Giving the BNP the runaround – part 2

When the BNP turned up at Harold Hill railway station on a rainy Sunday morning they were hoping to intimidate campaigners from the anti-fascist community group Redbridge and Epping Forest Together, who included Searchlight’s publisher Gerry Gable.

London taxi driver Jason Douglas, who is general factotum to the BNP candidate in next Thursday’s by election in Gooshays ward, Havering, drove up in his red hackney cab. Unfortunately no one managed to check whether it was displaying the full road fund licence that permits use other than for hire.

The candidate, Mark Logan, was there in the company of some real knuckle-dragging specimens, a couple of dowdy women and the man with the biggest gob in London, Barking and Dagenham BNP councillor Lawrence Rustem.

Two trade unionists from SERTUC joined us. We sent them off to link up with two minibuses of Hope Not Hate campaigners who had been working in the ward since 9am.

We waited expecting that Douglas, who has two convictions under his belt, would unleash his thuggish chums on us. We knew that the station was covered by several CCTV cameras.

A latecomer for the BNP was Ian Newport. A former NF activist and close friend of the BNP’s mad bomber Tony Lecomber, he tried to ingratiate himself to his fellow fascists by snarling “f***ing race traitor” at one of us.

Then we set off to Gooshays. It was now 11am and around 30 Labour and SERTUC supporters were out delivering a huge number of leaflets and papers. The Conservatives had already completed four full sweeps of the ward before Sunday.

There some young supporters of Hope Not Hate turned up to help, including two young women who had never been out on any activity like this. We left them with the Labour and trade union activists, while three of us, all seasoned anti-fascist activists, in two cars put part two of our plan into action.

All the BNP supporters had formed up in convoy at the station to follow us to the Labour and trade union assembly point on the Harold Hill estate. There was a white van transporting Rustem, Logan’s car and some other vehicles, carrying 16-18 BNP activists.

When our two cars left the assembly point, the BNP convoy followed and it was like an Ealing Studios comedy. Our first stop was a Catholic church where we left some literature. Rustem, Logan and one scruff rushed out of their cars after us, but clearly a church was no place for the BNP and they stood around looking bemused.

At this point Rustem started flashing around an election leaflet attacking Gerry Gable as a criminal, liar and editor of Searchlight. It’s a pity they are so out of date – Gerry relinquished the editorial role many years ago. It is also strange that this leaflet was published at all after so many London BNP officers thought Logan would be daft to do it. Voters in the ward, 99% of whom will have never heard of Gerry, might conclude that anybody who is so hated by the BNP might just have something going for them, that’s if they can understand the BNP’s illiterate and incoherent leaflet at all. Do we hear someone crying ouch after shooting themselves in the foot?

Next we headed for the Tesco hypermarket. At this point Douglas in his cab started chasing a third car containing the two young women, coincidentally going to Tesco’s to fill up. Douglas ended up following that car all the way to Dagenham. A formal complaint is being made to the Public Carriage Office about the convicted thug’s misuse of his taxi.

Our two cars then started a game of follow the leader around the huge Tesco’s car park, pulling up only when we reckoned the BNP activists in the back of the van are feeling car sick.

Rustem in his usual stupid way shouted out “Gable you are a convicted burglar, are you going to rob me”. Shoppers looked bemused and Gerry countered “no way, you’ve got nothing worth nicking at the flea pit you live in”.

We then started handing out Hope Not Hate leaflets. Many shoppers being offered the BNP leaflets told the fascists they would certainly not vote for them.

True to form as the grass he is, Rustem rushed into the store hiding his own illegal leaflets under his coat. Pointing at us he shouted, “they are giving out illegal material, get security”. But he was all mouth. Even with Gerry’s face right up against his, the little nazi runt did not have the bottle to take a swing at someone twice his age.

When Logan approached, Gerry mentioned his surprise over the publication of the leaflet. Logan was clearly not happy about it, but claimed that some of the nicest people he had ever met were in the BNP. So Gerry went through some names and Logan admitted he did not like Rustem and Douglas, nor did he like David Durrant, who is standing for another fascist party in the Gooshays by-election thereby splitting his vote. Logan at first looked puzzled when Gerry mentioned he had heard that Logan also did not like the BNP’s London organiser Nick Eriksen, who is number two on the BNP’s slate for the London Assembly election, but concurred when Gerry pointed out that him calling Eriksen a “prat” would not exactly endear him to the party hierarchy. Gerry concluded with the suggestion that Logan should take a step back and rejoin the real world.

Then for the next 40 minutes we drove around the roads and byways of Gooshays followed by the diminishing BNP convoy, as some of the BNP supporters broke off to go and look for our campaigners on the ground. They failed to find them.

In the end it was just one of our cars followed by the white van with Rustem and a bunch of knuckle-draggers. Now we entered the third and final phase of our game.

Working on the basis that white van man did not know the local area as well as us, Gerry drove onto the A12 and a minute later was going up the slip road onto the M25. White van man clearly left it too late to turn back and ended up trapped on the motorway heading away from Havering.

Gerry was doing a steady 70mph when the van, with Rustem pointing two fingers up at us, hurtled past exceeding the speed limit, adding to two earlier offences of going through red lights.

A couple of miles before the junction between the M25 and the M11 they ran into a huge traffic jam. Perhaps at that point Rustem, who appeared to be navigating, had a small light turn on in his pea-sized brain and realised that in every sense of the word they had been taken for a ride. As Hannibal used to say in the A-Team, “I just love it when a plan comes together”.

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