Far-right activists unlikely to fade away

At last year’s general election, the far-right British National Party (BNP) were routed across the board. It was hailed as a knock-out blow to the country’s radical right-wing, to a brand of politics derided as intolerance in a suit. The BNP’s leader, Nick Griffin, lost out to Labour incumbent Margaret Hodge in the east London seat of Barking, and was dealt a frightful ear-bashing for his troubles.

“On behalf of all the people in Britain, we in Barking have not just beaten but we have smashed the attempt of extremist outsiders,” Hodge said after retaining her seat. “The message of Barking to the BNP is clear, get out and stay out. You are not wanted here and your vile politics have no place in British democracy.”

But events of recent weeks suggest that, although the BNP bogeyman may have been hobbled at the ballot box, the firebrands have not yet flamed out. Far from it. Two weeks ago, as the country was convulsed by riots, the English Defence League (EDL), a far-right ‘street protest movement’, seized on public outrage to reinforce its hardline anti-immigration stance. On September 3, another flashpoint looms, with the EDL planning a march through Tower Hamlets, organisers promising to take “our message into the heart of militant Islam within our own country”.

According to Matthew Goodwin, author of New British Fascism: The Rise Of The British National Party, there remains strong grassroots support for policies espoused by the BNP and its ilk, even if it has not been mobilised effectively.

“In Britain, we’ve never had an organisation that’s taken advantage of it, that’s presented itself as a modern, credible alternative – the BNP tried but failed miserably,” Goodwin says. “The traditional weakness in Britain is that these parties have shot themselves in the foot.“

According to Goodwin, the key driver of support for far-right parties like the BNP and, its apparent successor, the EDL, is opposition to immigration and the sense that the government is out of touch on this issue. In particular, though, those on the far-right are obsessed with the ‘cultural threat’ posed by Muslims, homegrown or otherwise.

“Even though the BNP is pretty much finished, the trends that fuelled its support remain in place,” Goodwin says. “That section of the public remains concerned about Muslim communities and the way they integrate and the way the major parties approach that.

“So while some people, especially on the left, were celebrating the failure of the BNP, I would be far more cautious because it’s not going to suddenly disappear. Where do all these ideologically committed activists go? Some of them are so committed that they won’t just withdraw, they won’t just decide that the time has passed. They’re more likely to conclude that direct action is the answer.”

The rise of anti-Islamic sentiment is not a peculiarly British phenomena. And, unavoidably, any discussion of its European counterpoints recalls Anders Breivik, who murdered 69 people in Norway last month. Breivik was a rabid Islamophobe who frequented hard-right websites and whose online manifesto fetishised a coming ‘clash of civilisations’. In discussing the resilience and ideological oomph of the British far-right, Goodwin ponders an uncomfortable hypothetical: what if Breivik had grown up in Leeds or Bradford or Birmingham, instead of Oslo?

“Breivik is not unique; the scale of violence was unique but his motivation was not unique. I must have sat down with 50 activists who talked about the same kind of direct action and the threat of Islam,” Goodwin says.

“So if Breivik was to implant himself in the British far-right or if there was a British equivalent, there’s no doubt the groups over here offer a climate for people like him and the frames to justify acts of violence.”

According to Goodwin, the internet and its seething miasma of hard-right proselytisation is a crucial factor in establishing these so-called frames – the fundamentals men like Breivik embrace, the prism through which they come to see the world.

“The internet enables the far-right to offer their view, their diagnosis with what’s wrong with the country, without interference from other media. It’s a process called ‘narrowcasting’, where people no longer tune in to BBC or CNN – they begin to get all their information from one forum, one source.

“These sites, like The Brussels Journal or the Gates Of Vienna, bring like-minded people together to exchange ideas and exchange tactics. The far-right has been one of the quickest movements to realise the potential of the internet.”

The robustness of this online community, broiling away in the corners of cyberspace, bolsters Goodwin’s conviction that, with or without the BNP, the sun is unlikely to set on these far-right groups any time soon; not unless governments can engage and ameliorate the grievances of those drawn to the right-wing fringe.

“I think the far-right will basically go in two directions,” Goodwin says. “You’ll have the organised parties who try to influence policy, but you’ll also have these groups, movements, lone wolves, who reject the ballot box, who come to the conclusion that the political parties haven’t made any progress. Where do those activists go? Do they just withdraw or do they adopt a more confrontational approach?”

TNT Magazine

Thanks to Greg for the heads-up

Griffin Vs Hodge: The Case of the Century?

So. Nick Griffin is going to attempt to have Margaret Hodge thrown out of Parliament, a la Phil Woolas, over her statement that the BNP would chuck people out of aircraft.

Good luck, Cyclops.

Oscar Wilde made a similar tactical error, as I recall, when he, as just about the Gayest Man in England, attempted to sue the Marquis of Queensbury for calling him, well, “Gay”. (It should be noted that John Barrowman and Peter Tatchell, dressed as Julian and Sandy, coming out of a performance of La Cage Aux Folles hand in hand singing an Abba Medley could never be even a fraction as Gay as was Oscar Wilde, circa 1895.)

Although I don't have anything approaching the same vast legal knowledge and judicial education as m'learned friend (my entire legal experience being largely confined to a week's jury service in the 1980's and once seeing an am-dram production of “Witness for the Prosecution”...), even I can spot one or two weaknesses in Arsehole of the Bailey's case.

First up, unless Cyclops has access to hitherto undreamed-of technology, the whole enterprise would seem to be a non-starter anyway: Such actions can only be brought by petition before the Election Court within 21 days of the disputed Poll. Given the BNP's entertaining record with technology, I'd guess that time travel is still beyond them. For Christ's sake, keeping a website up and running is beyond them much of the time.

Then there's the matter of a small Point of Law.

Phil Woolas was turfed out of Parliament because he “knowingly made a false statement”. Given Griffin's past statements on such matters (including the fairly pertinent “Drop them out of a plane somewhere over Africa. I don't really care” and the ever-popular “I say boats should be sunk, they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya.”), I'd guess that Mrs Hodge would be perfectly justified in arguing that she quite reasonably believed her statement to be true.

Besides which, it only takes a few minutes browsing the comments of the Rank and File of the BNP's Membership (a group it takes less time to browse through every day...) on various comments boards and fora, to find even more insane, reprehensible and murderous statements. And, as Cyclops is so fond of saying (although he clearly believes anything but), the BNP is its Members...

Now then. I'm no cynic, but it occurs to me that Cyclops might even be seeing this opportunity as just another grubby little moneymaking exercise. An astonishing accusation to level at such a model of fiscal probity and Presbyterian thrift as Griffin, I know, but the comments from the assorted cretins on Green Arrow's site, among others,(is there such a thing as the opposite of a Brains Trust?) show that there are still people in this world gullible enough to fall for it. “I will donate with joy in my heart to the costs of this case against the perversion of democracy” says “Theoderic” (the famous King of Italy), while “Robert Weale” adds (and very cogently, too, considering that English is evidently his second language) “About time too, beg, borrow and get donating it's time we fought these dispicable characters through the courts...”.

(Note to self: Must find a way of letting these people know about my guaranteed moneymaking opportunity involving myself, their bank details and a secret Nigerian account containing a vast fortune...)

How much to launch such an action, do you reckon? £50,000? £100,000? Work out the cost of a Croatian Villa and add 10% for luck? Obviously, he's going to want to hire a crack team of legal experts to mount the action, so he'll need as much as his loyal band of followers can afford.

And such a price would be cheap, he'll tell the poor mugs - given that his assured victory in such a case would surely be greater than Agincourt, El Alamein, Trafalgar and The Battle of Minas Tirith combined.

Of course, if the Case were to fall at the first hurdle – or even in the changing room – his Donors would still be happy in the knowledge that their hard-earned money had gone to a Higher Cause (In much the same way as Mel Brooks' “The Producers” revolves around Max Bialystock's scheme of raising many times the cost of a Broadway Show guaranteed to close on the first night and pocketing the change)...

In fact, Griffin's doing quite nicely for fundraising opportunities these days: He's also announced his intention to stand in Phil Woolas' old seat.

Given that the discrepancy between what he had claimed would be spent on the May General Election and what has actually been owned up to (late, as usual) was a mere £470,000, I'd guess that the hapless goons of the BNP will find they've raised a small fortune, only to be rewarded by the spectacle of their Glorious Leader yelling at passers-by from the Truth Truck (if Dowson hasn't taken it with him), and handing out leaflets knocked out on a Gestetner and a John Bull Printing Kit (because surely no Printer who'd actually like to get paid will touch them now) between stuffing his face with the ever-present bacon rolls and slabs of cake.

Maybe this flurry of activity from Cyclops is just an attempt to keep his profile up among his dwindling band of worshippers. Or maybe it's the last throw of a desperate man (it's always interesting to remember that some of the great conmen, from Horatio Bottomley and Robert Maxwell to the board of Enron, actually increased their criminality as things went pear-shaped...).

Whatever the reason; at least we get to keep laughing at Griffin's antics into the New Year.

"The Battle for Barking": A Complaint

So. We've all seen it now. Was Cyclops treated unfairly?

To: Ofcom / Audience Complaints Department

Dear Sir,

I wish to register my complaint about the wholly biased, partisan and unpatriotic documentary “The Battle of Barking” broadcast on More 4 at 10pm on Tuesday November 30th.

