The smoke, the broken bottles, the bricks, the screaming and of course . . . Peter Hain

Ah memories . . .

The air was thick with pink smoke. I had to keep my eyes firmly fixed on the back of the lady walking in front of me to keep going in the right direction. Massive noise everywhere. The sound of bottles smashing, the sound of concrete against concrete as bricks landed on the road around us, the sound of people screaming abuse at you. The over-riding feeling . . . fear. Fear of being hit by a missile, fear of being attacked, fear of getting lost, fear of what was going to happen at the end of it all.

Ah memories . . .

It was the Lewisham National Front march of 1977. A perfectly legal march by 500 members of an increasingly popular political party which was opposed by a mob of 8,000 opponents. There were shocking scenes of violence. Violence against us the marchers and violence against the police officers escorting the march. Over 220 police and marchers were injured and had to receive hospital treatment.

The man who orchestrated that violence was a South African 'student' called Peter Hain, who now, thanks to the generosity of his adopted country, now sits in Parliament as MP for Neath.

This is what Hain has to say in The Guardian this morning:

"The lesson of the Anti-Nazi League's success is that the BNP needs to be confronted wherever its supporters march or appear in public."

Well, we know that the "success" of the Anti-Nazi League was based on its violent attacks on innocent people. The BNP don't hold marches, so it seems Hain is advocating attacks on BNP supporters out campaigning for the forthcoming European and County Council elections.

I expect Tony Ward of Liverpool (below) knows the sort of thing Hain is talking about . . .



You can read this morning's reports in The Guardian, here and here.

I'm happy with the discord within the Labour Party at the moment, Hain says "Confront them" and Austin says "Ignore them".

Five weeks to go to polling day and they haven got a strategy. That's got to be good news for us.

Very productive first day's campaigning up here yesterday, well it was preparing for the campaign really. This morning Allerdale organiser Paul Stafford and I should be handing in six completed nominations papers. A seventh will have to wait until next Monday as we are hopeful of having an 8th candidate standing which could mean a change of candidates in the ward concerned and an extra ward being fought in Workington.

We dropped off some leaflets in Carlisle at the end of the day and the news from our beautiful Border City is 17, (yes, SEVENTEEN) BNP county council candidates. That's a full slate for the appalling Neil Hodgkinson, editor of the Carlisle editions of Cumbrian Newspapers, to put in his pipe and smoke.

If there's no blog tomorrow I will have been arrested! We received a telephone call just after lunch yesterday from someone claiming to be a Workington policeman. He said that police in Workington were preparing to raid the homes and offices of all Allerdale BNP members!!

I just hope they are not using the stolen 2007 BNP membership list otherwise the people who bought my old house will be in for a bit of a shock!