So there are still some honourable journalists left

Well, I'm gobsmacked.

Can you believe The Independent this morning?

Read the report here.

And this is the very newspaper that was hitting us below the belt last Saturday with that phony photograph of the 'BNP'.

Off for a five hour stint of leafletting in Carlisle in a moment. I'm hoping to get away to Borough Park after that for Workington Reds vs Southport. I'm gambling that Mr Jefferson will be in an excellent mood after his publicity coup with The Independent and let me go with his blessing.

Main job today, as well as campaigning, will be to try to quell any unrealistic optimism for Thursday's results - not an easy job with anyone who has read that report.

More tomorrow.

Could he mean me?

I'm really under the cosh this morning with Freedom deadlines approaching, but just had to share this story with you.

Labour MEP Glyn Ford, believes the British National Party could win SEVEN seats in the European Parliament in June.

Well I'm wondering where he has got the seven seats from, and can't help but get excited at the thought that he might have included me, as No. 2 on the North West list, in his calculations.

According to my understanding we need over 16% in the North West for the BNP to get that second seat, which is probably beyond us - but maybe Gyln knows different!!

Anyway, he has certainly cheered me up this morning - here's the link

An establishment safety value stuck in 2002

What connection does Peter Hitchens have with the much publicised anti-BNP smear photograph that appeared in last Saturday's Independent newspaper?

No idea? Then I shall tell you.

But first things first.

Peter Hitchens is just the same as Richard Littlejohn, Melanie Phillips and Jon Gaunt. An establishment safety value whose purpose is to befriend those disillusioned with the three main political parties and empathise with their concerns.

That's it. Nothing more. They don't offer any political solution and just to safeguard their role in society they 'rubbish' the only political party that can actually change things.

At one time, back in 2006, I did have hopes that Peter Hitchens might be different. I took issue with one of his articles which denigrated the British National Party and we entered into a short correspondence. I was hoping to be able to enlighten him on the changes that had taken place within the BNP in recent years and to show him that the Party and its membership was nothing like how he described in his newspaper column.

But I'm afraid that Hitchens would have none of it.

"I know all about the British National Party. I was in Burnley and interviewed your officials there in 2002 and I know exactly what your membership is like."

Well, I was in Burnley in 2002, as campaign manager for the BNP's local election push in the town, and I certainly never met him and when I asked for further details about who he had spoken to it transpired that he hadn't met 'officials', but just one official, Steve Smith, who was then the Burnley organiser.

Now Steve was a character, I would certainly admit to that. He had just served a prison sentence for electoral fraud - filling in all ten names on a candidate's nomination form himself because there wasn't time to get the proper signatures. He wasn't worried about his appearance and would take pleasure in making controversial statements. He was a prolific leafleter, one of the best I have ever known, and used to run while making his deliveries, which didn't do much for his personal hygene.

So this is the character that Peter Hitchens is still, or certainly was in 2006, basing his evaluation of the average member of the British National Party on.

If Steve Smith was politically 'online' you could certainly have forgiven his other shortcomings, but he wasn't. He was way off beam and within 18 months had left the British National Party and set up his own organisation that spent most of its time attacking his former colleagues.


Now fast forward to last Saturday's copy of The Independent. The gentleman with the megaphone is Steve Smith, no doubt looking very much like how he would have done when he was interviewed by Peter Hitchens.

It's very unfair that Peter Hitchens equates today's membership of the British National Party with this one individual. He should of course be updating his research, but that's not what's suits him. He prefers just to have the Steve Smith image of the BNP in his mind, so that when he pens his 'nasties' about the British National Party and its membership, he can convince himself that he is telling the truth.

Many thanks to all those who have complained to Liverpool Council about the banning of my blog. This was its set answer to all those complaints.

Dear Customer,
Thanks for your email which has been passed to me to respond to.
The Library public computer network uses the International web filtering system called Fortiguard which categorises over 30 million websites into over 70 content categories and allowing unacceptable categories to be filtered. Fortiguard is one of a number of products which operate this way and is widely used in a number of countries.
Anyone can see the categories and challenge the listing directly on the Fortiguard website - http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/webfiltering/webfiltering2.html
I’ve just input the URL you mention and it is classed as ‘racism’ and ‘hate’ – categories filtered out on public library computers.
The website gives anyone the option to challenge a classification with any challenge be investigated by Fortiguard and changed if appropriate. If it is moved out of these categories it will be visible.
Yours sincerely
Liverpool Direct
liverpool.direct@liverpool.gov.uk
www.liverpool.gov.uk

However this is a 'fob off' and I'm grateful to Nigel Kay for investigating this further.

He responded to Liverpool Council with this:

"Thank you for your prompt reply.

When the URL "martinwingfield.blogspot.com" is entered into the Fortiguard database, it comes back as "Category: News and Media" as of the February 18th database update, as it should. As I understand it, when this database update is applied to your filtering software, this restriction should be lifted.