When I was initially approached by the Production Company, Dartmouth Films, with a view to allowing television access to the British National Party's finely-honed election organisation, I was assured that any resulting film would be fair and unbiased.

How wrong I was!

My complaints are as follows:

1) Although the clear favourite to win the Election, I was repeatedly undermined in the film by unfavourable comparison to my rival, Mrs Margaret Hodge. For example, I was described as “Chairman of the BNP”, while she was repeatedly given the attribution “MP for Barking”. I was also, incidentally, described as someone who had previously shown no commitment to Barking, while Mrs Hodge was allowed to make an entirely unjustified claim to somehow “care” about the constituency on the spurious grounds that she has somehow “represented” it since 1994.

2) At one point in the (so-called!!) “documentary”, the highly respected local politician, elder statesman and scion of the London BNP, Mr Bob Bailey, is portrayed as someone who would beat an opponent to the ground and kick him repeatedly while he was down. I ask you, in all seriousness: If a similarly senior politician from the Labour Party – say Mrs Hodge, or John Prescott - had thrown a punch during an election campaign, do you think the Mainstream Media Elite would have shown any interest whatsoever? Of course they wouldn't – it would be swept under the carpet and conveniently forgotten about!!

3) Although the British National Party, as any fool can see, triumphed in Barking and Dagenham, and emerged from the fight fitter, wealthier, bigger and more beloved than ever before, this tissue-of-falsehoods-masquerading-as-fact has chosen instead to concentrate on a few selective (so-called!!) “facts” such as my failing to win our best chance of a Parliamentary seat, and our losing every one of our Borough Councillors in the Ward. No. Instead, the (so-called!!) “filmmaker” (a certain Laura Fairrie – who certainly seemed to be telling a “Fairrie-Tale” here!!) made the somewhat bizarre editorial decision to concentrate on Mrs Hodge's “winning” the Seat. Something I suspect will have been of very little interest to her Viewers!!

4) A Mr Richard Barnbrook is shown claiming to somehow “represent” the BNP in Barking and Dagenham. As even the most cursory reading of our Party's recent history will tell you, Mr Barnbrook is, in the opinion of many, a drunken, mentally-deranged, traitorous fifth columnist long known to have been in the pay of the secretive and all-powerful Searchlight Cult. I hardly think it likely that a sagacious and vigilant Leader such as myself would ever have allowed a dangerous lunatic like that within a day's march of our party. To suggest otherwise is clearly misrepresentation.

5) The Eating. I am portrayed, more often than not, as someone who eats all the time. I am constantly portrayed, in the (so-called!!) “Film” as tucking into enormous plates of cake, bacon cobs and assorted comfort food. As anyone who spends any amount of time with me at all will know, there are, in fact, several minutes each week when I am not eating. Did Ms Fairrie choose to show this? She did not!!

6) Repeatedly, I am shown as a somewhat lonely, even pathetic figure. Such a portrayal is nothing but pure fiction! In fact, it can be noted that, throughout our enormously successful and ultimately triumphant Campaign, I was surrounded by close allies and firm, lifelong friends: Eddie Butler, Lawrence Rustem, Charlotte Lewis, Michael Barnbrook, Simon Darby and many, many others. All of whom continue to regard me as a dear, dear friend and mentor.

These, then, are my complaints. I trust you will investigate and swiftly find in my favour. I look forward to being awarded a substantial sum by way of compensation.

Cash would be handy.

Yours Sincerely...

BNP leader invited to meet Queen at Buckingham Palace garden party

Nick Griffin: off to Buckingham Palace in July

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, has been invited to attend a Buckingham Palace garden party hosted by the Queen, The Times has learned.

Mr Griffin has obtained invitations for himself and three guests in his capacity as the North West’s MEP, in a move which last night provoked concern that other guests would boycott the event. His possible attendance plunges the palace into fresh controversy over its attitude to Mr Griffin, who has been convicted of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred.

He attempted to attend one of the Queen’s garden parties last year, but withdrew after an eruption of public outrage. It was suggested that his presence would tarnish the Queen’s reputation. Other MEPs and opponents of the far-right party warned that Mr Griffin’s invitation “utterly compromised” the Queen and risked politicising the annual event.

Each year British MEPs are entitled to two tickets to one of the Queen’s three garden parties at Buckingham Palace. It was unclear how Mr Griffin obtained four tickets, which he announced during a BNP supporters’ dinner at the weekend. In a video seen by The Times, Mr Griffin produced the invitations in front of his guests, prompting loud cheers and claps. He told the gathered crowd that he, his wife Jackie and their two daughters, Jennifer and Rhiannon, had been invited to the event on July 22.

“So my guess is the six o’clock news on Thursday, July 22, might have a little bit about the British National Party,” he added. So we’re gonna [sic] be back in the news.”

Last year Mr Griffin sparked anger when he said that he would attend a party as the guest of Richard Barnbrook, who had obtained two tickets in his capacity as the BNP’s representative on the London Assembly. However, Mr Griffin withdrew after the Greater London Authority warned Mr Barnbrook that his nomination would be reconsidered if he continued to exploit it for publicity. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, had expressed concern about Mr Griffin’s attendance.

A spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace confirmed that an invitation had been issued this year. She said that Mr Griffin was eligible to nominate himself and the Palace would not discriminate against democratically elected representatives.

Searchlight, the organisation which campaigns against the BNP, said it was “bizarre” that Mr Griffin had received an invitation when his party had been soundly rejected by voters at the general election.

Claude Moraes, a Labour MEP for London, said that the move “deeply politicises and embarrasses the Queen”.

“She has been forced into an extremely difficult situation. I would expect some people to boycott the party. If people knew about this it would clearly spoil the occasion for a lot of them. It has utterly compromised the Queen and she is made to feel that she has to make a political decision.”

Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who trounced Mr Griffin in his bid for the seat of Barking and Dagenham, said: “It sickens me that Nick Griffin uses his elected position to gain access to the Royal garden party.”

The BNP’s media spokesman refused to comment.

Times Online

How to beat the BNP – and make sure they don't come back

It is only through open debate that we can expose the BNP's false prospectus and vile intentions, argues Margaret Hodge

Several symbolic victories lightened the gloom for Labour at the election, but none more so than the trouncing of the BNP in Barking and Dagenham. I doubled my majority; the BNP was driven into third place by the Tories; and all of its councillors lost their seats. In short, the politics of hatred and racism were decisively rejected.

Four years ago, I warned of the dangers of the rise of the extreme Right, after a surge in BNP support in my area. Some believed that by raising the problem, I was creating it. But I remain convinced that we cannot deal with the issue by ignoring it. All that does is add to the alienation of those who believe that politicians don't listen to their grievances, and haven't a clue about their concerns.

The argument about whether we should share platforms with the BNP is redundant. It is only through open debate that we can expose its false prospectus and vile intentions. That is why, in Barking and Dagenham, the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, consistently refused to debate with me, or the other candidates. He knew he'd lose the argument – on immigration, on the BNP's hideous heritage, and on local concerns and priorities.

The people here looked to the BNP because they have legitimate grievances. They have experienced the most rapid demographic change in the country. All of us would feel some unease if our neighbours suddenly seemed foreign, and the produce in the shops became unfamiliar. The traditional employer, Ford, has cut back from 40,000 workers to 4,000. The sale of council houses created a lack of decent affordable homes. The local Labour Party became too complacent, and there was no mainstream opposition.

The result was a cocktail of circumstances that the BNP could exploit. In 2006, they put forward 13 candidates in the local elections and won 12 seats. With more candidates, they might well have taken control of the council. Our voters felt we had completely lost touch with them.

Our response was to do everything we could to reconnect with people, and give them a positive reason for voting Labour. In our coffee afternoons, street meetings and door-to-door visits, we didn't talk about national issues. Instead, we listened to what voters were concerned about – from potholes, to the resiting of bus stops, to anti-social behaviour. And, of course, they talked about immigration and the impact they felt it was having on housing, jobs, schools and crime.

First, we always tried to deliver on the local concerns, to show people we were listening. Second, we worked hard to stay in touch with those we met, so people got to know their MP and local activists. Finally, we talked about immigration. Voters of every race share the same concerns about the way housing and welfare benefits are allocated. We didn't promise to turn the clock back. But just by listening and showing understanding, we began to restore confidence and trust.

Since 2006, we have almost doubled our party membership, and are now truly representative of our community. In the council wards where the BNP was strongest, we put forward African and Asian candidates – and they won with handsome majorities.

Yet this is the beginning, not the end of the campaign. The BNP retained its deposit in 72 constituencies, and remains a threat to tolerant, democratic politics across Britain. In particular, we still have to find our way through the issue of immigration. To this end, we need a better system for rationing housing and benefits, with priority for those who have lived in an area for longest. This would immediately lance the toxic perception that the allocation systems are unfair. In that way, we could start to change people's attitudes to immigration, and relegate the BNP to the dustbin, where it belongs.

Margaret Hodge is the MP for Barking & Dagenham

Telegraph

BNP licks wounds after poll wipe-out

As the dust settles after the general election, the far-right British National Party (BNP) is reassessing its strategy after its much-hoped for success turned into a spectacular defeat

After winning its first two seats in the European Parliament last year, the BNP had promised to create a "political earthquake" in the May 6 elections by winning its first MP in Barking, east of London. On the night, however, leader Nick Griffin did not even come close to unseating incumbent Labour MP Margaret Hodge -- and the party lost all 12 of the local councillors that it won here four years ago.

