A 'Life on Mars' moment thanks to the Western Mail

"Assembly warns against National Front Lies" screams a Western Mail headline!

Briefly I thought I must be experiencing a Life on Mars moment and that I had been transported back to April 1976 when the National Front were about to score its best ever vote in the capital with 119,000 Londoners voting for the NF.

But no, it was still April 2008 and the headline was not about London but about the Welsh Assembly and the article under the headline was not about the National Front but the British National Party.

'Journalist' Martin Shipton wrote:

"The Presiding Officer of the National Assembly has launched a strong attack on the British National Party as it puts forward more local election candidates than ever before in Wales.
"In a Senedd reception at which he accepted the honorary presidency of the anti-fascist campaign group Searchlight Cymru, Lord Elis-Thomas, urged local authorities to refute “lies” told by the BNP about asylum seekers and ethnic minorities.
The Presiding Officer said: “We know from experience how close the BNP came to winning a seat on the North Wales list in the last Assembly elections, they had 5% of the vote in North Wales, and this was in spite of the fact that they have not stood in the past.
“We know that the BNP is targeting seats in areas where migration has played a major part over the past few years. The BNP has therefore adopted candidates for Wrexham Council and they are also keen to target other councils including Cardiff, Newport and Swansea."

So what was the reference to the National Front all about? It was probably just a pathetic attempt to smear the BNP by associating it with the now discredited NF and shows how desperate the opposition is getting in their efforts to try to stem our progress.

Many people will say that I'm looking through rose-tinted glasses when I say that this sort of doctored reporting is massively backfiring, but that is what I seriously believe. The story in itself recounts how the Presiding Officer of the Welsh Assembly is biased against one particular political party and that smacks on unfairness and this could register with readers, while the NF headline will just confuse the issue. Shipton and his NUJ colleagues might think they are being very clever, but in fact they are being too clever and people will just wonder what the headline has to do with the story.

As I have said before on many occasions on this blog, for much of my political lifetime it has been the nationalists in Britain that have been making the mistakes and playing into the hands of our opponents. That was because we were desperate to make an impact in British politics and sometimes clear thinking and sensible strategy went out of the window.

But now the boot is on the other foot. We ARE making an impact and the desperation is now in our opponent's camp and it is they who are making the mistakes and playing into OUR hands.

Great report in The Times today on Richard Barnbrook. I had read it online, but Nick Griffin telephoned just after eight this morning having actually seen the newspaper and he said it was well worth getting - and it was - with a colour reproduction of our excellent Londoner leaflet.

Following on from Richard's interview on the BBC website yesterday which was the most unbiased bit of reporting on the British National Party by the Corporation that I have ever seen, I'm starting to get worried . . .  fair reporting doesn't happen to the BNP.