Please note, as I am sure your IT department understands, that the list of categories is completely configurable by the administrator. "Racism and Hate" is a very subjective category, and it very often abused to attack and censor different political views by activists who populate these lists based on their own political agendas.

Most public computers use the barest of minimum categories to protect users from pornography, malware, and other hostile Internet sites. I would recommend that you remove the "Racism and Hate" category from your filter list to prevent political abuse.

Our local library is also struggling to implement a filtering system that balances the need to protect end users from malware and pornography, while ensuring freedom of access to information, and it is a general consensus that too much filtering can lead to political abuse."

We await their reply with interest.

And finally it's the Greasley by-election today and I'm grateful to Broxtowe organiser, Nina Brown, for this update which I received late last night. She wrote:

"As far as we know UKIP have not put any leaflets out during this campaign at all, so this shows they have nothing to offer the electorate and are there simply to act as BNP vote splitters.

"Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe, Anna Soubry Prospective Conservative MP for Broxtowe, and Judy Mallaber, Labour MP for Amber Valley, have all been seen out canvassing in the ward, which appears to indicate that they have very few grass roots activists.

"Broxtowe Group has received over 30 enquiries for membership just from this election.

"Whilst the other parties have been campaigning on local issues such as bus routes and traffic flow, we have been campaigning on national issues with specially adapted British Jobs for British Workers leaflets, Heat or Eat leaflets and the new national glossy anti EU leaflet.

"This is a safe Tory seat, but we are hopeful of improving our vote share and closing the gap on Labour."

Taking the protest vote away from the Lib-Dems

DO you remember, back in December, that there were some eyebrows raised when the Lib-Dems in Bexley asked the UAF to help with its campaign in the East Wickham by-election? It was a bit of a surprise because in the past it had always been Labour that had worked hand-in-hand with the 'anti-BNP' group run by the Socialist Workers Party.

I believed that I mentioned at the time that there was more to this than met the eye and it was not just about the Lib-Dems wanting to parade its anti-BNP credentials in order to pick up the immigrant vote.

This has come to mind again after a report on the Kent News website this morning - Lib-Dems organise anti-BNP rally. Now the Lib-Dems weren't even able to put a candidate up in Swanley, so it is a bit of a surprise that they feel able to organise a rally. It would have been something you would have expected from Labour with us having just taken its seat.

Now cast your mind back to last Thursday. No, I'm not thinking about the Sevenoaks by-election, but the contest in Thringstone. What was the real surprise about this result apart from the huge 28% vote for the BNP? It was the derisory vote for the Lib-Dem candidate - just 76 votes which amounted to 4.6% of the total vote. What makes this vote even worse is that it was down by a massive 20.3% from the Lib-Dem vote back in May 2007.

When at Steyning Grammar School back in the early 1960s, I joined the Young Liberals, and then when I was 18, the Liberal Party itself. I did so because I felt a 'plague on both your houses' attitude towards the class based Tory and Labour Parties. I was looking for a Third Way and the Liberal Party was all that was available . . . until the National Front came along.

I believe that there are many people out there who feel now, how I felt then. They vote Lib-Dem because they can't stand New Labour or the Conservatives and are showing their opposition to the two main parties - it is just a protest vote. In fact, I would venture to propose that nearly half of those who vote Lib-Dem have little idea what its policies are all about at a national level. Yes they like the community politics, but I'm pretty certain would shy away from any true 'liberal' agenda.

Today, with its shallow Cameron-like leader, the Lib-Dems has lost that edge that made it an alternative and the home of the protest vote. Now, for people who see through the media spin and are tired of the cosy relationship between the Old Gang parties, there is the chance to lodge a real protest vote, a vote that has the establishment quaking in its shoes, a vote for the dreaded British National Party.

That's why the Lib-Dems are in a tizz over the BNP because they see us taking the protest vote which has been theirs by default for the last 30 years. This is very important for us as the European Elections are all about our 'vote share'. If we can shave a percentage point or two off the Lib-Dem vote and put it on to ours it could mean the difference for a region between having a BNP Member of the European Parliament, or not.

My theory might be tested tomorrow in the Greasley by-election in Broxtowe. This is a safe Conservative seat with Labour as the main challengers. The BNP candidate polled 17% here last time and the Lib-Dem 10% which should already prove my theory but I'm hoping that there still might be a little more movement here despite the already low bottom-line of the Lib-Dem vote. The last minute intervention of a UKIP candidate might also skew the figures but it is worth checking out the percentages when the result comes in tomorrow evening.

Very good letter from Alistair Harper in The Scotsman this morning. Alistair has the knack of getting his letters published which is no mean feat with the anti-BNP stance of the media. You can read it here.

And finally thanks to Freedom's trusted Subscription Manager Colin Goodgroves, for this photograph of the Wingfield Castle taken at the marina in Hartlepool. I love anything like this and for many years have lobbied for family holidays to be taken 'barging' on a river or canal on the Norfolk Broads or in France, but I have always been out-voted 4-1. Hopefully with the chicks flying the nest at a rate of knots and hence the anti-barge holiday vote losing its majority, I might just get my wish in the not too distant future.