"You're not wanted here and your vile politics have no place in British democracy. Pack your bags and go," a defiant Hodge said in her victory speech.

Their poor showing was a surprise and goes against a European trend -- the far-right entered parliament for the first time in Hungary this year, holds power in Slovakia and Italy and contested presidential elections in Austria. But experts warn it is too soon to write them off, as the party won half a million votes nationwide, a tripling of its support since the 2005 election.

"It certainly wouldn't be wise to be complacent about the BNP's demise," said Dr. Robert Ford of the University of Manchester.

One reason for this is that the key concerns that drove the party's support show no signs of going away, in particular immigration, which the BNP has promised to halt and reverse with a voluntary repatriation scheme. National politicians avoid the issue - but Hodge has tried to tackle it ever since the BNP won its 12 council seats in 2006, as well as a perception among many working-class voters that the Labour party has abandoned them. While she can do little about the influx of migrants, she assured voters she would address the perceived unfairness in the way they use public services, in particular social housing, and sought to listen to their other concerns.

"Was I certain we would win? No," she told AFP - but hundreds of hours of campaigning, with the help of anti-fascist groups, ensured she took 54 percent of the vote compared to Griffin's 15 percent.

The message she sent to her Labour party -- currently embroiled in a leadership election after Gordon Brown stepped down -- was that they had to engage with the BNP. "You can't beat them by ignoring them," she said.

In a radio interview shortly after polling day, Griffin admitted the party "took the most terrible battering" in Barking but blamed in part the "very high expectations" after the EU elections last year. The BNP campaign was damaged by the arrest of its publicity chief on suspicion of threatening to kill Griffin, and the taking down of the website by a disgruntled party member just two days before polling day.

But Griffin also said Labour had put together a "fantastic" operation and said the BNP's trouncing must be taken as a "wake-up call". The party has a serious image problem, however. Despite Griffin's modernising efforts over the past decade, the media and many voters still see it as racist and Ford warned this could prevent them ever winning power.

"It's not that there isn't a potential support for the kind of politics that the BNP represent, it just looks increasingly unlikely that the BNP will be the party that successfully mobilises that potential," he said.

This view is reflected on the streets of Barking, where Rashid Aleem, 41, pointed to Griffin's appearance on a prime-time TV debate last year as the moment when it became clear what the party stood for. Although he cites immigration as a concern, he told AFP: "People saw that and realised he's using the influx of eastern European immigrants as a front for his real agenda, which is racist."

Unemployed construction worker Guy Kerr, 47, admits he is the kind of person the BNP courts and backs their policies on more jobs for indigenous British workers and to pull troops out of Afghanistan.

"But they're racist," he said, adding: "I honestly thought they would get in here and I'm glad they didn't."

Yahoo

General election 2010: the defeat of the BNP

The BNP had promised a 'political earthquake' in east London. Instead, unexpectedly, it was wiped out. Matthew Taylor and Hugh Muir report on the forces that came together to defeat it, and ask: is this the end for Nick Griffin's party?

At two minutes past six last Friday morning, Nick Griffin walked to the front of the makeshift stage at the Goresbrook leisure centre in Barking, east London, and tried to make his voice heard above a braying crowd. The BNP leader had just suffered a humiliating defeat, beaten into third place by Labour MP Margaret Hodge in the constituency where he had promised to create a "political earthquake".

But as he began a flustered and angry speech, Griffin already knew that worse was to come. Rumours had been circulating round the east London count for more than an hour that the party had not only failed to get its first MP, it was on the verge of an electoral disaster in the area Griffin had once described as the party's "jewel in the crown".

"Within the next five years, the indigenous people of London will be a minority," barked Griffin, as jubilant Labour supporters taunted him with shouts of "Out, out, out!" "It is going to be too late for Barking, but it is not too late for Britain." By then, though, no one was listening.

In the next 12 hours, Griffin's worst fears were realised – and even exceeded. The party was thrashed in its two key parliamentary constituencies of Barking and Stoke Central. Its record number of council and parliamentary candidates failed to make a single breakthrough; and of the 28 BNP councillors standing for re-election, all but two were beaten.

But the Barking and Dagenham council election result was the most dramatic. The BNP had plans to take control of the authority – instead, it lost every one of its councillors there. Twelve elected in 2006. Twelve thrown out in 2010. A ruthless purge, more shocking because they didn't see it coming. Neither, for that matter, did their opponents. It was the miracle of Barking.

"This really was a disastrous result for the BNP," said Nick Lowles, who led the anti-BNP campaign Hope Not Hate. "It will have long-term consequences – particularly for Nick Griffin."

This week, those predictions are beginning to be realised, as senior BNP figures break ranks to question Griffin's leadership and, again, raise concerns about the party's finances. Griffin has been all but untouchable since he took control of the party in 1999, but now he seems increasingly isolated: mocked on far-right internet forums, forced to defend himself from the criticism of one his chief lieutenants.

"The BNP looks set to implode," says Matthew Goodwin, a specialist in far-right politics at the University of Manchester. "Griffin may hang on but, if he does, it will only be because there is no easy way to oust him and no obvious successor. He had plans to expand his reach. Now he is fighting to survive."

Walking amid the shops and bustle of central Barking this week, Zain Achtar, a 19-year-old student, could hardly stop smiling as he basked in a borough free of the BNP. "It feels like something has been lifted from the place. We can get on and go forward again."

Karena Johnson, who works in Barking's Broadway Theatre, agreed: "Having them here was an embarrassment. What happened last week means the story of Barking has changed."

Or perhaps the story of the BNP has changed. Twelve months ago, the party was celebrating its big breakthrough after winning two seats in the Euro elections. So why did that momentum stall in Barking?

The answer is a tale of determined activism by Griffin's opponents, aided by the antics of his self-harming party. That activism began to develop a sharp focus two weeks after those Euro elections, when Lowles chaired a meeting of MPs, anti-BNP campaigners, church groups and trade unionists. He gave them a detailed breakdown of the BNP's support. The message was stark.

"A decision was made to draw a line in the sand," says one Labour party figure who was at the meeting. "The coming general election was going to be the defining moment. Everyone knew that if they won then, it would be almost impossible to remove them in the future."

There was never a single anti-BNP campaign in Barking. There were meetings, events, leafleting initiatives run by Hope Not Hate – which coordinated much of the activity – and also by Labour and Unite Against Fascism. Hope Not Hate set up a base in derelict premises, and volunteers travelled across the country to prepare it for the coming battle; putting up a new ceiling, plumbing in toilets and setting up a print room. Some slept on the floors.

"The response was truly overwhelming," says Lowles. "On one day of action, we had 541 people; on another, 385; and even on election day itself, 176 people came out to help get the vote out." Many of the volunteers had not been involved in political activity before. "We had teenagers travelling up from Kent, old ladies from the other side of London turning out. It felt like a liberating experience for people who felt like we were doing something politically important."

The Hope Not Hate campaign was supported by Joe Rospars, chief digital strategist for Barack Obama from 2007 until his inauguration, who said it was the "best example" of a British organisation applying the lessons of the US presidential elections. "We are seeing a genuine community-based organisation, with people coming together around a common purpose," he said.

Campaigners were able to identify the key groups least likely to vote for the BNP – women, pensioners and people from ethnic minorities. They built up an online volunteer force of 140,000 people, and Rospars advised on how to use them for maximum impact. In the month before election day, Lowles says more than 1,000 volunteers descended on Barking, delivering 350,000 specially tailored leaflets and newsletters.

At the same time, the Dagenham MP John Cruddas, and his neighbour who seemed most under threat, Barking MP Margaret Hodge, were fighting a parallel ground war against the BNP. Hodge escalated the effort she had begun some four years earlier to reconnect with voters Labour had lost to the BNP. Their rise in Barking had seen the then culture secretary heavily criticised by many inside her own party. For her, this election result represents a triumph for decency, and personal redemption.

"When Griffin announced in September that he would stand, that gave me a real scare," Hodge says. "My husband had not long died, and I was still in grief. It was a tough period. I was quietly confident that I would win, but I really wanted to smash him. And I was really concerned about the prospects for the council."

Hodge, with the help of volunteers from Unite Against Fascism, turned to the politics of shoe leather, knocking on doors and listening to people's concerns. "'What do you want to talk about?' I would ask. It was up to them."

Most talked about street cleaning, wheelie bins and antisocial behaviour, but inevitably many raised the BNP trump card of immigration. Even black residents raised the issue with Hodge. "I would say to them: 'I can't turn the clock back, but this is why the borough has changed, and we must make it work for all of us.' Some people hated that. Some would understand. But they came to feel I was listening."

The more so, perhaps, because the BNP was itself struggling to cope under a harsher spotlight. Griffin's Question Time appearance last October, with its gurning and yammering, shocked his supporters within the BNP and appeared to weaken his authority. The decision by the Equalities Commission to challenge the party's racist membership rules occupied too much of his attention, and drained the party's meagre resources. Indiscipline, heightened by personal rivalries, created a string of difficulties for the party and its leader.

