Can you help in Salford?

I'm just off to a candidates' briefing for the European Elections but I wanted to post this message from Gary Tumulty from Salford BNP.

He writes:

"As you may know there is a another by-election in Salford on 21st May in Irwell Riverside Ward.
"We need help both canvassing and leafletting for this vitally important contest just two weeks before the European Elections. Please contact me on 07909 674 006 if you can help with the campaign.
"On the 19th March we fought the Pendlebury ward by-election and received a very good 13.5% vote share, but that took much of our local funds so we are in need of financial support.
Any donation would be very welcome with cheque or postal order made payable to the 'British National Party' and sent to:

British National Party,
P.O. Box 16,
Salford
M6 7PT.

Please support Salford BNP, this is an important election for all of us, not just for Salford and the North West.

Doing a Kinnock!

I don't mind admitting that I did a Neil Kinnock in the early hours of this morning when the Moston by-election result came through.

Mimicking the Labour leader's bizarre "well alright!" show of emotion during the Sheffield 'victory' rally at the 1992 General Election seemed quite appropriate at just after one o'clock in my thankfully deserted office.

I felt especially excited by this result and I hope that you did too. It was much better than some expectations and these results are always the sweetest to savour. I do sometimes get criticised for playing down expectations, but the Moston result provides the necessary proof that in the majority of cases, this is the best policy to follow.

Just after reporting the result on the main website, the Comments Section was jammed with those wanting to share in the glow of satisfaction that a better than expected election result brings. Everyone is bubbling with enthusiasm and no one is disappointed with last night's effort.

Yesterday I said that I would be happy with 8% and 'over the moon' with 10%, and I would have been. We just didn't know what level of support to expect, so it would have been quite wrong to unjustly raise people's hopes. Privately both Clive Jefferson and Mike Lester had said they were hoping for a vote around the 20% mark but 'on record' neither wanted to make any predictions.

I received numerous emails from those involved in the campaign who talked about "the brilliant reception we have received in Moston". Two or three confidently predicted our second place and the collapse in the Tory vote, while one even thought we might win.

Reporting these prediction yesterday would have raised expectations and, although they would have been exactly right with their take on how the result was going to go, if they had been wrong, people would have been left deflated. If we had just polled the 12% vote share, which was our target, it would have just been seen as disappointing, when in the bigger picture this was exactly what we wanted.

The blanket coverage of 12 Pakistani Muslims wanting to blow up Manchester's Trafford Centre, must have boosted our vote and this is something we must bear in mind as well, so we mustn't get too carried away.

Managing expectations is going to be key over the next 8 weeks in maintaining the morale of our campaigners who will be working harder than they have ever done before in their political lifetime. Also it doesn't end for the BNP after June 4th - it will be just beginning.

If we succeed in getting an MEP elected it will make things that much easier both financially and with greater representation in the media that this new status will afford us - but our battle will still have to be fought, with an MEP or without one.

For me it's head down on Freedom for the next three weeks so that the newspaper is out for the first of May - I had the Chairman of the Party on the telephone yesterday describing all sorts of horrors that will befall me if I miss this deadline. After that I shall be concentrating on Maryport West where I am standing in the Cumbria County Council elections. I will thoroughly enjoy this campaign, especially if the weather's fine in May, and there's no better way to lose a bit of weight and to keep yourself fit.

It's not about a bumbling policeman

SO 12 Pakistani Muslims, living in Britain, have been arrested.

It seems that they were planning another terrorist atrocity on the scale of the London tube bombing, so their detention could well have saved the lives of many British people.

Yet there is little celebration of this in the media this morning. Radio 4's Today progamme was only interested in criticising our counter-terrorist police for apparently arresting the men too soon.

Presenter James Naughtie was so wrapped up in his criticism of the senior officer concerned, and so intent, it seemed, to cover up the REAL story of the planned slaughter of British people by foreign terrorists, that he was left almost speechless when one interviewee dared to mention that those arrested were all of Pakistani Muslim origin.

The real story isn't about a bumbling policeman. It's about a fifth column of terrorists living in our midst who are waging a religious and cultural war against the British people.


Good luck to Derek Adams (above) and his team for the Moston by-election today, and thank you to all those involved who have emailed me with their take on how things will go.

Clive Jefferson, the North West's new regional organiser (well done Clive - a much deserved appointment), told me:

"An almost impossible one to call because no canvassing has been done.

"Derek and his team have put in a good campaign with top quality literature, including a full colour A3 leaflet.

