Four candidates in two council by-elections

There's no let up in the British National Party's election push as the year draws to a close. With just a week to go till Christmas, teams of activists are out in Benfleet in Essex and Shepshed in Leicestershire campaigning hard to recruit more voters to the BNP's Quiet Revolution.

The borough of Castle Point, situated on the coastline of south-east Essex on the northern side of the Thames estuary, has an area of 17.3 square miles and a population of approximately 86,000 people. The main population centres are Benfleet, Canvey Island and Hadleigh.

St Mary's Ward is in Benfleet and it is a Tory stronghold. In May it was just a straight fight between the Tories and Labour with the winning candidate polling 1129 to her opponent's 524. The two vacancies have come up after the winning candidate in May and her husband, also a sitting Conservative councillor, faced accusations of benefit fraud.

The details for this elections are:

Castle Point Council
St Mary's Ward
Thursday 20th December 2007
(2 seats)
Peter Barber (BNP)
Mark Howard (Con)
John Morgan (BNP)
Alf Partridge (Con)
Brian Wilson (Lab)
Tony Wright (Lab)

Julia Green is one of our two candidates in the contest for East Ward seat on Shepshed Town Council. Julia, you will remember, made the front page of the November issue of Freedom when she polled 20% of the vote in a county council election in Shepshed just before Gordon Brown called off his early General Election. Labour advisers at the count in Shepshed phoned the Prime Minister as soon as the result was declared and 24 hours later he pulled the plug on his intended November 8th polling day.

Lets just remind ourselves of that stunning BNP result:

Julia GREEN - British National Party 807 20.02%
Kevin PARKER - Labour Party 1,217 30.19%
John POPLEY - Liberal Democrat 933 23.15%
Christine RADFORD - Conservative Party 1,074 26.64%

Postings on the BNP Members Forum suggest this campaign is going well with very good canvass returns so it's hoped that Julia and Martin can improve on that 20% BNP vote share.

The full details are:

Shepshed Town Council
East Ward
Thursday 20th December 2007
(2 seats)
Colin Chapman (Con)
Sarah Fall (Lib-Dem)
Martin Foster (BNP)
Julia Green (BNP)
Stephen Londsborough (Lab)
James Nasmyth (Lib-Dem)
Richard Tabberer (Lab)

There is a very good local election website called Votewise at www.votewise.co.uk. If your BNP unit is contesting an election please make sure this website gets your candidate's photograph, biographical details and policy statement. The website is a popular news source for the media and has a growing visitor hit rate as local elections are attracting more and more public interest. All the details on how to post the information are on this website.