Madam,
Whilst the General Election result thankfully showed Stroud voters had little appetite for the fringe far right candidate they nominated, nonetheless Marcus Blackett and Richard House’s nonsense about our group, and about independent candidates, (including in the pages of this paper) must not be allowed to stand unchallenged.
It is regrettable that these individuals chose to nominate, for Stroud MP, someone who repeatedly quotes Hitler, suggests he has been unfairly maligned, promotes claims that the Allies “fought on the wrong side” in WW2 and we “should have fought with the fascists…not the other way round”, and repeatedly puts forward the idea that Hitler “cleaned up perverted Berlin” and that “once again” it’s time to do the same.
It is remarkable that when we warned them about their candidates’ extensive hateful social media history, her backers obfuscated, deflected, and reacted with wild and unfounded smears about us.
Why is it hard to understand that we choose to oppose the reactionary and extremist activities of the Info Hub stall crowd that distribute “The Light”, out of a sense of responsibility?
We are a group of citizens who have been raised, like most people in this country, to detest fascism and to know that it’s our civic duty to fight it when it rears its ugly face. Far from being the monolithic block alleged by House and Blackett, we include amongst our group, people who voted for at least three different major parties, and none.
Thankfully, “The Light” crowd’s fringe, Nazi-sympathising candidate, who they brought in from Cheltenham, got fewer than 300 votes (0.5%) and will hopefully now go away and leave Stroud in peace.
It would be wonderful if the purveyors of the reactionary fear-mongering, climate change denial, political nihilism and hatred of the Other contained in “The Light”, packed up and followed in her wake, and stopped blighting the district’s High Streets.
We look forward to SNJ printing this letter as our right to reply,
Yours faithfully,
Adam Horovitz, Alex Raeburn, Caroline Molloy, Christian Hayward, Denise Needleman, Emma Calcutt, Freddie Janke, Hannah Boss, James Beecher, Jacqui Stearn, Jeremy Green, Lynn Hanaan, Megan Sheer, Simon Jacobson – on behalf of Community Solidarity Stroud District
We sent the letter above to the Stroud News and Journal on Friday 5th July. On 10th July 2024, they published a heavily edited version of this letter – removing a lot of detail we feel is crucial. We don’t know why. The evidence for what we describe is available (and was shared with the editors of the paper). And yet, on the other hand, all sorts of false claims about our group have been printed or hosted in the comments section of their website without evidence.
What appeared in the paper is below, we’ve shown the sentences they chopped with strikethrough text, as this best illustrates the impact of their editing. Why do you think they edited our letter?
Madam,
Whilst the General Election result thankfully showed Stroud voters had little appetite for the fringe far right candidate they nominated, nonetheless Marcus Blackett and Richard House’s nonsense about our group, and about independent candidates, (including in the pages of this paper) must not be allowed to stand unchallenged.
It is regrettable that these individuals chose to nominate, for Stroud MP, someone who repeatedly quotes Hitler, suggests he has been unfairly maligned, promotes claims that the Allies “fought on the wrong side” in WW2 and we “should have fought with the fascists…not the other way round”, and repeatedly puts forward the idea that Hitler “cleaned up perverted Berlin” and that “once again” it’s time to do the same.
It is remarkable that when we warned them about their candidates’ extensive hateful social media history, her backers obfuscated, deflected, and reacted with wild and unfounded smears about us.
Why is it hard to understand that we choose to oppose the reactionary and extremist activities of the Info Hub stall crowd that distribute “The Light”, out of a sense of responsibility?
We are a group of citizens who have been raised, like most people in this country, to detest fascism and to know that it’s our civic duty to fight it when it rears its ugly face. Far from being the monolithic block alleged by House and Blackett, we include amongst our group, people who voted for at least three different major parties, and none.
Thankfully, “The Light” crowd’s fringe, Nazi-sympathising candidate, who they brought in from Cheltenham, got fewer than 300 votes (0.5%) and will hopefully now go away and leave Stroud in peace.
It would be wonderful if the purveyors of the reactionary fear-mongering, climate change denial, political nihilism and hatred of the Other contained in “The Light”, packed up and followed in her wake, and stopped blighting the district’s High Streets.
We look forward to SNJ printing this letter as our right to reply,
Yours faithfully,
Adam Horovitz, Alex Raeburn, Caroline Molloy, Christian Hayward, Denise Needleman, Emma Calcutt, Freddie Janke, Hannah Boss, James Beecher, Jacqui Stearn, Jeremy Green, Lynn Hanaan, Megan Sheer, Simon Jacobson – on behalf of Community Solidarity Stroud District
Community Solidarity Stroud District 
thanks to you friends for your excellent response and as to why it was tampered with to edit out the reality of the far right Nazi views – which are being openly and publicly expressed – I have two words: FEAR and DENIAL. It is suppression and it is a very worrying trend. Very worrying indeed
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