Closing in on Labour in Derbyshire

And so the Quiet Revolution continues apace.

Throughout the four weeks of the Church Gresley by-election campaign, the media has been full of news of Labour and the Tories. Hours of detailed discussion on their policies and the personalities that lead them. You would have thought with all this focus on the two parties, and the fact that just the two of them contested the last election for the South Derbyshire seat, that Church Gresley would have been a two horse race. The BNP, which doesn't get a mention in the media unless it's a smear story, shouldn't have had a look in!

But this was last night's result.
South Derbyshire Council
Church Gresley Ward
Thursday 18th October 2007
Gordon Rhind (Lab) 639
Richard Fallows (BNP) 516
Beatrice Eaton (Con) 304
BNP Percentage: 35.4%

The Labour vote was down 24% and the Tories down 12% from what it was just four months ago.

Now that's quite an incredible result for the BNP in a ward never fought before and it maintains a run of excellent election results for the Party since the May 2007 local elections. Something is shifting in British politics, it might be slow but it's sure and it is being built on firm foundations.

I call it the Quiet Revolution because it is being deliberately ignored by the media for fear of fanning the flames of our progress. As I have mentioned in previous postings, our opponents are petrified of the BNP Bounce. But this 'head in the sand' media approach suits us at the moment. The British National Party is still laying foundations in many parts of the country, built by strong and dedicated activists who have seen through the anti-BNP propaganda and joined our campaign. These are people who really care about our country whether to do so is fashionable or not. Once the BNP gets promoted in the media, and becomes 'fashionable', we will be swamped by the opportunists and careerists who are only interested in what the BNP can do for them and not what they can do for the BNP.

One of those strong and dedicated activists is Wayne McDermott who organised the Church Gresley campaign. When I heard the result late last night I was elated, 'What a great performance', I thought. But not our Wayne. He was disappointed we hadn't won.

"We had them worried," he told me in the early hours. "If the Lib-Dem candidate that was selected to stand had actually stood, then maybe we would have won. If we had managed to complete all our canvassing, we might have won."

Always striving to win and never being satisfied with second best is a new motivation that is prevalent amongst a growing number of our election campaigners. It's a great attitude to have but even these young turks must acknowledge a good second place when it comes along, and Wayne was grudgingly able to do this.

"Still three sweeps, a lot of interest on the doorstep and quite a few new members will help us build on this. It's another ward to add to the growing list of seats where we are the only real alterative to Labour," he said.

I'm still getting a lot of stick over my remarks concerning Andrew Green of Migrationwatch. In a previous posting I called him a Government safety valve and included him in the Fab Four of Government safety valves along with John Gaunt, Richard Littlejohn and Peter Hitchens. Well I'm afraid I stand by my comments. On Wednesday he was trotted out again on all TV channels to offer his thoughts on the consequences of immigration. Lots of useful quotes from him but what has he actually done to further the cause of those campaigning to stop the immigration that he sees as so detrimental to this country? As the Capital One credit card advertisement says "A big fat nothing". Once he has said his bit, that's it - end of story. But if Andrew Green wasn't there, then Nick Griffin might have been invited on the programmes and he could have told viewers what the British National Party would do about immigration and provide the public with an opportunity to stop what Green is so critical of.

I'm delighted to report that there was a successful day of action in Kendal yesterday, organised by another one of our strong and dedicated activists, Clive Jefferson. 400 leaflets handed out and 40 copies of Freedom sold in the high street of a south Cumbrian town which has never seen the BNP before. You can read a full report on Clive Jefferson's blog at http://www.cumbrianpatriotbnp.blogspot.com/

Interesting piece from John Harris in The Guardian this morning. He is worried that the Labour Party is too concerned with those 100 marginal seats in Middle England that will decide the next election and ignoring its traditional heartland. He writes:

"When the election finally arrives, beware. Given its talent for issuing leaflets that read more like Socialist Worker than Mein Kampf, the British National Party is making hay with the issue of casual labour, as I was recently reminded while reading The Triumph of the Political Class, a new book by the Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne. An elegant tirade against a cross-party cabal either in thrall to vested interests or so lost in the woods of electoral arithmetic that the stuff of real lives scares them, one of its most sobering sections deals with the rise of the BNP "in Barking, Dagenham, Dewsbury, Leeds and Burnley" and its place in what he sees as an "insurgency against the political class".

