Battle on to replace disgraced councillor

Burnley will go to the polls next week to decide who will replace disgraced ex-councillor Mozaquir Ali in Daneshouse with Stoneyholme And for the first time a candidate for the England First Party will be standing in the town.

The candidate is Steven Smith, who has just come to the end of the five-year ban on standing for public office. He is one of four candidates bidding for the seat, left vacant when Ali was sacked for electoral fraud.

Smith received the ban from political office when he was sentenced to six months in prison for election fraud in 2002. He admitted allowing false nominations to be submitted for the 2001 elections when he was organiser for the Burnley branch of the British National Party.

The far-right England First Party surfaced in Blackburn last year, when Couns Mark Cotterill and Michael Johnson were elected to the council.

Voters in next Thursday's Burnley elections will also choose a replacement for Brunshaw councillor Donald Hall, who died last year. However, neither vote will affect the balance of power in the council chamber since the the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition holds a majority of five over Labour.

The full list of candidates for Daneshouse is: Shah Hussain (Labour); Mohammed Malik (The Liberal Democrats); Alan Marsden (Conservative) and Steven Smith (England First). In Brunshaw the candidates are: Karen Baker (Labour); Tony Coulson (Conservative); Allen Harris (Liberal Democrat); Paul McDevitt (British National Party).

Mozaquir Ali, of Brougham Street, Burnley, was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the returning officer following a trial at Preston Crown Court last year. He was sacked from the council when he failed to appeal against his conviction for which he was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

His co-accused Manzur Hussain, of Milner Street, is still an independent councillor for Daneshouse and Stoneyholme, despite also serving 18 months, because he appealed against his conviction.

Coun Hall, a long-serving councillor and former paratrooper, died in December, aged 59, after a heart attack.

Alison Morville, Burnley Council's elections officer, said: "Two electors from the borough have written to the council asking for a by-election to fill the vacancies."

The current make-up of the council is Liberal Democrat 15, Labour 15, Conservative 5, BNP 7 and Independent 1.

Lancashire Evening Telegraph

Note: Steve Smith, ex-BNP Burnley organiser and convicted electoral fraudster, was said to have resigned from the party over its treatment of his violent nephew, Luke Smith. Nephew Smith, at the time a BNP councillor and convicted football hooligan, was thrown out of the party after he glassed the then BNP Head of Security in the face at the party's annual 'family' piss-up, the Red, White and Blue Festival. Luke Smith is now in prison for, surprise, football hooliganism and violence.

Uncle Steve went from the BNP to the British People's Party (BPP), then led by nazi drunk, Eddy Morrison, who was also accused of electoral fraud after he conned an elderly woman into signing his nomination paper by telling her it was a petition to save a local shopping centre from redevelopment.

Now Smith appears to be in the England First mob, sorry Party, led by Mark Cotterill, who used to head the 'American Friends of the BNP', yet another organisation whose funds mostly seemed to have detoured into a couple of deep pockets rather than the party's coffers.*

What a bunch.

* Since the above was written, Morrison has stated that Smith is still in the BPP, even though he is standing for the EFP. Confusing or what?

He's still an electoral fraudster, whichever party he's standing for.