March 14, 2009

Weekend briefing

Sneaking into Wigan following the multiple refusal of other venues in nearby Leigh to host its increasingly fugitive "Battle for Britain" fund-raising roadshow, the BNP is claiming an attendance of "well over one hundred people" for the event - notoriously symbolised by a stolen graphic showing a World War Two Spitfire flown by a Polish fighter ace.

Even giving the BNP the benefit of considerable doubt, "well over one hundred people" seems to us to be a very small number of activists to draw on from the populous North-west region for what was a heavily trailed showcase event, held on Friday night.

It is difficult to see how the BNP can claim the Wigan meeting the success it does, when according to the same party its ordinary branch meetings regularly attract an attendance of around one hundred. The North-west being home to a sizeable number of truculent anti-Griffin BNP dissidents is one possible reason for the derisory regional turnout.

An increasingly active and effective coalition of anti-fascists and concerned locals is very possibly another.

What is clear is that the BNP was seriously wrong-footed in the North-west. Not only was it forced to arrange a number of fall-back venues for its high profile roadshow, but the claim that there was "standing room only" at the final location is also an admission of how small and unsuitable it really was.

Prior to the roadshow a group of Liverpool BNP activists found themselves in an altercation outside the Ellesmere public house in Leigh that led to one person sustaining minor injuries and the arrest of another. There was also damage to BNP vehicles when locals objected to the presence of the BNP and its advertising trailer. We understand that the BNP members got out of their vehicles to confront the locals and had the worst of the ensuing violence.

BNP websites are now claiming that the violence was instigated by "blacks".

As I write, there is a certain amount of online speculation among far-Rightists that the Liverpool BNP contingent was ordered to the Ellesmere pub as a ruse to throw anti-fascist campaigners off the scent. Another way of putting it is that the BNP hung its Liverpool members out to dry, since the group and its advertising trailer could not fail to attract the attention of campaigners. Naturally, BNP Security was safely indoors protecting Nick Griffin from whatever threats to life and limb the party leader risks at the hands of his own members, and the Liverpool members were left to hold their own.

On Thursday, in a blatant attempt to inflame anti-Muslim passions, newly elected BNP councillor Paul Golding (of the dodgy family background) drove the BNP's Lie Lorry to Luton, the scene, earlier in the week, of a confrontation sparked when police allowed 20 Muslim religious extremists to demonstrate against the homecoming parade of the Royal Anglian Regiment.

"BNP’s Truth Truck Faces down Islamist Extremists in Luton" screams a headline on the BNP's website, for all the world as if Golding had single-handedly confronted an army of scimitar-wielding Dervishes.

The truth of Luton is that just 20 isolated lunatics failed to gain any support at all from a local Muslim population numbering 30,000 - since 99.93% of Luton's remaining Muslims managed to ignore the campaign of publicity and recruitment conducted by the extremists in the weeks preceding.

We think that says a lot for Luton's Muslim community - quite a number of whom were in the crowds cheering the Anglians along, as local news footage clearly shows.

The failure of the extremists to attract any support at all is not something you would know about from the subsequent hysterical media coverage of the affair, much of which would have been more at home on the pages of a BNP publication.

While politicians and community leaders in Luton worked hard (and largely uncredited) to repair the damage caused by the twenty extremists the opportunistic BNP worked just as hard to undo it. On the BNP website Golding brags that he took the Lie Lorry to Luton's largest mosque - an action that could only have been intended to provoke, and might well have resulted in violence.

Not being quite the British Lion he likes others to think he is, Golding "faced down" the Muslim faithful by driving off when some of them made unspecified "threatening moves" towards the Lie Lorry - which, translated, means that people were entering and leaving the Mosque as usual and a nervous Golding got cold feet.

Nick Griffin's grasping reaction to Luton was to fire off another in his interminable series of begging emails, hysterically claiming that the 20 isolated lunatics at the root of the trouble constituted a "horde of Muslim extremists". If a grouplet of just 20 can be extrapolated into a "horde" then we're left wondering if the "well over one hundred people" attending the BNP's Wigan roadshow is a product of the same imaginative thinking.

Taken together with a 2.5% vote loss in Rainhill (St. Helens) ward - in the heart of the North-west - in a by-election on Thursday, not the most glorious week in the BNP's history.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely disgraceful; the way the BNP think they can dish it out but they are too cowardly to take it.

Blaming the "Labour Party" when they were seen off by local people who do not want these troublemakers in their communities.

If we all stand firm, we can drive this rabble with their Lie Lorry out of our communities and relegate them to the dustbin of history.

Courage!

