Last year Ellie Reeves MP was one of a number of current and former politicians of all parties asked to help with a bipartisan campaign against a hate group targeting children. Ellie Reeves, who is associated with right-wing faction Labour First, alone ignored the requests. Subsequently two children were brutally murdered. I sent Reeves a draft article about it and she complained to police claiming my media inquiries were harassment. Initially I was spoken to by a PC but when I politely explained she had never replied to object to contact, other than automated emails, a DI wrote back confirming no formal action would be taken (including no harassment warning). The police do not consider this article a criminal matter. I will not name the officer or force and note that I am active around the country in different places. Statements to police are privileged but if she repeats any such allegations in public, I am likely to bring defamation proceedings.

I remember Ellie Reeves from 20 years ago, when we were both Labour Students. So, last year when I discovered she and other mutual acquaintances had been targeted by trolls I got in touch and offered my assistance. Sadly, my attempt at bipartisan cross-party kindness was not returned.

Ellie Reeves was asked to assist in a cross-party campaign against a hate group that targets children. Grant Shapps MP (Conservative) agreed to assist, John Hemming (Liberal former MP) agreed to assist and even Brendan Cox (Labour) had agreed. Ellie had not replied – except automated emails. Grant even wrote to me saying he had tried to find her in the Commons but not been able to get hold of her.

I emailed Ellie Reeves on 9 November 2017. I sent her a couple of reminders warning her children were being targeted. Margaret Pless, a left wing American writer wrote to her on 11 November 2017 and on 7 December 2017, two children were murdered by a member of the hate group, William Atchison, who walked into a school and started shooting. Ellie had been under no obligation to assist, but she was the only person who totally blanked us. As I said I remember her from University but there was no ill will between us as far as I know (except I had joined the Conservatives).

The campaign Reeves had opted out of was to eliminate a trolling forum called Kiwi Farms. Kiwi Farms, which is owned and operated by former Florida resident Joshua Conner Moon states that its goal is “gossip” and “exploitation” of the mentally handicapped.

The forum essentially targets vulnerable people, celebrities and its opponents for cyber-stalking. This includes collecting images of victims’ children. On a satellite board also owned by Moon, members also distributed paedophile-murder-rape stories about pre-teens of the same age. Moon has a detailed knowledge of the law relating to sex crimes and realized that stories about child rape, unlike photographs, are not illegal to possess. Therefore Moon allowed a board called, ‘/phile/’ on his website 16chan for the distribution of child rape stories.

Moon is also an enthusiastic white supremacist, so extreme he is shunned by most of the other far right groups and banned even by some darknet coin syndicates. Moon is on record stating that, “Muslims need a good genocide” and expressing his desire to collect a necklace of fingers of Jewish persons. Moon also hates transsexuals and at one point created a site called deadname.info for collecting their pre-transition information.

Until December 2017, Kiwi Farms had only claimed one life – Julie Terryberry was a 19-year-old Canadian woman. The Kiwis had latched on to her and begun a thread – by page 6 gleefully displaying photographs of Terryberry self-harming – Julie had carved the word, “hurt” into her own arm. So the Kiwis hounded her for the next 200 pages including stolen nudes of Terryberry penetrating herself with a sex toy. By page 200 she had taken her own life and the Kiwis took a list of her family members from her Facebook to organise messaging them taunts.

Terryberry was not the only dead woman to be trolled by the Kiwis. Kiwi Farms members had targeted acquaintances of several UK politicians, including the widow of a friend of Ellie Reeves MP. It appears that Kiwi Farms members have posted about Reeves on at least one forum, but the thread(s) with their clumsy attempts were quickly deleted or silenced with complaints of NYPA (Not Your Personal Army – a phrase used when people try to co-opt trolling forums or other online groups).

Despite this Reeves is the only mainstream politician who has utterly refused to engage. As she is a self-professed feminist it was a reasonable assumption she would be keen to help as she is presumably vehemently against stalking young women to death with revenge pornography.

Reeves alone had remained silent when on 7 December 2017, Kiwi Farms member William Atchison walked into Aztec High School in New Mexico and started shooting. Tragically, students Casey J. Marquez and Francisco I. Fernandez were killed before Atchison took his own life. Could intervention by Reeves and demands for law enforcement investigation have prevented the tragedy? No one can say anything for certain, but perhaps there would have been at least a chance these innocent lives could have been saved.

It is important to note that Ellie Reeves MP is under no legal obligation as an MP to respond to non-residents and has discretion even in relation to residents of her parliamentary constituency. In this case that is not the issue. She was not contacted in her role of MP per se but because of her relationship to a victim. Nonetheless my own MP Grant Shapps did not object to her helping and even physically attempted to find her in the Commons to talk to her about it. There is no suggestion of illegality here, only extremely poor and arrogant moral choices that cast light on her values. Ellie apparently had not received Grant’s attempt at contact but was aware of my inquiries and could of course have emailed me, or Grant directly, to clarify.

Reeves’ choices inspire curiosity about her background. Reeves portrays herself as a Labour Party moderate – on the political Right of her Left-wing party in contrast to its socialist leader. Reeves is associated with Labour First, a faction that likewise portrays itself as ‘moderate’ and identifies itself with a red circular logo containing a 1 mirrored vertically.

