alex hawke
Stacks On: Hawke, Clarke, Urbanchich
Mr Hawke says the event was a scheduled meeting of the local Young Liberals branch.
“I think there were probably some heated tempers,” he said.
Some context for the Tiny Tory Fight Club (Mitchell Branch) can be found at the SMH here, and at Irfan Yusuf’s place here.
Clarke was immediately interested in my background. He was particularly interested in whether I had a “Moslem” affiliation. From Day 1, he encouraged me to get “Moslems” to join the Young Libs. I told him I found it difficult to recruit as most of my friends were ALP voters.
“Don’t worry about that. Even if they’re ALP members, we can get them in. Take me along to their functions. I’d be happy to show them that we hate homosexuals and Jews as much as they do”.
At first, I thought he may have been joking about hating Jews. I wasn’t sure whether his beef was with specific Jewish people or with Jews as a whole. It was also often hard to tell if Clarkey was serious or half-joking - he always came across as a jovial fellow.
But in my subsequent encounters, Clarke boasted about how he had acted for Slovenian writer Lyenko Urbanchich in a defamation action against prominent Jewish community figures.