Ukip talking Turkey

Who are, or were, the UKIP Women’s Board? They were a Facebook group that existed briefly and seems to have deleted itself.

Here’s what they did.

There’s a Facebook group called Women Against UKIP. They joined earlier in 2014, and they now have upwards of 5000 Likes.

At the end of May, Women Against UKIP had upwards of 3000 Likes, as I recall.

As you can see from the screenshot at the top right, taken on 4th June, in four days UKIP Womens Board had 3153 Likes. Quick work in four days! A lot of women must support UKIP!

Yes. 3185 women support UKIP. Aged between 18-24. In Istanbul.

Incensed at the idea that they would have bought those Likes, UKIP Women’s Board came right out and denied it.

“We are getting the message across slowly but surely,” they said. (In Istanbul.)

Although people were certainly talking about UKIP Women’s Board, most of the comments were negative (and on the group’s page, negative comments were swiftly deleted). No post on the group’s page ever had more than 13 Likes: most had less.

For comparison, here’s how an organic growth of “Likes” appears on Facebook:

On 3rd June, UKIP Women’s Board announced a serious problem.

They were asked to provide proof.

Now, I personally don’t think that any woman is obliged to provide any evidence at all that they’re being harassed online. It happens so often – #YesAllWomen – that I just take their word for it. But if you accuse a specific group of people of doing things to harass you, should have something to back that up. In specific, UKIP Women’s Board were claiming that Women Against UKIP were responsible for buying those Facebook Likes.

Fortunately, UKIP Women’s Board had a letter from the West Yorkshire Police.

Or did they? The West Yorkshire Police logo isn’t black-and-white as it appears in that letter: it’s blue, with red and gold in the crown. But it’s not a black-and-white photo of the letter: the hand holding the letter as it is scanned has a pink thumbnail.

It appears very possible that the letter was clumsily faked.

UKIP Women’s Board was deleted from Facebook shortly afterward. No protest has been heard from Turkey about this popular group.