Kate Robey:

There's an elephant in the room: the English Defence League

Here at United Shades of Britain we know how low they are prepared to stoop. We have written in various places here and on our Facebook group our opinions of the EDL's tactics, their wasting of public money, and their persecution of Muslims. 
United Shades of Britain have always welcomed debate with EDL members, despite receiving abuse from some members in the form of tweets on our twitter page, on our Facebook group, and on various other groups on Facebook. This article details something more childish that they have perpetrated against us. 

On Tuesday 25th May 2010 a member of United Shades of Britain came across a United Shades of Britain fan page on Facebook. We all went to have a look and were quite puzzled by it as none of the admins had made it, and we hadn't ever considered making up a fan page as we have a great group page. There was no clue on the page at that point as to who had made it, so checks were made with lots of members to see if it was one of us. The answers all came back as no.

The next day the page was suddenly alive with lots of posts about United Shades of Britain supporting the English Defence League, and promoting the demo in Newcastle. It became immediately apparent that this page had nothing to do with United Shades as we would never support the EDL, or their demos. In turn each of the admins posted on the page stating the page was not run by us, and that we did not support the EDL. One by one we were all banned from posting on there and our posts removed.

The fanpage had used our logo and our name so we contacted Facebook about the use of our intellectual property. We felt the page had been made to discredit the United Shades name, and were worried about our members being confused about the sudden change of stance. We also made up our own 'Official United Shades of Britain fanpage'  and made it clear that we did not support the EDL. We called on various groups to help report the page for impersonating us so as to get it shut down as quickly as possible.

The following day was a long one. We had had no reply back from Facebook yet, and were increasingly worried about the posts being put up on the fake page, and were still unaware of who had made the page. I contacted the EDL media group to ask them to look into the group as it was pretty clear it had been made by an EDL member. I spoke to Donna Mortimer who is one of the media team. I told her the situation and that we believed it was an EDL member, and that we would have to look into legal action if the issue wasn't resolved. Donna was immediately defensive about it, and told me not to threaten the EDL. I replied that it wasn't a threat, it was simply a course of action.

Donna then went over to the fake page and asked the admin to message them privately.

From this Donna took the admins word and came back to tell me on the thread in the EDL media group that it wasn't an EDL member. Also note on the above screenshot that the admin had pretended to be Jabran Ali (UsoB Admin), which even Donna knew was a joke, so not only was this using our intellectual property and impersonating United Shades, but they were also now impersonating Jabran Ali. The admin of the fake page also then said “I am a member of USOB just pissed of (sic) with there (sic) anti English propaganda. They have some good values but seem to hate anything English or British.”

Donna insisted that it had nothing to do with the EDL and told me to look at my own group instead of the EDL. Interestingly, on the screenshot below Regan Hamilton is also posting on here, and Donna asks her if it's ok to delete the post I had made, to which Regan was very happy.

After further investigation one person on the fake fanpage had managed to uncover who the admin was. What we didn't know at the time was that if you click 'flag' on a post the admin has made on a thread, and then 'report' the name of the admin comes up. With more investigation a post made on a profile by Regan confirmed that Regan Hamilton was the person behind the fake fanpage.

So, Donna Mortimer, one of the EDL's media representatives, had specifically told me on the EDL media group that Regan Hamilton was not an EDL member, as well as through a private message.

Further investigation found that Regan was in fact an admin on the EDL fanpage, which Tommy Robinson (leader) also is admin of.

And to top that off, the fake fan page was even being advertised on the EDL updates twitter page

Donna then, through private messages, still tried to deny that Regan Hamilton was the person responsible, and even went as far as saying it was someone else. At her request I emailed all the evidence I had over to her at the time, to which I received no reply. It seemed that the matter had been closed to her, even though she had taken no action about it after receiving the evidence I provided to her.

Unfortunately for Donna, Regan actually admitted to being the person responsible on the Facebook group 'Exposing racism and intolerance'

Donna then went on to deny even knowing Regan, despite Regan being on her friends list

I forwarded the screenshot of Regan being an admin for the EDL fanpage to Donna.

This is the response I got:

I'm not an unreasonable person, but I do take exception when I'm blatantly lied to. It's worth remembering that in the EDL media group Regan Hamilton was commenting on the thread I was talking to Donna on, even though she is apparently not an EDL member. Donna Mortimer is one of the EDL's media team, and therefore represents them. The EDL leadership may have spoken to Regan about the fanpage, and stopped promoting it on the EDL fanpage, but they were not truthful to United Shades of Britain, or at the very least honest about the source of the fanpage.
To me, this does not show the English Defence League in a very good light. They have a media representative that lies, and then gets slightly abusive when her lies are uncovered.

Regan Hamilton has been shown to be a person who will impersonate an organisation that is seeking to do good, and has also been shown to try to impersonate one of the United Shades admin team, as well as using our Intellectual Property which is against Facebook Terms and Conditions.

Facebook finally contacted us and informed us that they were removing the page for breach of intellectual property on 27th May 2010

The English Defence League have been shown through this to be an organisation that can't be trusted and will lie if they feel they need to cover themselves.

My advice to the English Defence League is that liars are always found out, so it is best to tell the truth to save embarrassment.