A Wythenshawe man says he has been ‘stitched up’ by the British National Party after accusing him and three others of threatening BNP members and stealing flyers.
Chris Haddon, 23, from Wythenshawe, confronted members of the far-right political party on Saturday 1 February with three other people.
BNP activists had been in the area handing out flyers.
The group left after a heated confrontation, only for Haddon to receive a visit from Greater Manchester Police some days later – where he learnt he had been accused of theft of BNP flyers.
Haddon, who works at Blueprint Studios in Manchester, said officers visited his mum’s house, where he had recently vacated.
He told MM: “She rang me and said ‘what’s going on?’. As soon as she said I just thought, ‘this is just a joke.’ I found it quite hilarious that they would stoop that low to be honest.
“I’m pretty sure they knew full well it wasn’t us and they’re just trying to wind us up, stitch us up because all their idiot lot have been tweeting us for the last few days.”
Haddon said he had originally gone out to confront the BNP activists for airing their views in his neighbourhood.
“They were handing out their flyers and their vans were going round parts of Wythenshawe on Saturday. That’s right on my door step,” he said.
“I don’t agree with what the BNP do, I don’t agree with what they say so we basically went up to them and they explained to us why they were there.
Salford’s BNP representative Gary Tumulty was part of the heated argument that ensued, and claims that Haddock was particularly threatening.
“Chris and three of his friends, a couple of males and one female, approached the vehicle we were in and used words of threating violence.
“He said ‘If you don’t fuck off we’re going to do you in’, that’s what his words were. That’s what his words are and that information has been passed to the police.”
Tumulty also claims that Chris called him a ‘Nazi bastard’ and threatened to ‘do you in’, if he saw the BNP representative in the area again.
Chris says this is only partially true. He said: “I can guarantee that the second part to that didn’t happen at all, but I might have told him to ‘fuck off you Nazi bastard’. I’ve got no problem saying that really. There were no threats of violence.”
According to Gary, one of the group snatched the papers out of the BNP activists’ hands before running back to the car and driving off.
Tumulty said: “This was a street theft, with elements of political terrorism involved.”
Tumulty said the incident was one of several that occurred on the day, claiming that a gang of ‘militant left-wing thugs’, had approached BNP activists on foot and in their vehicle.
He says the incident bore resemblance to the previous incidents, though it is up to GMP to decide whether the incidents are related.
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