At the beginning of the campaign, the BNP's publicity director Mark Collett – once a firm ally of Griffin – was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill him. In Stoke, Alby Walker, a senior BNP councillor, said he would stand as an independent because of a "vein of Holocaust-denying" within the party. Then, a few days before the election, the party's website was closed. It was replaced with a posting from Simon Bennett, the website manager, who accused Griffin and James Dowson, the BNP election fundraiser, of being "pathetic, desperate and incompetent".

But the incident that might have had most impact on the voters of Barking concerned Bob Bailey, the BNP's London organiser and one of Griffin's closest confidants. On the eve of the election, Bailey was caught on camera throwing punches and kicks at a group of teenagers. Earlier this week, he was arrested and bailed on suspicion of assaulting two men (an 18-year-old man and a 19-year-old man have also been arrested and bailed, on suspicion of assault and affray).

"That caught the attention of voters," says Hodge. "One of the fears many people had was that a BNP win would result in violence on the street. That seemed to confirm it."

It is impossible to say how much of the Barking miracle can be explained by the efforts of the forces ranged against the BNP, and how much of the wound was self-inflicted, but after a shaky start at the Goresbrook leisure centre – before postal votes confirmed the landslide – the outcome was certainly decisive. Each confirmed result elicited whoops and backslapping, and by the end of the purge, only Richard Barnbrook, one of Griffin's senior lieutenants and himself a casualty of the wipeout, remained. He smiled a smile that at first seemed defiant, but eventually gave the impression that he was feeling queasy.

Around Barnbrook, officials – joyous at having the stain on the authority so ruthlessly removed – were quick to share the good news with friends and loved ones. One texted as each far-righter was shown the door. The last text read: "Bye bye, Nazis."

A widely shared thought is that the BNP was overwhelmed by the sort of grassroots activism that must now become a template if there is to be resurgence for the Labour party. In fact, Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, says it was all about Labour.

"It would appear that the vote for the BNP in 2006 was some kind of political cry of anguish, based on the perception that the Labour party simply didn't understand the concerns of that part of the electorate. The fact that the BNP has been dropped in 2010 heavily suggests this section of the electorate now believes it has got the attention of the Labour party." Back in 2006, the morality of supporting an intrinsically racist party wasn't an issue, says Travers. "The voters simply used the most shocking mechanism they could to get Labour's attention."

But there is good and bad in that conclusion. Good because it suggests people in Barking voted BNP for reasons other than racism and antisemitism. Bad because if it was all a means to an end, did no one consider the impact on community relations of voting for the far right?

In any event, Dan Hodges, a strategist and spokesman for Hope Not Hate, says the safest conclusion to draw is that wider society should never again be so complacent. "We were lucky this time. People realised the threat just in time, we mobilised just in time. But we may not be so lucky next."

What is the future for the BNP now? Griffin doesn't know. He can point to the fact that the BNP won more than half a million votes, but his mood is changeable. Yesterday he sent another email, brimming with anger. "The old east London is dead," he wrote.

His party is at a crossroads. A Tory-led administration may worsen social divisions, providing the far right with new opportunities. But it might also clamp down on immigration, rendering the BNP irrelevant. Even if opportunities come his way, Griffin's party has so many problems that he may not be able to take advantage. The BNP is not dead, but it took a mortal blow in Barking. It will be hard-pushed to find its feet again.

Guardian

More on the landslide Labour victory at Barking and Dagenham

Griffin is confronted by Searchlight editor Nick Lowles at the B and D count

A mixture of elation and disbelief erupted at the council election count on Friday

Elation at a historic clean sweep as Labour gained total control back of the council with all 51 seats being won by their candidates, and disbelief the electorate had voted out the 12 British National Party councillors elected four years ago. Conservatives Terry Justice and Neil Connolly were also casualties. The count took place at the Goresbrook Leisure Centre on Friday.

An indication of the borough's mood was with the two MPs, Jon Cruddas and Margaret Hodge being returned, but no one was prepared for the absolute rejection of the BNP councillors. None of the former councillors were seen or prepared to comment after the last results came through on Friday.

Education Cabinet member, Cllr Rocky Gill, said: "This is an absolutely amazing set of results. We have absolutely destroyed the BNP, we've wiped them out for good in Barking and Dagenham."

Margaret Hodge, who came out of the election with a massive 16,555 majority, gave a passionate speech after she was declared MP for Barking for another term by the council's chief executive, Rob Whiteman. She said: "Our voters faced a stark choice and they have overwhelmingly chosen democratic politics built on tolerance, fairness and decency, not politics built on hate. The message from Barking and Dagenham is clear: get out and stay out. You are not wanted and your vile politics have no place in British democracy. Pack your bags and go."

Nick Griffin was equally vocal about the result. He said: "I would like to thank the 6,620 people who voted for me who do not want to put up with the tirade of hatred against British people anymore. This was Barking's last chance."

Jon Cruddas, who had been MP for Dagenham since 2001, won with a majority of 2,630 over the Conservatives' Simon Jones. In his victory speech, he said: "I simply want to say that I find the work carried out by the Dagenham Labour Party extraordinary over the last few years. I also want to congratulate the Barking Labour Party for a fantastic total result and all the other candidates in this election. I look forward to being an MP for the constituents in Dagenham and Rainham."

A high spot of the night was when the assembled candidates burst into a rendition of the famous 'Dad's Army' theme song but with lyrics of 'Who do you think you are kidding Mr Griffin'.

Barking and Dagenham Post

BNP hopes of a breakthrough dashed as party defeated in target seats

Nick Griffin failed dramatically in his bid to gain a Westminster seat this morning when he suffered a resounding defeat in the British National Party’s east London stronghold

Margaret Hodge, the Labour incumbent, won by a majority of more than 16,000 to deflect the BNP leader’s challenge in what she labelled the most important and moral fight of her life. In a humiliating defeat, Mr Griffin was relegated to third place in Barking, trailing behind Conservative candidate Simon Marcus. The BNP’s share of the vote dropped by two per cent, the result of an extensive campaign to mobilise voters against the threat of the far right.

Ms Hodge, the Culture Minister, achieved a seven per cent swing, winning more than 24,000 votes and 55 per cent of the vote. She said: “The message of Barking to the BNP is clear: get out and stay out. You are not wanted here and your vile politics have no place in British democracy. Pack your bags and go.”

She said voters had chosen democratic politics built on fairness over “a fascist politics built on division, prejudice and hatred. We have not just beaten but we have smashed the attempts of extremists.”

The BNP had considered Barking a stronghold after exploiting local concerns about immigration and housing to win twelve seats in the local council in 2006. However, following a disastrous election campaign, Mr Griffin received 6,620 votes – one third as many as Ms Hodge.

There were indications of a national collapse in the BNP vote after it failed to make headway in its other target seat, Stoke Central. It also looked likely to lose seats on the Barking and Dagenham Council, despite beginning the campaign with hopes of gaining a majority. Mr Griffin blamed high voter turnout for his defeat and said that it was the “last chance for Barking”.

His voice drowned out by booing, he said: “This was the last of London. Within the next five years the indigenous people of London will be a minority in our own capital city. This is a wake up call, not just for London. This is a wake up call for the whole of Britain.”

Mr Griffin said he would not resign, despite the crushing defeat, however elements in his party are certain to demand answers about the disastrous performance.

There was a heavy police presence at the count in Goresbrook Leisure Centre, in Dagenham, as large numbers of BNP supporters turned out to support their leader. The BNP’s campaign has been was plagued with trouble and infighting. In the first week, Mr Griffin faced an alleged plot by BNP officials to overthrow him. He also told police that a colleague had threatened to kill him after an investigation into the political “conspiracy”.

On Tuesday, the head of the party’s online operation resigned and took the website down with him. Simon Bennett, 41, directed BNP traffic to his personal site, which contained a lengthy diatribe against Mr Griffin and other senior figures. The next day Robert Bailey, the party’s London organiser and Romford candidate, was videoed assaulting an Asian youth who had spat on him.

UKIP candidate Frank Maloney said he would make a complaint about Ms Hodge to the Electoral Commission, claiming she had spoken to voters inside polling booths.

At the same venue, incumbent Labour MP Jon Cruddas faced an anxious wait with a close run poll with his Tory opponent. However Mr Cruddas, widely tipped as a leadership contender, won his seat in Dagenham with a majority of 2,000 votes.

Times Online

Keep the BNP out of Barking and Dagenham, say religious leaders

A collective of religious leaders made a last-ditch plea yesterday to keep the British National Party out of Barking and Dagenham, warning that the far-right group would bring only division

The BNP has focused its general election campaign on the East London borough, where it hopes that Nick Griffin, its leader, will win its first parliamentary seat. It is also hoping to make gains in the local council, where it holds its largest presence in the country. It is struggling, however, to capitalise on its success in last year’s European elections, where it won two seats. Turmoil within the party and a lack of funds have resulted in a low-visibility campaign.

The religious leaders gathered with activists from Hope Not Hate, which campaigns against the BNP. The Bishop of Barking, the Right Rev David Hawkins, said: ”People of faith are united in recognising there is no place for racism in politics. We want to encourage as many people as possible to vote in spite of the background of disillusionment they feel about politics. It is supremely important to ensure that far-right parties don’t make any more electoral gains.”

Rabbi David Hulbert, of the Barking synagogue, said that the BNP’s message was profoundly negative. “It is very dangerous to divide the community according to religion and race and ignorance and prejudice,” he said.

