200 protest against dismal BNP conference

Around two hundred anti-fascists gathered outside the ghastly New Kimberley Hotel in Blackpool yesterday to protest at the British National Party holding their conference at the resort for the second time. Protesters came from Blackpool itself, Lancaster, Barrow, Manchester, Tyne and Wear, Nottinghamshire and Liverpool, and included students and trades unionists.

Speakers included Donna Guthrie: UAF, Stephen Mullen: Blackpool and the Fylde College Student's Union, Alec McFadden: North West TUC, Jane Rogers: Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre TUC, Paul Jenkins: Barrow and South Cumbria UAF, Dan Ratcliffe: Lancaster University SAAR, Mike Killian: Manchester UAF and others.

The BNP, rather than standing around sneering at us from inside the hotel as they did last year, chose instead to hide behind drawn curtains - except for a few who appeared momentarily to snap off a picture or two, much to the annoyance of the police who had told them not to. While most of the people who choose to do this at least tried to be discreet, Mark Collett, being the BNP's most arrogant moron, pulled his curtain wide open and stood in front of it grinning down at us until ordered to stop being a prat by the police.

This buffoon craves the limelight, good or bad, and one wonders why any party leader, particularly one as paranoid as Nick Griffin, would want such an uppity and ambitious little snot standing very closely behind him. I'd advise Griffin to check for concealed knives.

Cumbria BNP's Clive Jefferson made a couple of appearances at the door for no apparent reason, though maybe he simply wanted to be caught on Granada TV's camera. While on the subject of Granada TV, there was an excellent report on the demo last night including (sadly) a snippet of Griffin followed by three of our people. Nice. If anyone managed to get a digital recording of it, please sling it across to us at lancaster.uaf@zen.co.uk

A number of people at the demo speculated on the reason for the curtains being closed and it was suggested that the most likely reason was that there was hardly anyone in there attending the conference. This was borne out an hour or so after the demo had ended, when a group of us drove past the hotel on our way home only to see that the curtains had been opened and that there was a small cluster of around fifteen to twenty people sitting around a table in the dining room apparently engaged in a discussion. Maybe they were asking where the missing accounts have got to.

Assuming that a similar discussion was taking place in the resident's lounge (though it looked empty to us) that indicates a 'national' conference attended by about forty people. Wow.

All in all, a good demo. The weather didn't get too out of control, the conference looked pretty dismal and our speakers were great.

Thank you to everyone who made the effort to turn out, particularly to our friends who travelled from well out of the area. Many thanks to our speakers who all did a sterling job despite being frozen and our thanks to the many members of the Blackpool public who stopped to chat or who were driving past but gave us the thumbs-up.

Well done everyone (and thanks to Jim B. and Phil for the pics). :-)