THE UK Independence Party (UKIP) is facing a storm of protest over an alliance it has forged with an ultra-Catholic party from Poland which has been linked to anti-Semitism, far-right skin head groups and violent attacks on gay-rights activists.

The League Of Polish Families (LPR), a nationalist, populist party which came second in last month’s European elections in Poland, has hit the headlines for its militant opposition to gay pride marches in Warsaw and Kra kow. A leading party figure told the Sunday Herald that LPR would oppose all public dem onstrations of “a condition [homosexuality] which is unac ceptable from the moral point of view”.

LPR, which is also vehemently opposed to abortion, is being monitored by the Anti-Semitism And Racism unit of the Stephen Roth Institute at Tel Aviv University, which describes the party as “the main force of the Polish extreme right”.

However, last Tuesday UKIP ignored concerns over LPR – of which they were fully aware – and joined 10 LPR MEPs, along with a smattering of disparate interests from France, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, in a new Eurosceptic grouping in the European parliament called Independence and Dem ocracy. Groupings allow parties to gain access to sources of funding and seats on European parliamentary committees.

The move has outraged gay rights activists and campaigners on abortion rights, who said the alliance amounted to the UKIP “showing their true colours”.

David Martin, Labour’s most senior MEP and a former vice-president of the parliament, said: “If you judge parties by their friends, UKIP have proved to be as unsavoury as many of us predicted. They claim their [group’s] only uniting factor is their opposition to the EU, but it’s clear UKIP are prepared to play fast and loose with anti-libertarian parties and ideals and racist and xenophobic policies.”

The League Of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin) can trace its roots to the National Democracy movement of the second republic of Poland, from 1919 to 1939, which is characterised by the Stephen Roth Institute as having been “hardline anti-Semitic”. LPR leader Roman Giertych’s grandfather was an active member of National Democracy.

The party has links to Radio Maryja, a Polish Catholic radio station owned by the Redemptorist order and run by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a controversial figure with extreme views on social and political issues who is nonetheless influential, especially among older Poles.

LPR also has a youth wing, All-Polish Youth (Mlod ziez Wszechpolska), which has admitted being involved in attacks on gay rights marchers.

Witold Zygulski, news editor of the English-language Warsaw Voice newspaper, said the All-Polish Youth, many of them skinheads, was a “very aggressive, radical group”.

“They made their name by attacking homosexual demonstrations and by protesting against abortions and so on. Last year, when the Dutch so-called floating abortion clinic Langenort came to Poland, activists from Mlodziez Wszech polska attacked it and blocked it in one of the Polish ports.”

Greg Czarnecki, of the Polish Campaign Against Homophobia, said he considered the LPR to be “the most homophobic political party we have”.

In front of a 20,000-strong crowd in Berlin last month, the Campaign Against Homo phobia was awarded the Christopher Street-Day Prize for civil courage for its involvement in organising a gay rights march in Krakow this May “despite a horrifying propaganda of hatred by the Catholic right-wing circle”.

According to media reports, the demonstration was attacked by 300 protesters armed with stones, among them members of the All-Polish Youth. One gay demonstrator had to be treated for severe burns to his face after being attacked with acid.

Czarnecki said All-Polish Youth were “very well organised and don’t stop at much.

“They really don’t at all try to hide how homophobic they are, or that they will go so far as to break the law to do whatever they consider to be right.”

He added: “We’re really very worried because we didn’t expect this party [LPR] to be popular and that they would get so many seats at the European elections.

“We definitely consider them to be neo- fascist and extremely nationalist. It’s really frightening for us, actually”.

Professor Maciej Giertych, father of the LPR party con gress chairman Roman Giertych and one of the party’s 10 MEPs, said he did not want to link his party’s position with that of the European parliament grouping Independence And Democracy, since co-operation with UKIP and others was limited to five mainly Eurosceptic points. However, LPR will not cam paign for Polish withdrawal from the EU. He pointed out that one common plank was respect for traditional and cultural values, including rejection of “xenophobia, anti-Semitism and any other form of discrimination”.

When asked about clashes between All-Polish Youth and gay pride marchers, Giertych said: “There have been attempts to allow the marches of gay people in our big towns; we are opposing that .

“Any attempts at obtaining public support for things which are immoral will meet with the objection of the League Of Polish Families and of the youth wing, Mlodziez Wszechpolska, but that does not mean any discrimination against any people who have this inclination.”

David Allison, spokesman for the UK gay rights direct action group Outrage, was appalled at UKIP’s links with the LPR. “ The very fact that [UKIP] are prepared to countenance allying themselves with a group that is homophobic suggests the direction in which they plan to travel.”

UKIP founding member Nigel Farage, one of the party’s 12 MEPs, conceded that “yes, [LPR] are as hard-line Catholics as you would ever get”, but said its policies were not those of the grouping.

“What they stand for domestically is not our affair,” he said. “We have been convinced that there is nothing about the policy of this party that is anti-Semitic. We are convinced that the people that have been elected to that parliament are not going to cause us a problem. If they were to cause us a problem, the association clearly wouldn’t be maintained.”