UKIP ally with ultra right group in European parliament - [Sunday Herald]

Anger at link to anti-Jewish, anti-gay, Polish Catholic party THE UK Independence Party (UKIP) is facing a storm of protest over an alliance it has forged with an ultra-Catholic party from Poland which has been linked to anti-Semitism, far-right skin head groups and violent attacks on gay-rights activists. The League Of Polish Families (LPR), a nationalist, populist party which came second in last month’s European elections in Poland, has hit the headlines for its militant opposition to gay pride marches in Warsaw and Kra kow. A leading party figure told the Sunday Herald that LPR would oppose all public dem onstrations of “a condition [homosexuality] which is unac ceptable from the moral point of view”. LPR, which is also vehemently opposed to abortion, is being monitored by the Anti-Semitism And Racism unit of the Stephen Roth Institute at Tel Aviv University, which describes the party as “the main force of the Polish extreme right”. However, last Tuesday UKIP ignored concerns over LPR – of which they were fully aware – and joined 10 LPR MEPs, along with a smattering of disparate interests from France, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, in a new Eurosceptic grouping in the European parliament called Independence and Dem ocracy. Groupings allow parties to gain access to sources of funding and seats on European parliamentary committees.