Despite frequent attempts by individual MPs, trade unions and others to put pressure on the Home Office to get the Redwatch site closed down it is still running. This article from earlier in the month suggest that something may actually happen at last.
Previously the Home Office has just said that they can’t touch the site as it is hosted on servers outside the UK, specifically in the US, but now their tune has changed a little:
“However, the Home Office has now asked the US Department of Justice to investigate whether the site’s American server could be closed down.”
The response is, predictably:
Redwatch boast that if they were shut down in America they could switch instantly to servers in Poland or Serbia.
I wouldn’t be too sure about moving the site to Poland though. Back in July the Polish police got a site closed down which was based in the US and had the person who operated it arrested in Poland. The website is described thus:
The website urged its followers to collect information about “persons engaged in anti-fascist and anti-racist activities, on coloured immigrants, on left-wing activists and sympathisers and on the homosexual and paedophile lobby”, police said.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Doesn’t sound like the sort of place which would welcome Redwatch with open arms. The question is, that if the Polish authorities can do it, why is our Home Office still dragging its feet after five years?
I still get visitors coming here from links on the Redwatch site. About half come from Poland.
I’ve done a bit of campaigning on this and it’s amazing the amount of people who were even nervous about sending one of the “Shut down Redwatch” postcards off, for fear that’d they somehow fall victim to reprisals.
Like you say in the post above, it’s down to what gets in the news. The government has, I think, looked into, if not actually blocked people accessing Jihadi websites. Why not do the same to Redwatch? Not a big enough vote winner to worry about perhaps?
i miss redwatch website i looking to find leftys