Anonymous said...

Looks like Liverpool locals are fighting back.

Nice to see the British Nonces Party blaming the blacks for thier trouncingf rather than thier usual whinges about "reds", "joos", and "Islam"

Old Sailor

Anonymous said...

The picture of the guy who was injured is of a cut NOT of a hammer blow.

As usual the they are rather over egging the custard.

Elsewhere they allege 11 stiches - try 4-5 tapes.

I would suggest they are being economic with the acualte (sorry don't know how to put the accents on).

But from them what do we expect!

Anonymous said...

@ Ben Trunch

I totally agree. The credit for seeing off the fascist BNP should go entirely to the locals, and what a fine job they did too. The aforesaid Labour Party wouldn't have had the courage.

Anonymous said...

The Cyclops can do anything to his people, and yet the party faithful continue to lick his smelly, hairy arse.

Says a lot for the lack of intelligence of the average BNP member why nobody has, and nobody will depose the one-eyed bandit from Welshpool!

Anonymous said...

Hi there, Ketlan and Denise. There is an interesting piece in the Daily Mail about the rise of the far right in Europe.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1160972/The-far-right-march-rise-fascism-Austria.html

I hope you can publish it on your blog.

Thanks

Tony

Anonymous said...

After reading the Daily Mail piece, I'm never holidaying in Austia. It's an absolute nightmare!

In future, I'll go to France instead for skiing.

Anonymous said...

BALDY KETLAN FUCKS PIGS,YOU ARE THE DEVILS CHILD YOU EVIL SLAP HEADED CUNT

Anonymous said...

Its nice to see the Liverpool BNP lie trailer was destroyed, while I don't condone violence unless we stand up to them history will repeat its self, a good turn out too on Saturday in Liverpool city centre with many people handing out anti BNP material, not a fascist to be seen anywhere :-) they where probably licking their wounds after their visit to Leigh on Friday,

Gwen....

Barbara Suzuki said...

I believe the BNP can be resisted effectively without the sort of violence that resulted in bloody injuries featured in That Photograph.

The picture will haunt the anti-BNP movement, and it could steal away some moral authority. Which is a great pity.

Antifascist said...

"BALDY KETLAN FUCKS PIGS,YOU ARE THE DEVILS CHILD YOU EVIL SLAP HEADED CUNT"

Partly true. I AM going bald, dammit.

Anonymous said...

Landale:

I just trawled loads of local papers and the police are alleging it WAS a hammer blow, for example:-

"A Greater Manchester Police spokesman said: “The victim sustained lacerations to the head and it does look like a hammer could have been used.”

Anonymous said...

Barbara Suzuki said...
"I believe the BNP can be resisted effectively without the sort of violence that resulted in bloody injuries featured in That Photograph.

The picture will haunt the anti-BNP movement, and could steal moral authority. Which is a great pity."

I agree Barbara. It's not as though we haven't been warned, Searchlight wrote just the other month that "non violent" actions were the only way.

Shame some apparently did not take note

Anonymous said...

"The picture will haunt the anti-BNP movement, and it could steal away some moral authority."...

Could? No two ways about it will, it already has - take a look at some comments in non BNP and non anti racist forums.

Not exactly surprising really is it when you have people getting hit by a hammer who will come out as the victim and who the aggressor no matter what their politics. It isnt rocket science and this is not the 1970s or 80s , things have moved on. We need to outwit the BNP, not out hit them,

Anonymous said...

I agree Barbara. It's not as though we haven't been warned, Searchlight wrote just the other month that "non violent" actions were the only way.

Shame some apparently did not take note

8:42 PM, March 16, 2009

so you think that antifascists defending themselves from a viscious attack by 4 car loads of bnp nazis armed with knives and baseball bats is a bad thing?

the bnp will regret attacking innnocent antifascists

Anonymous said...

"So you think antifascists defending themselves....is a bad thing"


Problem is it doesnt come over that way, as self defence, in any press report. Therefore it could give antifascism a bad name, we've already had one uncomplimentary press comment about an earlier incident from Mike Jones of the Park Hotel, there's a post about it on LU but its old so here's what he said...


"The complaint I have is with the people who have been starting up the protest, creating rumours which aren't even true and sending us nasty emails. They're the ones who've caused all this trouble"

Unfortunately no matter what the provacation as soon as people see images of someone with a battered, bloody face they naturally assume them to be the innocent party and the others the bad guys. And cries of they started it first are a bit feeble compared to pictures like that.

It's a balancing act, we need to thwart the BNP but keep our reputation intact at the same time. Not sure how but maybe defend with slightly less force next time?