Fund for man who threw coke at Ukip figure makes target in one hour

A GoFundMe set up to help a man fined £150 for pouring Coca-Cola over the chair of Ukip Scotland made its target in under an hour.

Liat Norris set up the crowd-funding page on Saturday to help Mike Shaw, who was arrested for throwing coke over Ukip's Mike Scott-Hayward in May 2013 during Nigel Farage's disastrous visit to Edinburgh. At the time Shaw was president of Edinburgh University's Socialist Society and Scott-Hayward was Ukip's Scottish chair.

"Mike posted on Facebook that he had been issued a fine in response to pouring coke over the leader of Ukip Scotland," Norris told i100.co.uk. "That seemed to me to be essentially a criminalisation of protest, especially as it had been dragged through the courts for nearly two years, so I offered to contribute to help him pay for the fine. A lot of other people said they would chip in as well, so I set up a GoFundMe to pay for it."

Shaw told i100.co.uk the remaining money would be used to help fund anti-Ukip campaigns in the party's target seats or to support people arrested for protest.

"I remember seeing the GoFundMe posted, I had breakfast and by the end of breakfast the money had been raised, which was incredible," he said.

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