Mr Griffin looks unlikely to unseat Margaret Hodge in Barking, who held the seat for Labour with a majority of nearly 9,000 in 2005. The BNP performed strongly at the last council elections, winning eight of the nine seats it contested. Its hopes of gaining overall control look increasingly forlorn, however, unless the Labour vote collapses, after it was able to field candidates in only 34 of the 51 seats.

Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics, said that there was “no evidence of a great BNP surge”.

Times Online

Fighting the BNP from the ground up – Obama-style

Anti-racist groups have learned from success of Obama election campaign, says former mastermind of president's online strategy

The man who masterminded Barack Obama's online strategy during the US president's election campaign said today that anti-racists fighting the British National party had learned from his successful internet plan.

Joe Rospars, who was the chief digital strategist for Obama from 2007 until his inauguration, said the Hope Not Hate campaign to prevent the BNP making a breakthrough later this week was the "best example" of a British organisation applying the principles he had picked up during the US presidential elections.

"We are seeing a genuine community-based organisation with people coming together around a common purpose and – crucially – meeting each other and taking the campaign forward themselves," said Rospars.

Hope Not Hate held its second day of action in Barking and Dagenham in east London , where the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, is standing against Labour's Margaret Hodge, and the far-right party is also hoping to take control of the council. On the campaign's first day, last month, 540 people turned up to deliver more than 90,000 leaflets and today hundreds more gathered from around the capital, including comedian Eddie Izzard and singer Billy Bragg, who staged an impromptu concert.

Izzard said: "I am a Labour supporter – but the message today to those who are opposed to the BNP is to get out and vote."

The BNP had predicted it would create a "political earthquake" at this week's general and local elections, claiming it was on course to win two MPs. But its campaign has been beset by problems, with one of its senior figures arrested on suspicion of plotting to kill Griffinm and growing internal criticism of his leadership.

"This and Stoke remain the BNP's key target areas at the moment, although their campaign does not seem to be cutting through," said Daniel Hodges from Searchlight. "But it will be very tight here on polling day and every vote in both the national local elections will count."

Rospars, who is in London advising the anti-BNP campaign, said part of its success was its ability to translate its online campaign to "on-the-ground community action". "The volunteers that go out and knock on doors and deliver leaflets each weekend are not following a leadership group sitting in a fancy office somewhere; they are the campaign, the core of the organisation." He added: "What we are seeing is a lot of people who even a few weeks ago had never been involved in something like this taking an active part, doing things they would may not have thought they were capable of, and becoming leaders in their own communities."

Nick Lowles, who set up the Hope Not Hate campaign before last year's European elections, travelled to the US to work alongside the Obama campaign. "One of the main lessons we have learned is that the technology on its own does not build a political organisation on the ground."

"This time we have followed up the emails with phone calls and from there we have set up local groups around the country – sometimes just a couple of people sometimes larger – and the result has been the largest political mobilisation of the campaign."

Lowles said it was now crucial to sustain the momentum up to Thursday.

"The challenge for us now is to build on what we have achieved over the last year or so," he said.

Guardian

How exciting! I've never met proper racists before...

He's got a nice complexion, but Nick Griffin could do with a history lesson. Deborah Ross gets under the BNP leader's skin on the campaign trail in Essex

So, I'm off to spend the day with the British National Party which appals almost everyone I know – "Poor you"; "Say you're busy"; "Can't you pull a sickie?" – but I find I'm peculiarly thrilled and excited.

Perhaps I've always lived in some kind of bubble, but I've never met proper racists before. Once, when I was a kid, a girl down the road called me a "dirty yid" but my mum punched her and that was that, pretty much, and I've never witnessed or been involved in any instances since. Might they wear uniforms? March? Say Auschwitz was all one big, fat, stonking lie? As days out go, it has to be better than a stately home. (Although Blenheim Palace is said to be good, with a more than decent café).

I find the BNP in Barking and Dagenham, which basically means going east on the District line until you fall off at the end. This is where they already have 12 councillors (they need 14 more to gain control of the council), and where Nick Griffin, the leader, is standing as an MP against Labour's Margaret Hodge (majority: 8,883). They are all out canvassing today, and have gathered on a street on the vast Becontree Estate, which is comprised of 27,000 council homes and, apparently, houses 167,000 people. As I tip up, an altercation is already taking place – oh, joy of joys – between a BNP man in a sandy-coloured suit and a fat, white tattooed fellow with a neck thicker than his head and a Staffordshire bull terrier snarling at his side. "You got a problem with my bird, looking over the fence," the tattooed man is shouting, while jabbing the sandy-suited man in the chest. "Next time you come over, I'll hit you with a shovel!"

My God, you don't get this at Blenheim! Hit him with the shovel! Quick, someone find him a shovel! But, disappointingly, the minders manage to talk the tattooed man down. What was that all about? I ask. "That," says one of the minders, "was because Richard Barnbrook [the sandy-suited man, a BNP councillor] looked over the other fellow's fence where his girlfriend was having a bonfire, and he got cross about it." The minder is friendly and later updates me on where dog-fighting is at these days. "They use them Japanese akita dogs now. They can pick up a Staffie and it's gone." He also says: "I can't give you my real name, love, for security reasons, but it's Terry."

Back to work, pounding the streets, along with Nick and some of the other candidates – "I have two mixed-race grandchildren," says one happily, "but that's all right, because we never talk politics at home" – and the minder who would be nameless, if only he weren't Terry. Nick is not wearing a uniform, alas, and does not march. He just sort of pootles along. But he does have a glass eye, which is something. The eye is blue and spookily opaque, giving him the look of a dead fish that's been rather too long on the slab. He lost it while doing up a derelict house in France. He'd been burning rubbish on the fire when a shotgun cartridge, concealed in the rubbish, exploded in his face. "Ouch!" I say. "Didn't hurt at all," he says. What? Your eye is blown out and there is no pain? Pull the other one, although, I should warn you, it is just as Jewish as the first. He says: "It's like when someone has been stabbed, and they don't feel it. I guess it's a natural reaction when you've been injured. You've got more chance of getting away and surviving if you don't initially feel pain or whatever." A car passes. A young black woman sticks her head out the window, shouts "racist bastard" and speeds off. Is that painful? I ask. "No," he says. "You have to have the skin of a rhinoceros, doing this job." Actually, Nick has rather nice skin; he's 52, but possibly looks younger. Your beauty regime, Nick? Clinique? Clarins? Eve Lom? "I've never smoked ... I don't know actually ... it's just the way things are." Clinique, I'm thinking.

The job, today, is to press the flesh and distribute flyers. The flyers come with the headline "New Labour Have Changed The Face of Barking & Dagenham" and juxtapose two photographs. One shows pretty, white young women in tea-dresses, lining a street on what appears to be VE Day, and has a "From this..." arrow on it. The other, meanwhile, has a "To this..." arrow on it, and shows three women in burkhas, one of whom is giving the finger. I confess I have never personally seen a woman in a burkha give the finger but, like I said, perhaps I've lived in some kind of bubble.

Anyway, Nick's shtick, if you'll excuse my Yiddish, which you better had, or my mum will punch you, is that Hodge has been moving Labour-voting immigrants into the borough "on a huge scale" to see off the BNP threat. Some residents certainly believe this. "See that turning? Hodge has filled it with Africans," says one. The BNP even have a leaflet, "Africans for Essex" , which claims that the Government has paid Africans up to £50,000 to move here and "ensure safe majority seats in the future". However, as it turns out, the incentive scheme was open to everyone, not just immigrants, and how many took advantage? Just 39, of which six were white, 15 Asian, 13 black and five not recorded. Just 39, then, in a population of 167,000 which, as far as I can work out, represents an uptake of 0.02 per cent. Come on, Nick, I say. You're a Cambridge graduate. Surely you can see an uptake of 0.02 per cent isn't exactly the worry of the century, or even the week. You couldn't even brush your teeth and make that worry last. It's not a leaflet-worthy worry, is it? "It's symptomatic," he says. Of what? "In the last few years 5,000 natives have moved out of Barking and Dagenham and they've been replaced by Africans. The Labour Party hasn't had a programme by that name, but there has been deliberate gerrymandering."

Richard Barnbrook interrupts. "Nick," he says, "there is a man round the corner who is very angry with the BNP. He says you're the cause of bringing in all the immigrants." We go to see this man, who lives in a house with rotting windows and, for some reason, two lampposts lying horizontally across the concrete out front. "Nick," says the man, "I'll be straight with ya. Because you've got in here, they've [Labour] given 'em [immigrants] incentives from Hackney and every other borough ... That's what's happened." And this is what happens, I suppose, when gerrymandering accusations come back to bite you on the bum. I ask the man: are you blaming Nick? "I am," says the man. Might you want to hit him with a shovel? I haven't seen anyone hit with a shovel all day. Nick says: "Labour are bringing them [immigrants] in to deal with BNP votes, but if you go back to Hackney and Tower Hamlets in the Seventies, when the BNP wasn't there, and the National Front weren't a threat, the Labour Party still swamped them with immigrants, and they'll do the same here in Barking, whether we are here or not. Immigrants are cheap labour, and that's what it's really about, isn't it...?" Whoa, Nick, I say. I'm only here for the crack. I'm only here because I thought it would be more fun than Blenheim. I don't want to get involved. But to say the population is being deliberately manipulated, and to then say, actually, it's all down to the free market... It's manifestly contradictory, Nick. "I'm not a racist," says Nick, by way of reply. And neither is the man on the doorstep. "In 1964," he says, "my best friend was a black man." I say: Nick, why do you always use the world "swamped"? Nobody likes it. "The people round here do," he replies.

