Newly-elected Jewish MP defends saying Nazis should get ‘heads kicked in’

A newly-elected Jewish Labour MP has defended saying that Nazi-saluting football fans should “get their heads kicked in”.

Warrington North’s member of parliament, Charlotte Nichols, came under criticism after appearing to advocate violence in tweets sent before she was elected.

This comes after the MP, who converted to Judaism, responded to a video of football fans from the Italian club Lazio, performing Nazi salutes in October ahead of their clash with Celtic.

She wrote: “I hope every single one of them gets their heads kicked in by the good folk of Glasgow.”

Asked by BBC correspondent Phil McCann whether she stood by her comments, she said: “These were people doing Nazi salutes on the streets of Britain.

As a Jewish person whose grandfather fought in WW2, ultimately sometimes I believe that fascism has to be physically confronted as it was at Cable Street and elsewhere.”

Obviously as someone who is now an elected public official, naturally your language is going to be different from being an ordinary member of the public.”

She added: “Sometimes I believe that fascism has to be physically confronted and I’m not going to apologise for that”.

Nichols won her Warrington North seat last Thursday with 20,611 votes, narrowly pipping her Tory opponent who had 19,102.