Anne Widdecombe Pied by Asylum Seekers Support Group in Anti-Racist Protest

Things That Cheer Us Up

Shadow Home Secretary Anne Widdecombe learned a valuable lesson in home economics in April this year - that stirring up race hatred is a recipe for getting your just desserts.

Anne Widdecombe received a pie in the face at a signing ceremony for her pisspoor book at Waterstones bookshop in Oxford. Featuring an award of a custard tart made to a traditional Romany recipe, the pudding was delivered by Agent Orange of the Campsfield High Command of the Biotic Baking Brigade at precisely 1.15pm on Thursday, 27th April 2000.

Agent Orange waited politely inside the door with an assorted mixture of mothers buying Harry Potter books and security guards. As Anne Widdecombe swept in, the pie was planted smartly across her frightening face.

The Conservative Party's local elections manifesto said that Britain is "a soft touch for the organised asylum racketeers who are flooding the country with bogus asylum seekers." Widdecombe has been especially vocal in trying to win votes by playing the race card against refugees and asylum-seekers.

Perhaps the undead Widdecombe, also known as Doris Karloff because of her uncanny resemblance to Frankenstein's monster, has been spending time with the ghost of Enoch Powell. The late unlamented racist would surely have approved the Conservatives' latest plan - to imprison every single asylum seeker without trial in detention centres.

Agent Custard Tart, in support with a second pie, said later: "Refugees are not 'flooding' in to the UK because it is a 'soft touch'. Within Europe we rank 9th in numbers of asylum applications per 1,000 inhabitants. Britain hosts less than 1% of the world's 21 million refugees. And out of those who do apply, 54% are eventually given leave to remain. That is to say, even the Home Office considers a majority of asylum-seekers to be genuine."

He continued: "It's difficult to imagine a policy more targeted at stirring up race hatred and far-right nationalism.The Conservatives are stigmatising asylum-seekers in a cheap bid to gain votes that would probably otherwise go to the BNP. The overwhelming majority of people seeking asylum in the UK are people who have faced oppression - even torture and other violence, discrimination and deprivation in the country they have left. We should be welcoming them and offering them refuge, as common decency and international law demand."

An official from Conservative Central Office was also hit by a pie in the incident.

A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said that a man, aged 27, had been charged with using threatening words and behaviour, and a woman of 28 with assault and affray.

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