What is a racist? If you are worried that this country is becoming over-crowded, is that racism? I don't know. I put it to Nick. Nick, what is a racist? "It's a phrase that was invented by Leon Trotsky, who was a mass murderer, to demonise his political opponents. That's the first thing," he says. "But I think the definition that the ethnic minorities use is prejudice plus power. If that definition is used then, self-evidently, the BNP cannot be racist because we do not have any power."

And if you did have power, what's the first thing you would do? "Get out of Europe." Has there ever been an ideal time to live in Britain? "I think being a member of a yeoman's family under Elizabeth I would have been pretty good, before the theft of Parliament. The people were free. There was Shakespeare," Do you like Shakespeare? "I do, yes." Do you read Shakespeare? "I don't get that much time."

Barking actually has a lower proportion of people from ethnic minorities than most other London boroughs, so perhaps what's happening here isn't about a rise in immigration, but a rise in the fear of immigration. A recent report from the Institute for Public Policy Research even revealed that support for the BNP is actually weaker in areas of high immigration rather than stronger. It seems the less you have to do with immigrants, the more you will take against them. Nick himself lives in mid-Wales, which isn't the most mixed of areas. In fact, my husband is from mid-Wales and I was the first Jew my mother-in-law had ever met. ("What is a Jew exactly?" she asked. "I suppose," I replied, "Jews don't believe Christ was the Messiah." "I see," she said, before going to lie down for the afternoon).

I ask Nick if immigration has had a direct impact on his life. "I'll give you an example," he says. "I was campaigning in Birmingham, three or four years ago, and I put a leaflet though a letterbox and a boxer dog stood the other side and ripped the top off my finger. I went off to get a tetanus jab and get it sorted out, and the doctor there was a south Indian, and everyone else in A&E thought it was hilarious, but I was grateful to him for the treatment." But Nick, you big silly, that's a positive anecdote! He looks crestfallen, then continues: "Britain steals health workers from countries that are far poorer than us and need those health workers far more. I've got nothing against someone working in our health service from abroad, the shame is they were trained somewhere else and we've pinched them." Anyone would think he was making it up as he goes along.

Terry, meanwhile, is wondering why all we journalists ever want to talk about is immigration. Terry, I say, have you seen your own flyers? Terry, I add, why do you go to dog-fights, anyhow? You should be ashamed of yourself. "You can't avoid them where I live, love." he says. I ask Nick about John Tyndall, the founder of the National Front. What are your memories of him? "He was ideologically a fascist," he says, "but a gentle person." He insists that the BNP is not just the National Front in new clothes. What's the main difference? "We're electable." And who is an "indigenous Brit?" "You can see it at a DNA level," he says. "The fact is, if your maternal grandmother was born in this country before 1948, you are about 80 per cent likely to be descended from people who came here when the last ice melted 18,000 years ago. Until very recently, the last wave of invasion we had was in 1066." So is someone descended from a Norman an indigenous Brit? "Yes, as a matter of fact, because one of the phrases is 'before legal memory', which is the time of Edward I."

Am I an indigenous Brit, Nick? "Yes, because Jews were here before legal memory. There will always be a blurring of populations around the edges but the idea we are a nation of mongrels is most bizarre. It's almost a form of inverse Nazi race science." Inverse Nazi race science? Can you study that anywhere? The LSE? "If you have a mongrel race you must be able to have a pure race. As a matter of fact, you can't really have either. You wouldn't dream of going up to a Maori, whose people have only been in New Zealand for a thousand years, and saying: 'You're not indigenous,' whereas we've been here for 18,000 years." Well, the fact is we "swamped" the Maoris, and the Aborigines and the Native Americans. We did more than "swamp". We stole their land. If countries belong to their indigenous populations, as you say, shouldn't we now give those lands back? "That colonisation of other countries was wrong, but I'm not going to let it happen to mine," he says.

We end up in a pub on the Goresbrook Road, where we drink beer outside in the sun. Have you seen Shane Meadows's film, This Is England, I ask Nick. "Yes," he says. And? "It wasn't particularly good. It was shallow propaganda." A black fella walks by with one of those old-fashioned, Victorian bulldogs. It's a lovely dog, if called Razor, so Terry and I get up to make a big fuss of it. "Great dog," says Terry, to the owner. "Cheers," says the owner. Terry, who would still be nameless if only he were, then says: "See? We're not so bad. We talk to darkies."

I think it's probably Blenheim next weekend. Leeds Castle is also said to be good.

Independent

On the front line of the war against the BNP

The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is at war. The next two weeks will determine whether the area becomes the jewel in the crown for the British National Party – a BNP-controlled council with command of a £200 million-a-year budget. And sometimes, as this week, the warfare becomes physical. Police were called to Barking town centre after a punch-up began during a BNP canvassing session. And there were angry scenes in Dagenham last week when anti-fascist campaigner Billy Bragg had a stand-up row with Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s London Assembly member.

But even Bragg, a Barking man by birth, has not grasped the seriousness of the situation according to one leading campaigner. “They think that a vote for the BNP is a way of lashing out against the local council”, Bragg said last week. Wrong, says Sam Tarry, organiser for the anti-fascist Hope not Hate campaign and a Labour council candidate in Dagenham. “That shame that used to exist about voting BNP is gone. It’s well beyond a protest now. The BNP have been gaining nationally for five or six years. I think the council is going to be very, very tight.”

The 2006 local elections saw 12 BNP councillors elected to Barking and Dagenham council, making them the biggest BNP council group in the country. According to campaign group Searchlight, the organisers behind Hope not Hate, the party only needs to swing six marginal council wards to gain control.

Away from the town hall, Barking Labour candidate and culture minister Margaret Hodge and Jon Cruddas in the new Dagenham and Rainham contituency seem quietly confident of their own electoral success. But a late BNP surge could yet see Cruddas (notional majority 6,581) unseated by his Conservative opponent. And in November, BNP leader Nick Griffin announced he was standing for Parliament in Barking. Griffin vowed to spend more than the party has ever spent on a constituency campaign: no idle threat, with he and his fellow MEP Andrew Brons now on the Brussels payroll. How much of a threat is he to Labour?

“Griffin’s not here to win a parliamentary seat – the council’s the real prize”, Tarry insists. “He’s here to take the heat off the councillors. Obviously our strategy is to bind those things together. Locally he’s seen as an outsider, someone coming to take advantage of the situation.”

When I arrive in Dagenham, Hope not Hate’s footsoldiers have been out in force at the weekend: 548 to be precise, a record number for any election campaign, delivering glossy leaflets and full-colour Hope not Hate tabloid newspapers. “We got the whole borough done. It was fantastic”, says an activist.

Labour’s big guns, too, are out in force, at least for Hodge. On the day I visit her North Street offices, David Blunkett has been and gone, deputy leader Harriet Harman and her predecessor John Prescott are planning a visit, and health minister Baroness Thornton has just dropped in for a cup of tea. The trainers on her feet prove she has been out canvassing.

“If people are going to support us, they are really going to support us,” she says, echoing some of Sam Tarry’s views. “There’s a strong Labour vote and quite a sizeable BNP vote.”

Indeed, she met some BNP voters today. How did she deal with them? “I said, look, these guys are Nazis! – I feel I’m old enough and mature enough – if it’s someone older I say, ‘did your father fight in the war? Do you want people who like Adolf Hitler running the borough?’”

For all the common cause they have, Searchlight and Labour do not always agree on how to fight the BNP. And neither do Hodge and Cruddas’ offices. Hodge’s profile dominates her literature in a “top of the ticket” strategy. Cruddas gets a more equal billing with his council candidates. Some privately think Hodge’s approach is not the best way to protect the council. But there is no doubting the Barking MP’s sheer hard work: she has pounded the pavements regularly every weekend for the past two years and is currently canvassing three times a day.

Darren Rodwell, Hodge’s campaign manager, is proud of what has been achieved. Three years ago, he says, only 7 per cent of the electorate were on Barking’s contacts database, compared to 54 per cent now. Would he stake his home on a Labour victory, I ask. “I’m as confident as I can be; I would never do anything that would risk my family”, he smiles, before admitting that, in any case, he would move out if the BNP won.

How the impressive efforts in Barking and Dagenham compare to the BNP’s own canvassing is hard to say: at the time of writing, my questions to them were unanswered. But the far-right party has not come from nowhere – its voting figures at general elections have grown steadily for nearly 20 years – and with two Brussels seats and the chance of a Westminster seat, it is certainly not going nowhere. Whether that continues depends on Barking and Dagenham.

Tribune

Met inquiry into BNP’s ‘dirty tricks’ against Margaret Hodge

Police are investigating the British National Party for allegedly running a dirty tricks campaign against a rival candidate.

The Met confirmed it was looking into claims the far-right party had lied in literature about Margaret Hodge, the Labour hopeful in Barking. BNP leader Nick Griffin is challenging the culture minister for the east London seat.

In a newsletter sent to residents, his party claimed Mrs Hodge had financial interests in a proposed new prison for Barking. It also carried a cartoon suggesting she was personally behind a ‘racist’ housing allocation. It also said a member of her staff hung up on an ex-soldier when he called her office.