There should be an advert for Peter Oborne's book on this page if anyone is interested.

And finally to Tony Blair. In a speech in New York last night he likened the growth of Islamic extremism to the growth of fascism in the 1930's. In fact that was the main theme of the speech. Now that's going to upset both the Labour Party and the Trade Unions who have spent a lot of money setting up an organisation called 'Unite Against Fascism (UAF)' to try to stem the growth of the BNP. If Blair's analogy takes hold within people's minds then UAF will be thought of as a group that campaigns against Islamic Extremism rather than the BNP. Now that might muddy the waters come election time!

The end of the 'Nice' Party

My theory of what is behind the demise of the Liberal Democrats over the past 18 months is that it has had nothing to do with the leadership of Ming Campbell. I believe the reason that voters turned away from the Party, causing their poll ratings to nearly half from 22% to 12%, was because of the way that Charles Kennedy was treated when he was removed from the leadership.

Support for the Lib-Dems comes from many different strands. There is a hard of core of old-fashioned liberals who actually support liberal policies. There are those who vote for the Party because they don't support either of the other two parties. There's the protest vote of those who want to make their voice heard and see voting Lib-Dem as making that statement, and then there are the votes it attracts because people believe that it is the 'nice' party in the world of hard-nosed politics.

This was very much the case in Burnley where Labour and the BNP were fighting out a series of by-elections after the 2002 and 2003 local council elections. Labour were unpopular but still held the lion's share of the votes in these wards, the BNP were the challengers along with the Lib-Dems. Labour's campaign against the BNP was quite ferocious with as many as eight anti-BNP leaflets being distributed, and as Labour and the BNP slugged it out, the Lib-Dems picked up support from those people who were alienated by the intensity of the contest.

"The Lib-Dems are okay, they seem to care" one chap told me on the doorstep. He probably couldn't name one Lib-Dem policy but the Party's 'gentle and nice' facade had temporarily won him over.

But that image was undermined by the way Charles Kennedy was hounded out of office. People with a drink problem do seem to attract some public sympathy, probably because we have all over indulged at one time or another. Kennedy was quite a popular figure and to see him treated in such a way by people who were meant to be his colleagues left a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who had followed the saga on TV. In the eyes of many, after treating one of their own in such a manner, the Liberal Democrats were not the nice party any more.

And now it has happened all over again, this time with an old and respected politician. Who needs enemies with friends like Vince Cable, the Party's deputy leader. His interview on the World at One yesterday was the signal for the jackals to stop their circling of the prey and to go in for the kill. Within a matter of hours Ming was gone, so devastated by his treatment that he was unable to face the press.

Politics used to be about political parties with different policies. Now it's about political parties with the same policies. The only difference between Labour, the Tories and the Lib-Dems will be the media savvy and celebrity status of their leaders. That's why the Lib-Dems ditched Ming Campbell, because to compete they need someone more charismatic for the media.

And all the while, out of the spotlight, there's a silent revolution going on. There's not a day goes by without the British National Party recruiting another, ten, twenty or even fifty new members. On most Thursdays over the past two months, voters have been turning to the BNP in increasing numbers. As Britain's fourth political party, our current target is to become its third, and the continued exposure of the Liberal Democrats as being anything but a 'nice' party will help towards that end.

There's some news from the frontline in the council by-elections the BNP is contesting on Thursday. Wayne McDermott, who is involved in our campaign in South Derbyshire in Church Gresley ward, says he was disappointed that the United Kingdom Independence Party candidate had his nomination papers refused because of duplicated signatures.
" We were gutted they didn't stand because we would have thrashed them, and that would have increased the number of UKIP people now joining the BNP. I can't believe they didn't have a spare set of nomination papers. We had three sets ready just in case there might be a problem."

Wayne reports that the campaign is going well with the response on the doorstep very favourable. Labour have been out in force for the past two weeks and the battle looks to be for second place between the Tories and the BNP.

There was a mistake on yesterday's blog. The Waltham Abbey by-election is not this Thursday but next, 25th October 2007. Apologies for the error and I can quite honestly shift the blame to www.votewise.co.uk which is still showing the contest as taking place on the 18th.

