against this new Conservative alliance – especially targeting the PiS

“Jewish, gay and women voters will be appalled to see the Tories cooperating with such a nasty, bigoted party. It calls into question the sincerity of David Cameron’s professed conversion to progressive Conservatism,” he told UK Gay News

“The modern, liberal image that David Cameron has been trying to cultivate is seriously damaged by his decision to team up with Poland’s homophobic Law and Justice Party (PiS).

“This party has strong links with the misogynistic and anti-Semitic Catholic radio station, Radio Maryja,”

Meanwhile, in Poland the head of the Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, revealed to the daily Rzeczpospolita newspaper that talks to form the new group had started seven years ago in 2002. 

That was two years before Poland joined the EU and talks continued of the proposed alliance during the height of the anti-gay rhetoric of the Kaczynski twins and their stance against Warsaw Gay Pride and led to Poland being found "guilty" in a case at the European Court of Human Rights.

Indeed, Mr. Cameron has strange bedfellows in Europe which the UK LGBT community will certainly be wondering if the party that introduced the notorious Section 28 (thankfully now repealed) can really be trusted to be an inclusive party, as the leader claims.

The leopard dosen't seem to have changed its spots.

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