Mrs Hodge said: ‘This is politics of the worst kind. Griffin creates a big lie, tells it often enough and it hopes it becomes a truth.’

Her lawyers have contacted the BNP over the claims. The BNP denies any wrong-doing. Meanwhile, Charlotte Lewis, a BNP candidate, defended as ‘hilarious’ pictures of her wearing a burka and fishnet stockings at a party.

Metro

One dark day with the BNP in Dagenham

Tanya Gold follows Nick Griffin, BNP leader, on the campaign trail against Margaret Hodge. And though his cronies are on hand, he doesn't get an easy ride

It is hot in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham. It feels like the first day of summer. And, in a park opposite Becontree tube station, BNP activists are gathering for their day of action. There are maybe 100 of them. Some are suited and booted, and some are in "Anglo-Saxon" T-shirts and tattoos, the very archetype of ex-National Front. Heartbreakingly, there are children here. As I stand, watching them muster, a small boy comes up to me. Where, he asks, can he get a BNP poster?

Nick Griffin is standing here against Margaret Hodge, the Labour Minister of State for Culture and Tourism (majority: 8,883). It is a stunt. But it is possible that Barking and Dagenham could soon have a BNP-controlled council. It is now the second largest party at local level with 15 seats and they aim to take absolute control; along with Stoke, this borough is the centre of BNP hopes. The BNP wants to reinforce its gains of 2009, when it took two seats in the European parliament and two county council seats. The anti-fascist organisation Searchlight is worried enough to have a permanent HQ here.

Before the muster, I spend an hour with Margaret Hodge, as she walks the empty streets. She is brisk and bossy. "Come back later," says one man, dragged out of bed, when Hodge wants to register him to vote. "No," she replies, "Let's do it now."

Hodge was born to Jewish parents and her maiden name is Oppenheimer. "He [Griffin] called me 'a Jew' a few years ago," she says. "I have been canvassing for 40 years, but this is the most important election I have ever fought."

A few minutes later, a black woman answers the door, holding a baby. Yes, she is voting Labour, she says. No, she won't put a poster in her window. "I am scared," she says.

I go to the Cherry Tree pub to wait for Griffin, who is giving a press conference. The drinkers come out to talk. They are all ex-Labour, now BNP. "It's housing, schools, hospitals and jobs, not colour," says one man. "I believed in Old Labour but not New Labour. They have failed in this borough."

"People have had enough," says a woman. "We are being pushed to the back of the queue. My son couldn't get into the school of his choice. He has no chance of a council house."

"You don't appreciate that our facilities are getting swamped," says another man. "If we vote BNP, people might start listening to us. Because we have been abandoned by our government."

I begin to sympathise with their grievances, because they are right – no council housing has been built here for 30 years. The rise of the BNP is one of Labour's greatest failures. But then comes the racist bile. "Go into a supermarket," says another man, "it's full of immigrants. Why?"

Griffin arrives at the Cherry Tree to give his set-piece speech in the car park. He has a driver/bodyguard dressed as a soldier. He is not a soldier. He is wearing the uniform, he says, "to show solidarity" with the troops in Afghanistan. This does not surprise me. There are plenty of fantasists and oddballs in the BNP leadership.

One parliamentary candidate told me his wife woke him up in bed because he was screaming: "I want to shoot myself in the head."

Another informs me that homosexuality "is an abomination. Buggerers will not inherit the earth."

We watch the new Griffin facing the cameras, polite, concerned, reasonable, a patriot. He denies he incites racism, "No, it is the Labour Party who have taken us into a racist war in Afghanistan." He claims his policies – "Voluntary resettlement" of legal immigrants, instant deportation of all others, withdrawal from the EU – "are what the British people want to hear." Where is the man who, just a few months ago, called mixed-race children "a tragedy?" The man who joined the National Front at 14?

Griffin gets into his car and we drive to Dagenham Broadway, where the BNP has erected its stall. We pass the BNP music bus, pulled over by the police for playing loud music. Griffin gets out and glad-hands; he seems to adore it. Reverend Robert West, the BNP candidate in Lincoln, shouts, "It is not racist to love your country!" as Pastor James Gitau, a black BNP supporter, stands next to him. Every time the Rev Mr West shouts a slogan, Gitau shouts, "Hallelujah!"

A young black girl stares on, astonished. A second black woman strides up to the black preacher, and berates him.

"Why are you holding this?" she shouts. "You are a black man. You should be ashamed." In response, Gitau waves his flag.

Outside Tesco's, Griffin finds some punters. "We are about putting British people first," he tells a spotty boy on a skateboard. "It's not about being white." Now some lads in England shirts arrive, holding pints of lager. "Are you going to do the job for us, Nick?" they ask. "I'm going to try," he replies. They man-hug and Griffin walks into a betting shop, to put £20 on himself to win this seat. "I got 4/1," he says, happily. So far, it is a street party, not a political party.

Then, quickly, it turns dark. A group of black women confront Griffin. "Do you see us as equals?" asks one. He pauses. "Yes, you are equal," he says. "Do you want us to get out of the country?" asks another black woman. "No, we just think the country is full," he replies. "These are my children," says a third, "and we work hard."

Griffin is trying to smile, but there are just too many black women shouting at him for his comfort. The grin melts and, seemingly as one, the BNP high command gets into their cars and drive off. They had stayed for only 20 minutes.

Griffin has, I learn, gone back to the Cherry Tree pub, where there is due to be a debate between all the parliamentary candidates in a private room. It is closed to all press and supporters except for Sky News, who will be broadcasting it. I arrive to find the gates to the car park locked, and a woman from Sky arguing with a Hodge employee. Margaret, he says, doesn't want to go into a BNP pub. But if she wants to debate, she must, "because no other venue would have Griffin". This is the mood in Barking and Dagenham.

I find Hodge a few doors away, outside her campaign headquarters, a brown, bare church. She is trying to find the Tory candidate's telephone number, so they can both pull out of the debate.

"That pub is BNP," she says, looking disgusted, "I don't want to walk through it." Having spent the day with them, I understand. With the BNP, menace is never far away, no matter how much they try to distance themselves from their fascist roots. They are, above all, a party of angry men.

“Margaret, it will be fine,” says her employee, “We’ll drive in.” Hodge squares her shoulders, gets into the car, and drives off. As I walk away, a black Labour supporter comes out of her house and waves at me. I tell her what the BNP supporters say – that they have been abandoned and that only the BNP understands their woes.

“The BNP councillors,” she says, “are nowhere to be seen here. They have the majority in this ward. What have they done?” She pauses. “The damage they will do [if they win the council],” she says, “to house prices, to investment, to race relations. The area will be tarnished for 20 years. It is not for me but for the children we are bringing up. We want them to learn to live together. I am old and I can shrug my shoulders. But the children…”

Telegraph

Billy Bragg: I’m fighting for England’s soul against BNP

Billy Bragg: musician, anti-fascist activist and now playwright

Billy Bragg “declared war” on the BNP today, and called the electoral battle for his home town of Barking a “fight for the soul of the English people”

Speaking before the premiere of his first play — the story of three generations of a white working-class family — he said he would be working to help Labour defeat the extreme Right in the east London seat.

The 52-year-old singer-songwriter, known as the Bard of Barking, has created Pressure Drop with writer Mick Gordon and On Theatre. Bragg will perform new music during the show at the Wellcome Collection in Euston Road. But between performances he will campaign in the seat where Labour MP Margaret Hodge faces a challenge from BNP leader Nick Griffin.

Bragg said the election was “critical” because of the economic situation, “but for the country that I love, for the patriotism that I feel, this fight in Barking and Dagenham is the most important fight since the war.” He said Labour had done much for the area: “They built houses, they built schools. There are improvements in education.”

But, he added, people felt powerless and ignored in the face of rapid change with significant immigration. “It's not racist to recognise that so many people coming to the borough puts incredible pressure on housing and health.

Everyone else in London benefits from multiculturalism and cheap labour but places like Barking and Dagenham suffer as a result.

“The answer isn't to round these people up and send them back. But there on our doorstep inequality has thrown up this situation that can be exploited by the fascists. It's going to be a fight for the soul of the English people.”

Meanwhile, the BNP is bidding to win Barking and Dagenham council. Bragg said: “They could do a lot of damage with a budget of £200 million. Imagine what they could do to housing and education.” He hopes Pressure Drop will raise awareness of residents' genuine worries: “The fact that people are being exploited by a man who questions the veracity of the Holocaust, in the form of Nick Griffin, doesn't mean the problems aren't worthy of being addressed. My concern is that if the BNP gets elected the borough becomes a kind of pariah.”

The play is entertainment, he said. “Entertaining is very important. But you can't change the world singing songs.” Mick Gordon began writing Pressure Drop after reading Bragg's book The Progressive Patriot. By coincidence, the Wellcome Collection was planning a season on identity and commissioned it as its first play.

* Pressure Drop runs from April 19 to May 12.

London Evening Standard

The ugly truth behind a BNP council

On Friday, May 7, Britain could wake up to its first British National Party-run council. The previous day many parts of the country will hold local elections - and the far-right party is in striking distance of winning control of Barking and Dagenham Council.

The BNP is already the official opposition there, with 12 councillors. Its leader, Nick Griffin, is standing in Barking in the general election.

"Our drive to take the council, well, that's the real prize. It really is," Griffin said earlier this year.