The Labour liars

THE Labour Party is full of liars - so what's new. But it does get a little more worrying when Government ministers are caught out telling deliberate lies to try to gain a party political advantage.

Listen to this one from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Andy Burnham:

"This sorry saga exposes the BNP for what they are. They've no regard whatsoever to the cost and inconvenience to football supporters when they refuse to change the date of their march."

BNP march? What march?

Burnham knew there was never any BNP march planned. What the local BNP group in Liverpool had applied to the police for was permission to hand out leaflets to members of the public in Liverpool city centre in support of the British National Party's European Election campaign.

The only march would have been one organised by the Labour Party and the myriad of anti-BNP groups that it funds itself or hands over public money to, to keep them going.

It was a deliberate lie from a Government minister desperate to try to stem the growing tide of support for the British National Party.

And then there's the Home Secretary, Jackie Smith. Take a look at this.



The deliberate lie here, in a letter to BNP Redditch councillor David Enderby, is that she claims that she only "recently" came across Nick Griffin's, now retracted, remarks concerning the Holocaust. "Recently" and "alarming". Where has Jackie been for the last decade. The Labour Party have been hauling out this quote almost every week for the last ten years, so it would be impossible for Jackie Smith to have only recently come across it. Just another deliberate Labour lie to try to hurt the BNP.

And she finds his WORDS "alarming" does she?

But not as alarming, I expect, as over 100,000 (see comments) innocent and now dead, Iraqis found the ACTIONS of her Government in its complicity with the 'shock and awe' annihilation of their country and population back in March 2003.

Hogan-Howe is looking for a high-profile job

I KNOW from first hand the very nature of the beast that calls itself Merseyside Police. Back in November, after the leaking of the BNP Members List, we were plagued by telephone calls from a couple of its officers desperately seeking information in order to persecute one of their own whose name had appeared on that list.

They were reptilian! Jobsworths desperately seeking to curry favour with their Chief Constable, Bernard Hogan-Howe, as he was instigating his anti-BNP crusade across the region.

One morning I got a call before nine and it was one of these Wormtongues scratching around again for any scraps of info that might help him 'hang' his colleague. (The BNP had been asked by the family of the officer to co-operate with the police investigation).

"Hello Martin, how are you,' he slimed. Now I had never spoken to the officer before and had told him my full name when he called. Yet now he was keen to be on first name terms.

I don't very often say the F word but I did then with an 'off' after it and then put the telephone down.

Then, off course, Merseyside Police arrested 13 members of Liverpool BNP for puting out Racism Cuts Both Ways leaflets in the city centre. Days later at 6.00am on a Saturday morning officers distributed notices informing the now quite famous 'Liverpool 13' that they would not be facing any charges.

What an embarrassment for the Chief Constable because he had been bragging to local Labour Party councillors and officials that anyone distributing the 'Racism Cuts Both Ways' leaflet would be arrested and prosecuted. Then came the news that the Crown Prosecution Service had ruled that the leaflet "was unlikely to increase racial hatred" and could quite legally be distributed. Apparently Hogan-Howe was livid and immediately appealed against the decision, sending in a huge list of objections to the ruling. But it was all to no avail, his appeal was rejected which meant that he had to inform the local Labour Party that the British National Party were quite at liberty to put their leaflets out in Liverpool after all.

And now we have had the Everton vs Stoke City football match saga. The BNP asked permission to hand out leaflets in Liverpool to launch the Party's European Election campaign on Merseyside. The Labour Party and its acolytes then announced a march against the BNP. The Police granted this request but then told the media that they were putting the Everton game back 24 hours because of "the BNP march" . . . need I go on?

Chief Constable Bernard Hogan-Howe had aspirations to become the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He is very much a political policeman and he sees his Bash the BNP campaign as a way to impress the Home Secretary so she promotes him to another more high profile and better paid job.

On a more uplifting subject, yesterday I headed a panel interviewing applicants for the places on the Scottish European Election candidates list. There was a very high standard of interview from those who attended and our findings have been forwarded to the Advisory Council for approval.

Glasgow was a very busy city yesterday but we did find the venue without any problems, were able to park for five hours without any charges and were greeted by Charlie Baillie with very welcome refreshments of coffee and tea.

The BNP in Scotland is moving ahead at a pace. The calibre of our officials is impressive and when the Party gets the growth spurt here that has recently taken place south of the border, we will be very capable of capitalising on it.

The lead candidate on our Scottish List will need 10% of the vote to win a seat, as there are now only six vacancies not seven. The BNP only polled 1.6% in 2004 but will significantly improve on that this time around and with UKIP's 6% vote share also up for grabs, as well as the volatile political climate, anything might happen.

Off to work on Freedom now - more tomorrow.