Reaching new readers is the key

I have just seen a contact sheet of photographs from the Trafalgar Club Dinner and they look stunning. I had originally left half a page in Freedom for this annual event, but this morning I shall try to 'jig' reports around to give it extra space so that more photographs can be included.

This black tie dinner shows the BNP in its true light and makes a nonsense of the media's 'knuckledragging skinhead' smears. When such events are reported in Freedom with a host of positive images of the membership of the British National Party, it makes the newspaper a particularly powerful propaganda tool. When people see a copy of Freedom for the first time it immediately blows away the media's distorted view of us. I know, because over the years I have received hundreds of emails from first-time readers that say exactly that. And that is why it is so important for BNP branches and groups, and individuals who have their own door-to-door rounds, to keep pushing to get the newspaper into the hands of people who haven't seen it before.

Of course, selling Freedom at branch meetings to our members is as important as servicing existing door-to-door rounds to keep our supporters and voters up-to-date with what is happening and what we think. This also provides a vital stream of income. But getting Freedom out to a new readership is the priority, to spread our message even further so as to bring on board a whole new raft of members. And this is happening. In November's issue there are a host of reports of Freedom sales stalls being set up in town centres up and down the country and a roaring trade being done.

Talking of making space in Freedom for reports, I am leaving some for what I hope will be a positive result from the Royal Courts of Justice with regard to the Rosegrove with Lowerhouse Ward election last May. You may remember that our excellent candidate John Rowe, won the contest by two votes before two previously rejected ballots were added to the Labour vote to make it a tie. Labour then won the seat on the drawing of straws.

John and his fellow councillors in Burnley were outraged by the decision and took their case to the High Court where it was agreed that another count should take place and the rejected ballot papers be re-scrutinised. That re-count took place over FOUR weeks ago and there still has to be a decision on it. Maybe it will come today.

First job for me this morning after posting this blog, is Freedom's Letter's Page. There's room for just 6 to 8 letters, yet there are over twenty that have been put on the short list for publication. Unfortunately for me, some of the best letters are hand-written and sent in by snail mail which means that they have to be re-typed if they are to be included. In an ideal world they should all be emailed letters which I could 'cut, paste & edit' in a matter of minutes, but sadly life is not that easy. The sort of letter I particularly like tends to come from Freedom's older readers who are not computer literate which gives me extra work. Still if it's a good letter the effort is worth it.

And finally, I am always delighted when our opponents end up with egg on their faces. In Kendal in Cumbria, the Westmoreland Gazette tried to do a hatchet job on the BNP after a papersale was held in the town. Together with a front page story and editorial attacking the Party, there was a cartoon about a man having to pull out his own teeth because the BNP had stopped all the Spanish and Polish dentists entering Britain. But the 'joke' misfired and only went to stimulate a debate on why this country wasn't training its own dentists instead of having to recruit them from abroad. Sometimes the anti-BNP brigade can be too clever for their own good.

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!