BNP's fraudulent 'Preston Pals' lie machine steps up production in North-West

The Bamber leaflet - a clear incitement to religious hatred

Parts of the North-West of England, primarily around Lancashire, are being treated to a BNP-produced leaflet that seems to have been penned by the ever-despicable Tony Bamber, the former fundholder for the now defunct Lancaster and Preston branch of the far-right party and a former candidate for the Tulketh ward in Preston in 2006. The leaflet campaign appears to be part of an attempt to get the branch up and running again in time for the Euro-elections.

Bamber, in keeping with the BNP's long-established tradition of jumping on any available bandwagon, formed a fictitious group a couple of years back, which he called the 'Preston Pals', a reference to the company of volunteers from Preston who were eventually formed into 'D' company, 7th Battalion, the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, to fight in World War I.

In the Battle of Bazentin-le-Petit on the Somme in 1916, 200 out of the 250 in the battalion were killed in action and the surviving Pals were then further reduced in number through redistribution to other battalions. A short and bloody history but one of which Preston is rightly proud.

Sadly, while appropriating the Preston Pals name and claiming on his latest leaflet that the current bunch (which is actually the remains of Preston BNP) have taken the name 'in honour' of the Pals, he then goes on to state inaccurately that they became the 5th Battalion, a mistake that shows precisely how much respect he actually has for the Pals.

The Royal British Legion (RBL) has roundly condemned this misappropriation of the name by the BNP, with its spokesman Patrick Leavey saying; '[The Preston Pals] sacrifice should not be besmirched by people engaged in political campaigning for such an ugly cause. We condemn this leaflet, its contents, and those who are disseminating it'.

This is not the only reason for condemning this filth. The leaflet is headed 'the heroin trade - a crime against humanity' and goes on at great length about how Muslims are responsible for the 'heroin trade' in Britain, stating;

'Before the Islamic invasion, it was almost impossible to find heroin in our land.'

Invasion? Isn't that a slightly loaded word and one that seems to encourage religious hatred?

So was it possible to find heroin in Britain before say, the 1960s? Yes, and a little bit of research would show Bamber and the BNP that they are misleading their readers. But before we go on to that, let's get things into perspective.

The very first chart I came across on the internet on doing a search, tells me that deaths from heroin and morphine in England and Wales for 2005 hit a shocking 842 - although that's possibly not quite so shocking when compared to the deaths caused by alcohol and tobacco for the same year, which added up to a staggering 93,127 - none of which, amazingly, the BNP has yet claimed as the responsibility of Muslims, though doubtless they will if we give them enough time.

That the BNP doesn't really care about these tragic deaths is clear from an appalling article written by the party's legal advisor and obvious lunatic Lee Barnes back in March of this year, following criticism from the parents of Rachel Whitear, an addict who died in her bedroom and whose image was used in an acclaimed campaign against drug use. Rachel's parents had objected to the use of her picture to bolster the BNP's warped racist ideas of who holds responsibility for the drug trade. Barnes' response was unequivocal;

'The idea we should treat with reverence the image of their dead junkie daughter is repulsive...the idea we should ask your permission to use the image of your dead junkie daughter is not something we need to do.'

A despicable statement and one that would have had him thrown out of any real political party on the same day that it was made.

However, back to the leaflet and its ridiculous assertion that 'before the Islamic invasion, it was almost impossible to find heroin in our land'.

Strange then, that, at the end of the nineteenth century, the underworld of London - Limehouse, Whitechapel and all the area around its docks which were then riddled with opium dens - was searched during the hunt for the murderer who became known as Jack the Ripper. In fact, around that time and long before, opium dens were found in the dock areas of all major cities, though heroin use around the world has been going on for centuries.

The art of the sweeping statement is not lost on Tony Bamber. His current leaflet states;

'For all intents and purposes, Muslims are exclusively responsible for the heroin trade.'

This will not sit well with those who have, through the course of their work, taken a quick look at the history of the heroin trade only to find that the most enthusuatic traders in opium in the late eighteenth century were the British, who were aggressively exporting it from India and importing it into China, creating, by the mid-1830s, some twelve million addicts.

The Opium Wars were sanctioned by the then British Government purely to achieve their economic and territorial ambitions, which included smuggling huge quantities of opium into China estimated to be 15 tons in 1730, 75 tons in 1773. By the 1820s, 900 tons of opium per year was then exported into China and 1,400 tons per year by March of 1839. The trade from China itself is decreasingly rapidly nowadays thanks largely to the Communist government and its violent suppression of opium growers, which should please the BNP but strangely, doesn't.

Moving nearer to now, there are many people who remember the opium/heroin trade being centered on the so-called Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand and Laos, and also Vietnam, during the mid-nineties, when rumours abounded of immense slave farms which produced astonishing amounts of opium which was then refined into heroin and transported back to the US with the collusion, it was frequently alleged at the time, of the US military.

Even now, the Golden Crescent of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan is far from the sole producer of heroin. Mexico and Columbia contribute vast amounts as do a number of other South American countries, though the traffic from those tends to be primarily for the US market.

One of the things Bamber forgot to point out on his leaflet was that, up until 2004, Pakistan was considered one of the biggest opium-growing countries. However, the efforts of Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force have since reduced the opium growing area by 59%.

Then of course, there is the cutting or dilution of the heroin that reaches these shores. Very little pure heroin gets as far as the consumer and what does, generally kills them - most is diluted with all kinds of crap in the never-ending fight for vaster profits. Ninety percent of that industry takes place here, by home-grown criminals or criminal organisations like the decidedly non-Muslim Mafia. Where heroin is concerned, crime is international and certainly cannot be laid at the feet of any one race or religion, no matter how much the BNP might try to distort reality.

In its desperation to have a go at Muslims, the BNP - as it always has - ignores the facts or only produces half-facts to support its racism, its hatred of Islam, its lies and its fraudulent claims to being a real political party. It is not. It is nothing more than a rabid band of racist buffoons led by a con-man. The likes of Tony Bamber fit right in.

Our advice to anyone who receives one of these leaflets is to report it to the police as incitement to religious hatred. I've already done so - if we all do it, we can eventually get the vermin who deliver this rubbish off our streets.