Success, even before the first vote has been counted

Yesterday I was waiting on the publication of our local evening newspaper, the News & Star.

Last year on the day before polling day it had a double-page spread telling its readers how wonderful Polish migrant workers were and the obligatory editorial instructing people not to vote for the BNP.

This year things were different and that in itself is something worth celebrating. There was no anti-BNP tirade, just an election guide that studiously failed to mention the British National Party.

OK, there was the usual editorial telling its readers to vote for any one of the main parties and even Independents . . .

"To vote for anyone else runs the risk of at best electing a councillor who can effect no change or at worst one that has a negative effect on society. As a city seeking to build an exciting future, we can do without that sort of surprise."

The editor is Neil Hodgkinson and you can read about him here.

For Neil to have to written that final paragraph without mentioning the British National Party must have hurt him badly. He probably did so to save his blushes if the BNP just happen to take Currock from Labour tonight. It would have been a real snub to him to have his instructions implicitly ignore by the voters of this ward.

I'm suprised he missed out the word 'vibrant' when talking about Carlisle's future. Have you noticed how those in the media seeking to inflict large scale immigration on us lesser mortals always talk about multi-culturalism being exciting "and vibrant".

You can read the News & Star reports I have referred to on Clive Jefferson's excellent blog here

Clive was up at 4.00am this morning updating his blog and preparing the last minute leafleting teams for delivering the 'Don't Forget to Vote BNP' leaflets today. In over thirty years involved in nationalist politics I have seen hundreds of 'deciated activists' come and go, but for activism AND understanding of politics and the media, Clive must rate amongst the best I've known. He's an energetic and tireless worker, despite being beset by health problems, and with his trusted assistant Bill Pugh has really motivated Carlisle BNP to produce a herculean effort in campaigning across the city with a limited number of activists.

And there's more. Clive has stood up to a violent campaign of intimidation orchestrated by the Labour Party. The details of which will come out when Clive is ready to tell them. I will just say that many people would have kept their head down after such targeting, but not our Cumbrian press officer. He is even more motivated now, than he was before.

In a free and fair society, with a free and fair press, the efforts of the BNP in Carlisle would be the subject of constructive reports about how a new political party with radical new policies was campaigning for votes in the city. There should be criticism of the illegal and untrue leaflets being put out by the Labour Party and the fact that it was pretending to be an independent 'third party' whilst doing it. There should also, of course, be condemnation of the Labour Party thugs trying to silence the BNP by targeting one of its key officials.

But I'm afraid there is no chance of this happening while we have editors like Neil Hodgkinson who has so much political baggage to take with him to the office each day that he has no room for any objective journalism.

Best of luck to all our candidates and congratulaltions to all our activists involved in the London Assembly and local elections. Your efforts have already ensured that our May 2008 election campaign is a success and that's before the first vote has even been counted!