Wednesday 9 April 2008

Media creating interest in the BNP 'brand'


The BNP's website is back in business - thank goodness - as yesterday was a difficult day with many BNP telephones lines jammed by callers wanting to know what was going on. In the membership office, (which Freedom shares), the telephone was non stop - as soon as it was put down it rang again. Many people were offering advice on what should be done but as Tina and I only have basic computer literacy, it all went over our heads rather.

With so many BNP leaflets going out at the moment, and all promting the website address, this might have helped cause some of the difficulty. We put out 20,000 in Carlisle alone and if people interested in finding out more about the Party all try to get onto the site around the same time it will have trouble servicing all these requests.

It would be disappointing to think that the Labour Government and the anti-BNP organisations it funds would sink as low as to try to deny the public access to the BNP website. Surely if they are so confident that the public will reject our policies they should be telling voters to go to the website to see for themselves how abhorrent we are.

There was a blow for the Rock Against Racism concert tour yesterday when the main attraction Pete Doherty was sent to prison for six weeks for breaching a bail order. In a way, it is also a blow for us, because I'm certain we would have gained support from the media focusing on him as the leading anti-BNP campaigner.

I'm busy collating the election grids to provide all the BNP results in the May issue of Freedom, and although this is a mundane task it still gives me a boost to think all those people standing for the BNP and giving voters the chance to show their support for our Party. The results pages in the May newspaper have been a tradition since 2002 and over the years it has become the one issue that people tend to keep so they can monitor the progress the BNP is making in specific towns and wards.

The media have already started their negative stories with a host of them yesterday but there is a growing lobby of opinion that these are counterproductive. Damian Hockney, a former UKIP GLA respresentaive and now an Independent, put it quite well in a recent article.

"I wonder why politicians and the media give endless coverage to attacks on the BNP by politicians who themselves are not very popular. This coverage of the BNP in a negative way, together with failure to cover the positive aspects of other small parties, is more reminiscent of Zimbabwe style electoral processes than those of a democracy.

"We know that the endless regular drip, drip of media coverage for a product or person gives branding and public recognition. Why else do L'Oreal and Ford spend millions on tv advertising?

"No-one in public life seems able to grasp that when a bunch of not-that-popular politicians from what the BBC calls "the main parties" spend large amounts of energy and provide hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of media coverage attacking a small political party like the BNP - all that's going to happen is that they help build that party's brand, whet the appetite for information on the party, and give them the oxygen of that hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of media coverage.

"Of course no-one ever gives the BNP the opportunity to really respond so hence the BNP can claim the most viewed political website. Because where else can we all go get information on this valuable brand being built so assiduously promoted by the press and the 'main parties'.

I think Damian has just about got it right.

Great Cumbrian derby last night at Borough Park. Barrow won it with a goal five minutes from time and, hand-on-heart, probably just about deserved it for their never-they-die second half effort. It was still a very good performance from Workington Reds and I'm optimistic about next season.

But it was a shocking attendance last night, with just 500 going through the turnstiles. It makes me so cross to think of those 'supporters' staying at home to watch television and getting excited about overpaid foreign players and managers masquerading as 'Liverpool' and 'Arsenal'. I won't be watching the Premiership until there's a limit on foreign players - two per club would give British youngsters a chance to make the grade. 


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