Big week for the BNP

I shall be standing by the telephone this morning waiting for that call from Nick Griffin. If the BNP chairman takes a leaf out of David Cameron's book and appoints an ex-con as an adviser for the prison service, then I might just be in line for a new job!

Joking apart, it's a strange decision by the Conservative leader. Jonathan Aitken epitomised the sleaze that befell John Major's Government, appearing to the public before, during and after his trial as the clearest possible example of a Tory snout-in-the-trough liar. Some uncharitable people may think that this, rather than any input he can give the Party from his time spent in chokey, is why Cameron is so keen to get him back on board .

It's a big seven days for the British National Party, which started yesterday with the attendance of many BNP units at Remembrance Day services up and down the country. On Friday it's off to Blackpool for three days and our Annual Conference. Surprisingly the Labour Party opposition has chosen Saturday to picket the Conference hotel which in reality is just a training day for potential delegates to the AGM, rather than the Sunday which is the day of the Conference proper. I think demonstrations like this actually help us now because however the opposition tries to spin it to the media, it comes across as an attempt to deny people the right to meet and discuss ideas. With political freedom very much on the agenda at the moment because of events in Pakistan and Burma, a threatening mob in Blackpool trying to stop people attending a political meeting just because they don't agree with that political party will smack of intolerance and I don't think the British people will appreciate it.

I see this as Labour making another mistake as it tries to stem the heamorrhaging of its traditional vote to the BNP. And let's just take this opportunity to make it very clear that although the groups opposing us come under a wealth of different names, it is the Labour Party behind them - Labour Party activists and Labour Party money. There was a typical Labour Party mistake in the Times & Star newspaper here in West Cumbria on Friday which I hope to score some points off in its next issue. In the letters' page there was a contribution from a Labour councillor concerning the political developments in Maryport. (see Clive Jefferson's excellent blog for the full story on this: http://www.cumbrianpatriotbnp.blogspot.com/ ).

In his letter, Karl Holding claimed that "the BNP have come last in every election they have contested in Allerdale." This is incorrect and gives me a chance not only to set the record straight but also remind readers of the BNP's excellent results in Maryport - something the Labour councillor is trying to belittle with his 'come last' comment. My letter to the newspaper reads as follows:

Dear Sir,

Allerdale councillor Karl Holding, may be new and relatively inexperienced as a Labour Party councillor, but he's certainly proving an old hand at Labour Party spin.
By his assertion (Times & Star 9th Nov) that the BNP "have come last in every vote" contested in Allerdale he is trying to imply that the BNP has no support in the borough. This certainly isn't the case.

In the council elections in May the BNP became the first party for 12 years to take on Labour in the Maryport wards of Ellenborough and Ewanrigg. When the votes were counted, the average vote for the two Labour candidates in Ellenborough ward was 607 while the single BNP candidate attracted 342 votes and in Ewanrigg ward the average vote for the two Labour candidates was 591 while the single BNP candidate polled 276 votes. That's over 600 BNP votes across the two wards and one-in-three voters supporting the British National Party rather than Labour.

Mr Holding's attempted 'no support for the BNP' spin is also factually incorrect. In Wigton ward for Allerdale Council in May 2003, the BNP candidate Paul Stafford polled 261 votes while Bill Walton, one of the Labour candidates, polled 246 votes and came last.

Martin Wingfield
BNP candidate May 2007,
Ellenborough Ward.

Letters to the press are important for the BNP because they keep our name publicised.

Just one by-election this week for Lincolnshire County Council. Here are the candidates:

Heighington & Washingbororough Ward
Michael Clayton (BNP)
Roy Harris (Lib-Dem)
Darren Hopewell (Lab)
Clive Oxby (Con)
Stephen Pearson (UKIP)
Victor Sahunta (Ind)

As with another recent by-election, an Independent candidate has withdrawn from the contest although her name will still be on the ballot paper. The seat is a Conservative one but with Labour snapping at their heels. It is also a target seat for UKIP which polled a very creditable 11.3% of the vote. The votes last time around were Conservative 1750, Labour 1534, UK Independence Party 419.

Workington Reds covered themselves with FA Cup glory on Saturday (well for 80 minutes at least) and made a few bob in the process. The Wembley dream came to an end at Gigg Lane as we went down 4-1, but that scoreline was an injustice. On 75 minutes we got a well-deserved equaliser and for five wonderful minutes it looked as though a major shock could be on the cards, before Bury scored three goals in the last 10 minutes. Well, now we can concentrate on getting into the Conference North play-offs without any distractions.

Standing apart from the others

It's a little disappointing that there's still no news from the Royal Courts of Justice on Burnley's Rosegrove Ward local council election recount. You can understand that sometimes a judge's decision might take time to formulate, with so many different strands of evidence to be brought together, but this is just the counting of ballot papers and a decision on whether one or two ballot were valid votes or not. My concern is that this long wait for a verdict might be due to pressure from above, maybe advising Mr Justice Irwin to take a second look at his decision. Still we might hear something today.

All the news this morning concerns Chancellor Alistair Darling's statement in the Commons yesterday. I like the headlines - Labour steal Tory policies. It's on a par with headlines that appear at the time of an election when a Labour incumbent will plead Vote for anyone but the BNP in order to hang on to their seat. The more Labour is seen to move towards the Tories, the better it is for the British National Party. As the economic downturn takes hold and people's personal comfort zones contract with the credit squeeze, voters will be looking for something different, and in the British political arena today there is only one political party that stands apart from the others.

The fuss about inheritance tax is all to do with the General Election that never was and those key marginals in Middle England which would have decided the outcome. Just 10% of the population would be affected by the threshold of the tax being raised from £300,000 to £600,000 or £1 million, and the majority of these families just happen to live in those key marginals. A Labour Party stealing Tory policies will be going down like a lead weight in areas like Barking, Burnley and Stoke and will boost the chances of BNP candidates in the all important local elections next year.

The Guardian reports that next week, the Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) campaign against the BNP launches its biggest initiative to date with a 29-track compilation album featuring some of the biggest names in indie rock and underground dance, including Babyshambles, the View, Bloc Party and Lethal Bizzle. The CDs will be distributed around schools, colleges, youth clubs, universities and workplaces via the National Union of Teachers, student unions and trade unions, teachers, pupils, parents and youth workers.

Now I am not going to pretend to know anything about indie rock or underground dance, but I do know something about music being used for political recruitment. In the 1980s I spent many a Saturday morning at an office-cum-shop in Croydon selling records recorded on the White Noise label to enthusiastic youngsters in the hope of boosting the fortunes of a political party. But as with the LMHR campaign, the music we were promoting had a very narrow appeal and only recruited within one or two youth cultures. So while it made money, White Noise's political value was not only zero, in fact it was detrimental to the organisation it was set up to help.

One of our election boffins, who gets as excited as I do over any forthcoming contest and was also hoping for a November General Election, is worried that there now might be a 'Super Thursday' in 2009 with combined, council, General and Euro elections held on the same day.
"I could only see this harming our chances. What are your thoughts on the likelihood of this happening?" he emailed me this morning.

It's a possibility but I'm not certain that it would be a bad thing for the BNP. As we have seen, a week is a long time in politics, so an awful lot can happen in 21 months. I expect that the political temperature within the country then will be very different to what it is now, and that the public might be delighted to be able to make a wholesale change of their political representatives all on one 'Super Thursday'.