"Derek is on the North West's European Elections list and his aim from the start was to build up the British National Party's profile in the area and to meet our target percentage to get Nick elected. I think both objectives will be achieved."

Experienced election campaigner Mike Lester was also in no rush to make any predictions. He said:

"The Moston by-election is difficult to predict. Firstly we have never stood in that ward before and we did not attempt to canvass it, so we have no realistic idea of what our true level of support is.

"The main shopping precinct is dominated by the ward's ethnic minority communities and many parts of the ward have seen better days. It seems to be an area much of which has missed out on Manchester's regeneration makeover.

"Our campaign consisted of a warm up leaflet, an excellent election address and a glossy postcard for the last week of the campaign.

"Special attention has been paid to postal voters and to the areas where the older British population resides. The demographic profile of the ward is changing with ethnic minority voters now making up about 20% of the electorate."

Others have been much more upbeat about our chances and many report "the great reception" that the BNP leafleters received in some parts of Moston. In summing up, I would be very happy with around 8% which will keep us on track for an MEP. A 10% vote and I shall be over the moon.

It will be interesting to see whether the arrests in Manchester last night influence voters in any way. Much will depend on how the media plays it. Will they go into details as to the terrorists' target and what was the outcome they intended?

Helping to keep our feet on the ground

THERE was an interesting report published in the European Voice yesterday.

It detailed research from the London School of Economics and Trinity College Dublin predicting the outcome of the European Election. Apparently, using a statistical model that draws on results from opinion polls and previous Euro Parliament elections, they worked out that British National Party will not win any seats on June 4th. You can read the report here.

I'm not fazed when a report like this gains publicity because it helps us all to keep our feet on the ground. It also exposes Gordon Brown's office's supposed investigations which claimed that the BNP would win 7 seats in the European Parliament, as complete nonsense. Its findings are specifically designed to motivate Labour's demoralised campaign troops and raise unrealistic expectations within our ranks as to what can be achieved.

Many thanks to Gary Tumulty for informing me of another by-election in Salford. Gary is the new membership secretary for Salford BNP and he will be our candidate in the contest for Irwell Riverside ward.

Now what is of particular interest here is that the election is due to take place on Thursday 21st May, just two weeks before the European Elections. The result could well provide an indicator as to our chances of getting Nick Griffin elected to Strasbourg.

The by-election has been called after the death of  James Hulmes, a Labour counciller and former Mayor of Salford.

The result last year was:
Irwell Riverside Ward
Stephen COEN (Labour) 888
Kenneth McKELVEY (Liberal Democrat) 337
David LEWIS (Conservative) 286
Anthony HEALEY (British National Party) 233

The BNP percentage was 13.4% and something along a similar level of support will do very nicely again on May 21st.


Above is a photograph of my wife Tina, and her mum Jenny, taken at our Battle for Britain Roadshow here in Cumbria the other week. I've posted it because I feel a bit guilty after referring to her in yesterday's blog as just a 'proof reader'.

In reality, Tina is Freedom's sub-editor and draws attention, not only to typos and grammatical errors in the newspaper, but also to the content if it might not be in keeping with the British National Party of 2009. We do have the odd spat over whether a report should be included or not, and/or whether a report actually serves to promote the nationalist cause or not. Sometimes she accuses me of still living back in the 1980s, and sometimes I accuse her of actually believing all the PC nonsense she was fed during her time training as a probation officer and later on working for a drink and drugs charity and the NHS.

But overall we do have an excellent working relationship which stems back to 1983 when I became editor of the National Front's newspaper NF News and Tina had the responsibility of typing up the stories (twice) on an IBM typesetter into galley format so that I could past them into place in the newspaper with cow gum and the aid of a lightbox. How technology has moved on since then.

Of course, even then Tina was more than just a typesetter but a key party activist in the Newham region of London where her mum was the local branch secretary. When Joe Pearce was sent to prison under the Race Relations Act, Tina and Joe's wife Gina, chained themselves to the Downing Street railings, then right outside No.10, a stunt which got us a stack of publicity. They also disrupted Tony Blackburn's show on Radio London another publicity gaining exercise which also drew attention to Joe's incarceration.

Later, after we were married and were living in Worthing in Sussex, Tina and Ted Budden (my political mentor, now sadly departed) made the front page of almost every newspaper and the top slot on the prime time 9 o'clock BBC News when she threw a jug of water over Gerry Adams at a public meeting organised by the Labour Party in Brighton just days after the IRA had slaughtered 11 guardsmen at their barracks in Deal in Kent.

