Last chance to apply for a job with London's BNP member

There are only two days left to get your application in for a job with the BNP's lone London Assembly member.

Richard Barnbrook won a seat in the May elections, and now the City Hall website is carrying adverts for a PA and a researcher to join his staff. The closing date for applications is Friday. The BNP presence on the Assembly sparked protests just after election day.

The jobs are advertised by the Greater London Authority. In its notes for job applicants it states:

"The GLA ensures it serves the interests of all Londoners and communities equally, regardless of their religion, race, gender, age, disability or sexuality. The GLA wants to ensure that the people who work for us are truly representative of Londoners. We have therefore set ourselves the target of having a workforce which is 52% female, 25% from black and ethnic minority communities, and 10% with a disability. We have set these targets for all levels of our workforce, and we positively encourage applications from people from within these groups."

The GLA target fails to mention the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans communities.

The BNP is outspoken in its opposition to a multi-cultural society and to gay equality. The party, which has more than 50 councillors in England and Wales, has at times maintained that homosexual acts should be recriminalised. During his campaign for Mayor of London Mr Barnbrook, who is a Barking and Dagenham councillor, along with eleven BNP colleagues, said:

"You can be gay behind closed doors, you can be heterosexual behind closed doors, but you don't bring it onto the streets, demanding more rights for it."

He also denied the party is racist.

"It's not immigrants that are at fault here, never has been, it's the establishment, our own governing powers and their greed or their ignorance or their simple gutlessness to do anything about it," he told the BBC. "They feel if they try to look at immigration they will have the finger pointed at them - 'racist'. This is an easy get out clause - this is bullying people. We're not racist at all. We do not perceive one person's religion, identity, culture or way of life as being better or worse than our own, we are simply different."

Mr Barnbrook was ridiculed in 2006 when the Evening Standard newspaper publicised a copy of a film produced and directed by him described as "Marxist gay cinema." The film, HMS Discovery, A Love Story, contains scenes of men undressing and touching each other, coupled with nudity and sexual activities. Mr Barnbrook told the Standard:

"It was an art film, not a bloody porn film. The only nudity in it is a couple of guys running in a river. This was done when I was a student. It was part of my extra education, part of my studies and that was it. Anything to do with my past politics or my past work, I am not interested in commenting on."

The BNP has previously told PinkNews.co.uk that homosexuality should not be promoted as equal to a straight lifestyle.

"The word gay means happy, we have no problem with being happy," a spokesman said. "Some unfortunate people suffer from homosexuality so we will just have to tolerate them. If I was one I would be ashamed and would remain celibate."

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