By a Newsnet reporter
A Scottish Labour election candidate has caused outrage after comparing Scots youngsters who attended an anti-bias demonstration, to Hitler Youth.
Kathy Wiles, who has been selected to stand for the Labour party in Angus, posted an image of German youngsters gathered under a Nazi banner in response to an image of five Scots youngsters pictured at an anti-bias rally.
Prompted by a comment which said the picture of the five Scots youngsters was “eerily familiar and unsettling”, Wiles responded saying “You mean this?” alongside the Nazi image.
Within hours of the tweet appearing, the Scottish Labour candidate had deleted it from her account. However alert users of the social media site Twitter, including the mother of one of the youngsters, had saved the image, which has been reproduced on the right.
In a letter published by online site Wings Over Scotland, the mother wrote of her anger that her son had been a victim of what she called “vile twisting of facts” by members of the Labour party.
The mother challenged claims from No supporting Labour activists that her son and other children had been coerced into posing beneath a banner at the demonstration.
Explaining that all had a genuine interest in the referendum and had enjoyed participating in the event, she added: “And the reality of yesterday’s photo was that children having fun at a peaceful, family friendly, anti-propaganda gathering have themselves been subject to vile twisting of the facts by a prospective Labour Westminster MP with a background in education.”
The tweet from Wiles came hours before she was declared Labour’s Westminster candidate for Angus.
The episode follows a similar incident this weekend when a No activist suggested First Minister Alex Salmond and the wider Yes campaign had links to sex-offenders.
Pro-Union online activist ‘The Kilted Kelpie’ tweeted: “The launch event of ‘Sex offenders for YES’ is tonight. There’s a Yes group for everyone.”
Beneath the image was a picture of Alex Salmond stood alongside a young woman with a banner headline which read SEX OFFENDERS for YES.
Newsnet Scotland contacted Better Together for a response to the Sex Offender tweet, but received no reply.