The next morning there was a media frenzy with journalists at the door and on the telephone wanting to do a follow-up report. Soon as they found out that Tina was a leading official of the National Front the story was dropped.

So Tina's political background is just as extensive as mine, but her political knowledge is even more widespread. When we left to work and live in France in 1996, Tina enrolled in an Open University course in Politics and Social Science and four years later after we had returned to Cumbria was presented with her degree at a ceremony at Newcastle University.

She was working as a graduate mental health worker with Cumbria NHS when a witch-hunt in the local newspaper led to her being suspended from work, and then losing her job, because of her association with the British National Party. Now, as well as sub-editing Freedom each and every month, Tina is the Party's Membership Secretary.

And finally, you just can't get away from politics. I like to go to Borough Park and watch Workington Reds play their Conference North football to escape from politics for a couple of hours. Last night we beat struggling Hucknall Town with a last minute goal but the majority of the game was spent talking shop with a range of different people who stopped by my Popular Side vantage point for a chat. Still there was a useful outcome - another possible county council candidate for June 4th.

Back tomorrow with hopefully some news on the Moston by-election.

There's been a fall out from Redcar!

THIS is the front page of the April issue of Freedom which is out this weekend. Remember, you always get to see it first here on this blog.

I just hope the newspaper is OK. It seemed to me that I was at death's door last week and even the simplest task gave me problems. Fortunately Freedom was mostly completed by then, so it was just a matter of pulling it all together. But then disaster struck again when Tina, my proofreader, went down with the same bug, so the weekend and yesterday was all a bit of a struggle.

Anyway, I'm better this morning and my first job is to comment on those excellent election results from last Thursday.

That was a brilliant vote in Leeds and congratulations to candidate Tom Redmond on beating Labour, and Leeds City councillor Chris Beverley, who fought a sophisticated and targeted election, which maximised the BNP vote in the face of huge campaigns from the main parties.

I'm grateful to Paul Harris from Barnsley BNP for an insight into the campaign as it was taking place. He told me:

"On the Halton Moor Estate, which is a large council estate comprising around 30% of the ward, we have been receiving between 4 and 3 to 1 'Yes' canvass returns to 'No'.

"On the private housing estates, it's not so good but we are still averaging around 50/50. Some parts are rather less favourable than that, for example one day I had 16 No's to 10 Yes's, and 19 possibles.

"Although we have done 3 sweeps, in many areas we have only talked to probably around 20% of the voters.

"The only reason I have been able to take part in this campaign is because I was made redundant in January, so it's thanks to Gormless Gordon that I have been able to spend so much time on the campaign.'

There was another very good vote in Redcar where Lynn Payne scored a more than respectable 16% of the vote. But what is important here is that there may well be wide-ranging repercussions from the overall result which saw Labour lose a safe seat to the Lib-Dems. Let's evesdrop on a discussion on the Redcar by-election on the influential by-election website Vote-2007.

One poster wrote:
"If UAF, Unite and the local anti-fascists had channelled their efforts and resources into supporting the Labour campaign we would have comfortably held the seat."

And another replied:
"Unite is a Labour-affiliated union (I am a member of it) and if Labour-supporting officers and activists have time to be spent on campaigning, they should really be using it to work for Labour candidates."

I'm certain that this is a debate that we shall be hearing more about as Labour struggles to motivate its activists to put out its own leaflets.

And finally, well done to Mike Witchell in Felpham West on another surprisingly good vote in the South East. This region has been virtually unconsidered as a possible for returning a BNP MEP but now there's just an inkling that it might be the dark horse of the Euro Elections for us.

Only one election this week, in Moston in Manchester. I haven't heard anything about our campaign but understand that there is a huge Lib-Dem steamroller campaign taking place which might propel them from third to first.

The BNP will, of course, be looking for the 8% required to get Nick elected to the European Parliament, and if possible 12% to incorporate a buffer zone for those areas where we might not be able to meet that level of support. If anyone knows how it's going, please let me know so that I can update the readers of this blog tomorrow.

This morning I'm starting on Freedom 105 which will be the big print-run Euro Elections issue and looks as though it will be having a record-breaking circulation of 125,000!

Sick Bed

I'VE staggered out of my sick bed to post up last night's election results on the main website.

Been laid low with a cold for the past two days. As you get older they seem to take their toll more and with your head swimming it's near impossible to write anything that makes sense.

I'm in a real panic over Freedom which has to be to the printer by Monday, so that's where all my efforts will be channelled over the next 72 hours.