New Britain First Facebook page appears hours after group are banned for hate speech

A Britain First Facebook page appeared hours after the group were banned (PA)
A Britain First Facebook page appeared hours after the group were banned (PA)

It appears that Britain First have already flouted the ban imposed on them by Facebook.

The far-right group were removed from the social network, which has increased monitoring of extremist and offensive content.

The Britain First page, which had more than 2,000,000 likes, was removed along with the profiles of leader Paul Golding and deputy Jayda Fransen after the pair were jailed.

Within hours of the ban, a new Britain First page appeared promoting their ideology and hate speech and requesting users ‘add as many patriots as possible’.

The page even bragged that the ban had earned them great exposure.

The Britain First page was removed for repeatedly breaking Facebook community standards on hate speech.

Although Facebook did not specifically identify all of the offending posts, it said the breaches included an image of Golding and Fransen with the caption ‘Islamophobic and Proud’ and video content which reportedly aimed to incite offensive slurs against the Muslim community.

Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen was jailed for 36 weeks (PA)
Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen was jailed for 36 weeks (PA)

In a statement, Facebook said that ’political views can and should be expressed without hate’.

Facebook added: ‘We are an open platform for all ideas and political speech goes to the heart of free expression,’ Facebook said in a statement.

‘But political views can and should be expressed without hate.

‘People can express robust and controversial opinions without needing to denigrate others on the basis of who they are.

‘We have community standards that clearly state this sort of speech is not acceptable on Facebook and, when we become aware of it, we remove it as quickly as we can,’ the statement added.

‘Political parties, like individuals and all other organisations on Facebook, must abide by these standards and where a page or person repeatedly breaks our community standards we remove them.’

The pair were jailed last week (PA)
The pair were jailed last week (PA)

Golding, 36, and Fransen, 32, both of Penge, south-east London, were jailed on Wednesday 7 March at Folkestone Magistrates’ Court for 18 weeks and 36 weeks respectively.

The pair stood trial for religiously-aggravated harassment which they carried out in Kent in May last year.

The pair launched a political campaign in which they claimed to be trying to expose Muslim men who were the subject of a rape trial, though they ended up branding innocent Muslims paedophiles and rapists.