Last month, BNP councillor Bob Bailey said: "We are on the verge of making history by taking this council and Margaret Hodge's and Jon Cruddas' parliamentary seats."

What would a BNP council's policies be? What would it do on schools, on caring for the elderly and most vulnerable? How would it allocate a £200million annual budget? The shadow budget drawn up in Barking and Dagenham last year and the party's manifesto allow us to see how BNP policies would work.

Should it win in East London, its strategy is to set its sights on Stoke-on-Trent, which has similar elections next year. Barking and Dagenham would be the science lab to test these dogmatic ideas...

HOUSING
The BNP plans to take a new homes site identified by the council and use it instead to park 1,000 caravans as local authority housing. At just £1,000 each, these old caravans led local campaigners to dub this a "Steptoe & Son solution" to social housing. The site would be a potential eyesore with no facilities, nowhere for kids to play and no substitute for real homes for some of the most vulnerable.

Under BNP policy, social housing - and caravans - would go to "UK citizens only", leaving vulnerable people to sleep on the streets.

CARE
Social work professionals say the best place for children in care is with foster families, but the BNP differs. It wants to take the several hundred children in care in Barking and put them into boarding school. While some children do still live in care homes in Britain, there are rarely more than eight per home.

The BNP's proposals would mean a return to Victorian-style "workfare", their alternative to welfare.

TEEN MUMS
The BNP plans to build an institution in Barking & Dagenham for all mothers under 21 to live in, with single mothers and babies taken into care. Failure to comply with the homes rules could result in the mother being sent to prison and the baby being taken into to care.

COMMUNITIES
The Corporate Grants Programme, which would affect 27 organisations including Victim Support, Relate and the Volunteer Bureau, all of which provide vital community services, would be halved by the BNP.

Bob Bailey, leader of the council's BNP group, calls the arrival of people from ethnic minorities into Barking and Dagenham "genocidal". He says the BNP would cut the "PC madness" of translation services, where one of the key groups of people to be affected would be blind people who require translation to and from Braille.

POVERTY
Bob Bailey claims that "only by voting for the BNP and electing a BNP council will the elderly and poor have a real champion in this chamber". Yet nationally the party supports the Tories in raising the inheritance tax threshold to £1million and it wants to cut "personal taxes".

SCHOOLS
One of the areas the BNP has earmarked for cuts is the Building Schools for the Future programme. This would delay much-needed work on all the borough's secondary schools. National policy is to scrap GCSEs for O levels and to cut the Talented and Gifted Young People programme.

EDUCATION
In its 2009 county council election manifesto the BNP says mixing white and non-white children is "destroying perfectly good local secondary schools". It adds that schools are "riddled with tension between pupils from an Islamic background and everyone else". This is despite the fact that schools in Barking and Dagenham recently received their best ever performance rating as most improved in Outer London.

BNP deputy chairman Simon Darby has called integrated schools "political paedophilia". The BNP would prefer to segregate children in an apartheid system, so that children from other ethnic backgrounds are taught separately - leading to a divided community, destroying children's friendships, and setting up ethnic tension in the future.

The party also wants all children with special needs to be taken out of the mainstream and put into special schools.

COUNCIL TAX
The BNP plans to cut council tax to "among the lowest of any London borough" in five years, yet its proposals cost almost £1million above existing spending. Its savings would be £18.6million, while its proposals cost £19.5million. Leader of the BNP group, Bob Bailey, says Labour relies on council tax for "loony left PC projects". But in the wake of a global recession tax cuts could severely impact on the poorest in society.

LOCAL EVENTS
The BNP would get rid of the popular Dagenham Town Show, slashing the events budget and ending opportunities for local families to have a free weekend out every July.

SPORT
In Barking and Dagenham, the BNP voted against congratulating British athletes on their success at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It does not consider athletes such as Amir Khan and Kelly Holmes to be British, and previously held a policy of supporting Denmark - and not England - in a World Cup as the only all-white team.

The party also opposed grants to local sports clubs including Barking Rugby Club and Dagenham and Redbridge Football Club, who between them coach hundreds of local children every weekend. Instead they suggested spending £50,000 on fixing up the town hall so they could webcast meetings.

KNIFE CRIME
The party likes to talk up knife crime in Barking and Dagenham. In September 2008, Richard Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London Assembly, broadcast a video blog about two murders in Barking that never actually happened. He was censured for his deliberate scare tactic. Yet when the council launched a campaign to ask the Government for stronger powers to deal with shops that sell knives to children, the BNP opposed it.

ENVIRONMENT
The BNP claims to be the "only truly environmental party unlike the fake 'Greens' who are merely a front for the far left of the Labour regime". Yet the party would end the building of wind turbines in Barking and Dagenham - London's first wind farm - and opposes "climate change dogma".

Mirror

Black churches not welcome in white areas, says BNP leader

Black churches would not be welcome or receive grants from a BNP local or national government if their ministry and place of worship were to be in a “historically white area”, BNP leader Nick Griffin admitted on live TV last night.

Mr Griffin aired his views in a controversial live debate with the leader of the Christian Party and British-born, black pastor Rev George Hargreaves on Revelation and Genesis TV. Both men are standing against Labour Minister Margaret Hodge for the Barking constituency in the up-coming general election. The two were debating the motion: “That the election of any BNP MP or leader of a Local Authority will be detrimental to Black and ethnic minority Christians in particular and the wider church in general in Britain."

Mr Griffin revealed that his understanding of Christian heritage was one of "national pride and history", rather than a personal and corporate dedication to Jesus Christ. When asked about his own relationship with God, he stated his relationship was not so much with Jesus, but rather with an ideal of what the Anglican church as the 'state church' should be. When asked if the BNP would allow black churches to purchase building in certain areas of London, Mr Griffin made it clear that any church composed primarily of ethnic groups would be disallowed in historically white majority areas, and forced to conduct their worship in areas deemed suitable by a white political leadership.

Rev Hargreaves said: “BNP policy is to oppose the community cohesion that would allow non-Christians to hear the Gospel at, say, Christian school assemblies. Most alarming for Christians and churches, is their policy on ‘eliminating multiculturalism spending’. Their policy is to overhaul the Charity Commission and debar from having charitable status any organisation that promotes multiculturalism, multi-racism and foreign religions, in fact, only ‘indigenous groups’ are welcome and would receive funding."

The current BNP Mission Statement states: "The British National Party exists to secure a future for the indigenous peoples of these islands in the North Atlantic which have been our homeland for a millennia."

Revd Hargreaves added: “This statement means that the BNP does not exist for my future any other Black or ethnic minority Christian. And since in Christ racial division are demolished – “for there is neither Greek nor Jew, but all are one in Christ Jesus”– the BNP does not exist for the wider church. Last night’s debate clearly shows that the election of any BNP MP or leader of a local authority will be detrimental to black and ethnic minority Christians in particular and the wider church in general in Britain’."

Christian Today

The People exposes BNP member sham

The British National Party's boast that it's changed its rules to let non-whites join is today exposed as a sickening sham.

A senior figure in the far-right party openly told a British Asian reporter posing as a wannabe supporter he would not be welcome. Yet only weeks earlier, the BNP voted to end its ban on non-whites, with leader Nick Griffin bragging: "We are happy to accept anyone as a member providing they agree this country should remain fundamentally British."

Our reporter tried to join the BNP's branch in Barking, London - the party's heartland where Griffin plans to stand against Labour MP Margaret Hodge in the next General Election. But Christine Knight, 60 - one of a dozen BNP councillors for the borough of Barking and Dagenham - left him in no doubt about the party's real attitude to non-whites.

Knight, a close ally of BNP Greater London Authority member Richard Barnbrook, told him: "The constitution may have changed but our core members would have a problem with you." And making no attempt to hide the BNP's vile views, she said: "You are for your people and I'm for mine. You're saying you're British but you are still siding with people who are not indigenous to the country. People can say I'm a racist for saying it but it's my opinion."

During a half-hour hate-filled rant she even claimed she could not get state benefits because she was "the wrong colour". Knight - whose dad was an immigrant from Ireland - said: "I'm British, my parents were, my grandparents were, their parents were and my parents' parents' parents were. I'm trying to point out that things that we've paid out for thousands of years don't go to us any more."

She added: "My father came over here and joined the Army. My husband was born and bred here. But it's going to change - we'll be ethnic minorities in our own country."

The BNP decided to rewrite its constitution after being warned it broke discrimination laws. After the party voted for the change, Griffin said he expected a "trickle rather than a flood" of applications from blacks and Asians. The whites-only policy had been in force since the party was formed in 1982. It was challenged in the High Court by the Equality and Human Rights Commission last year and judges are due to rule on the case next week.

Griffin - who caused outrage when he appeared on BBC1's Question Time show in October - took over as BNP leader in 1999 and has since tried to tone down the party's fascist image. But he has been accused of choosing Barking to fight the next election as a way of deliberately exploiting local fears about immigration. Barking has more BNP councillors than anywhere else. And more than 40 per cent of voters backed them in wards contested by the racist party at the last local elections - compared with a Labour average of just 33 per cent.

Following The People's confrontation with Christine Knight, a BNP spokesman said last night: "As Britain's fourth biggest political party it's inevitable members will hold differing viewpoints. Should our new constitution be accepted by the High Court on Tuesday, membership will be open to all who support the policies and principles of the British National Party."

The People