A loser, methane & Thursday's elections

It's been a bad week for Gordon Brown and the footage shown of him on last night's Bremner, Bird and Fortune indicates that the setbacks have taken their toll on him. The Prime Minister, unlike his predecessor, isn't particularly photogenic at the best of times but the clips of him at Prime Minister's Question Time when not at the dispatch box, showed a man who know he's in trouble . . he looked like a loser.

Having spent ten years in the shadow of Tony Blair, suddenly all this limelight doesn't suit Brown. His shortcomings are going to be ruthlessly exposed and with the media pack already on his trail, he could be in for a torrid time in the coming months. There was an inkling that Brown might not be as cautious and clear thinking as he likes to portray back in February when commenting within minutes of Nick Griffin and Mark Collett's acquittal on race charges at Leeds Crown Court. He was on the TV news bulletins advocating reviewing again the just reviewed and strengthened Race Laws while Nick and Mark were still being interviewed outside of the court. It was an ill-thoughtout soundbite to placate the ethnic minorities and this lack of judgment was even seized upon by one of the establishment newspapers which pointed out that Brown couldn't yet have seen the transcript of the trial, didn't know the particular points of law that the jury had seen fit to clear the defendants on, and that his instant call for a change in the law sounded like 'if we couldn't get them this time, we'll get them next time' sour grapes.

I would like to bet that the European Union is behind the latest move by the Labour Government to phase out fresh milk and replace it with UHT milk. According to a discussion paper, the move is in our best interests because of global warming caused by the carbon emissions from our dairy herds and the refrigerators that keep our milk cold. Almost all of the rest of Europe drinks only UHT, which lasts forever in vacuum packs, so the discussion paper wants to see a cull of Britain's dairy herds reducing them by 50%.

It is not only bad timing to announce such a scheme when our farmers are suffering with foot and mouth and bluetongue, but the whole idea smacks of the EU wanting to snuff out Britain's milk drinking habits because they happen to be different from the rest of the member states. And to claim it's all about global warming is a despicable con-trick typical of this Government. Our cattle herds have been pumping out methane for centuries and haven't caused any climate change, so why should it be different now? If Brown and Co are really worried about Britain's carbon footprint they should place an immediate ban on all flights to and from India & Pakistan. Maybe we should put an e-petition on the Downing Street website . . . "We the undersigned would like to cut carbon emission by banning flights that take 'British' Asians to and from their home country and adopted one, and not by culling our dairy herds'.

There are two local council elections involving British National Party candidates this week in Epping Forest and South Derbyshire. The BNP already has six councillors on Epping Council but it will be something of a political earthquake if Peter Cooper becomes the seventh. Last time the ward was contested we polled just over 20% coming third behind the Tories and Lib-Dems. It might be difficult to actually improve on that percentage with a Labour candidate standing this time around but the local BNP group will be hoping to put the squeeze on the Lib-Dems in what looks the main focus of the campaign - the battle for second place.

Father of four Richard Fallows, is the British National Party's candidate in the Church Gresley ward by-election for South Derbyshire Council. Last time this ward was contested it was a straight fight between Labour and the Tories, but with the added choice of the BNP this time for voters, it could provide an interesting result. Labour candidate Gordon Rhind, is focusing his campaign on saving the local Post Office. What his election leaflets conveniently forget to mention is that it is his Party - the Labour Party - that is actually closing the Post Offices down across the country. Hopefully voters will see this as another example of Labour treating voters with contempt, just like Gordon Brown's 'British Jobs for British Workers' quote at the Labour Party conference. I'm going to stick my neck out on this one and predict that we can come from nowhere and push the Tories into third place in Church Gresley.

The candidates

South Derbyshire Council
Church Gresley Ward
Thursday 18th October 2007
Beatrice Eaton (Con)
Richard Fallows (BNP)
Gordon Rhind (Lab)
Last Time: Lab 798, 770, Con 397, 389.

Epping Forest District Council
Waltham Abbey Honey Lane
Thursday 18th October 2007
Christine Akers ((Lib-Dem)
Jonathon Collier (Con)
Peter Cooper (BNP)
Patricia Sumner (Lab)
Last Time: Con 636, Lib-Dem 240, BNP 225.