Difficult by-election in Prince's End

THERE is just one local council election on Thursday and it will be a very difficult one for the British National Party to gain any satisfaction from.

SANDWELL MBC
Prince’s End Ward
Thursday 6th December 2007
Dorothy Brayshaw (Lib-Dem)
Delia Edwards (Lab)
Beatrice Owen (Con)
Karen Parkes (BNP)

Our excellent candidate Karen Parkes, faces the almost impossible task of trying to defend the Prince’s End seat on Sandwell Borough Council.

Yes, it is a BNP seat and the by-election has come about because of the ‘under-performance’ of sitting BNP councillor James Lloyd, who was elected in May 2004 but hasn’t attended a council meeting for the last six months which means he forfeits his hard-earned place on the council.

It’s a sorry state of affairs for which I know of no mitigating circumstances and as such the electorate will punish the BNP at the polling stations on Thursday. In Burnley and Barking where similar situations occurred three years ago, in the resulting by-elections the BNP vote fell by between 10-15% and it’s difficult not to expect the same sort of shift from voters in Prince’s End.

This is very hard on Karen Parkes who contested the ward for the BNP in May and came within 20 votes of winning Labour’s one remaining seat
May 2007
Raymond Howes (Lab) 898
Karen Parkes (BNP) 878
Beatrice Owen (Con) 498
June Newell (Ind) 241

In May 2006 the BNP won its second seat in the ward with the following result:
Russell Green (BNP) 1128
June Newell (Lab) 1050
Jean Nugent (Con) 415

The full result in May 2004 when James Lloyd won his seat was as follows:
James Lloyd (BNP) 987
Raymond Howes (Lab) 947
June Newell (Lab) 939
John Salvage (BNP) 886
Andrew Millard (Lab) 866
Mark Nelson (Con) 423
Kevin Richard Walker (UKIP) 388

One interesting development this time around has been the withdrawal of the Green Party candidate Vicky Dunn, after the close of nominations and with her name on the ballot paper. She told the Birmingham Evening Mail: “The Greens don’t want to split the vote and let the BNP in, so I have withdrawn.” But within hours of her decision, a lifelong Green Party supporter had contacted the newspaper to say that they were switching their support to the British National Party as it was the only political party talking about the effect of immigration on the environment.

Thankfully because of the BNP’s summer and winter training schools, which focus in particular on the role of councillors within local communities, the calibre of the new slate of BNP councillors and candidates is now much improved.

Good luck to Karen and her small but dedicated team for Thursday and I hope she can buck the trend and save this seat for the BNP. Prince's End is a special ward for British Nationalists with a long history of supporting our cause. I remember travelling up from Worthing in the mid-1980s for a local by-election campaign. We polled around 15% which was a stunning result in those days and made the local headlines because of the exclamations of dismay expressed by the other parties at our vote.

On a personal note, I’m still well below par because of a flu bug that has shown little inclination to leave me. It’s two weeks now and I’m contemplating a visit to the doctor to try to get something to shift it. Next September I am going to invest in a course of flu jabs which will hopefully see me through the winter without being laid low. I failed my fitness test on Saturday morning so was spared Workington Reds 3-1 home defeat by lowly Hucknall Town – “worst Reds performance of the season” my man at Borough Park informs me.