The truth about Labour First is far darker.

Labour First began in the late 90s when it was founded by members of the right-wing of the Labour Party including then MP and Union bigwig John Spellar. Its original logo was a Cross of Odin with a 1 superimposed – resulting in something looking a bit like a rifle sight. The Cross of Odin was an odd symbol to choose, not least because it is a sign used by Stormfront, the Daily Stormer and other avowedly neo-Nazi groups. The sign is recognized by the Anti Defamation League as a hate symbol (archive).

However, the ADL also acknowledges that the logo has a number of non-hateful uses so it is important to identify the context in order to avoid wrongfully tarring innocent people as white supremacists. So what is the context? Early examples of Labour First’s newsletter include regular exhortations and warnings decrying the far left, and slates of factional candidates to vote for bare of much (if any) explanation as to their merits.

Furthermore Mr Spellar is on record as calling for local authorities to avoid buying non-British wheelie bins – in case asylum seekers hid in them. In 2009 Spellar stated that, “The costs of dealing with these illegal immigrants should fall on the Councils buying the wheelie bins. They should be ashamed of buying bins from abroad rather than providing jobs for British workers. It would also stop this illegal racket”. Perhaps local authorities should also avoid other random objects – I am pretty sure undocumented migrants have from time to time hidden behind doors, for example.

Labour First frequently used strident language. When questioning the concept of directly elected mayors (which were being introduced by Labour at the time) their newsletter stated, “[…] the campaign for directly-elected mayors has had all the success of ITV Digital. Ironic that both are likely to be remembered for their monkeys.” The reference was to an advertising campaign that made use of a puppet monkey but the word chosen was at least insensitive – it could be taken as a reference to non-Caucasian candidates for mayoralty, even if that was not the intention.

At the very least Labour First’s interpretation of socialism contained strong themes of nationalism and authoritarianism. The group, which styled itself as a mailing list by invitation only, was also far from democratic or inclusive. It is now incorporated as a Limited Company. As with Trump’s America First campaign and the Britain First campaign, what does “first” mean in this context anyhow if not ‘before all others’ or by synonym, ‘über alles’?

In short Labour First is surprisingly hard to distinguish from many far right groups. Whilst many of its members involve themselves in Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), if I was Israel I am pretty sure I would not want to be friends with people like blonde-haired cold-eyed Fraulein Reeves.

Other recent events place Ms Reeves’ silence in a deeply disturbing context. Jeremy Corbyn, her party leader, recently provoken controversy by refusing to attend a cross party dinner to celebrate the centenary of the Balfour declaration. Labour was also criticised recently for its dilatory approach to disciplining a member called Nasreen Khan (archive) who had complained online of school teachers, “[…] brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler.” It is clear that Labour, and Reeves, could do more to condemn anti-Semitism.

Pless and myself had provided Ms Reeves with material such as Moon expressing his desire to cut off the fingers of Jewish people to make a necklace and an example archive of a story circulated by Moon. In the story a 5-year-old boy is abducted in a planned crime by a predatory paedophile. The perpetrator then slices a hole in the child, penetrates the child through the hole with his penis and rapes the child to death. Ms Reeves has not responded requests to condemn this.

She is the only mainstream politician we have contacted not to be vocal in her horror at Moon’s desire to collect a necklace of Jew fingers. She is the only mainstream politician we have contacted not to condemn Kiwi arousal at carving the soft flesh of screaming toddlers into quivering chunks of semen-spattered sashimi.

These allegations, including an early draft of this article were put in writing to Ellie Reeves MP, John Spellar MP and Labour First spokesman Luke Akehurst. No responses were received and the allegations were not denied. The subjects were offered extra time to take advice and did not take it up. Email tracking shows that the emails were read and the Labour Party national press office confirmed on the phone they had received and would read the inquiry.

Ellie Reeves is a barrister and is aware of the duty to mitigate loss that applies in libel. I have changed previous articles where legitimate factual errors are shown and she has been sent links to them. Nonetheless, no facts are challenged. Instead she sought police action.

Unsurprisingly, Labour First has proven controversial in the Labour Party. The current spokesman for Labour First, Luke Akerhurst, holds forth on Twitter in a literal black shirt (@LukeAkehurst) (archive) whilst decrying the systematic purging of his faction by a resurgent left. I am no supporter of Momentum, but I really cannot blame them for cleaning house. Who could? My view on Momentum is that they should win the internal Labour Party elections because they have more votes. The Conservatives will face whoever Labour chooses to represent them.

Grant Shapps MP has shown greater ethics and leadership than Ellie Reeves in opposing Kiwi Farms. So has Brendan Cox.

It is difficult to see Reeves’ arrogant silence as anything other than a betrayal – of her professed beliefs, of the victims (some very vulnerable), of the dead like Julie Terryberry and worst of all of her own murdered friend. I understand that the factional infighting in Labour has currently led to organised attempts to deselect MPs associated with Labour First and, candidly, this author can hardly see how they could do worse.