General Election 2015: Ukip candidate has excrement posted through office door as vandals try to wreck campaign
The incident follows six ‘attacks on democracy’ in its Wearside Branch in recent weeks by people who 'describe themselves as left wing'
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Your support makes all the difference.A Ukip candidate for the party’s Wearside Branch has hit out at vandals after a bag filled with excrement was posted through a campaign office door.
The incident – where a carrier bag containing faeces and urine was posted while the group were out campaigning on 4 May - comes after what the party describes as six ‘attacks on democracy’ were reported to police within a week last month in East Rainton, Newbottle, Hetton and Houghton.
On 14 April a Ukip election poster was stolen from a residential garden in the Sunderland constituency. The following Saturday a house was attacked by vandals who also tore down a large Ukip campaign board. On 19 April, a Ukip board on private land was sawn down – with a replacement lasting only a day before being chopped down again.
Ukip Wearside Branch Chairman and former parish councillor Richard Elvin, who is standing for the safe Labour seat of Houghton and Sunderland South, had referred to the vandals as people who ‘describe themselves as left-wing’, in an interview with the Sunderland Echo.
“Words fail me as to what goes through people’s minds’ sometimes”, he told the newspaper after the most recent incident.
“I’m astounded that anyone can show so much hatred towards a political party that stands up for hard-working men and women and simply wants to regain control of our country from Brussels.”
Northumbria Police confirmed the incident on 4 May. A spokeswoman said: “Between 6pm and 8pm on Monday, May 4, a carrier bag containing excrement was posted through a door on Newbottle Street in Houghton.”
Elvin is campaigning against Labour’s Bridget Phillipson, an aide to Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, who comfortably won the Houghton and Sunderland South seat with 50 per cent of the vote in 2010.
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