An Italian university closed one of its campuses for the day Friday to prevent a planned lecture by a retired French professor who denies gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps.
Robert Faurisson, who has been convicted five times in France for denying crimes against humanity, had been expected to speak at a local hotel instead but that conference too was later canceled after scuffles with protesters.
Faurisson had been invited to give a lecture at the University of Teramo, in central Italy, by Claudio Moffa, a professor of Asian and African history and director of a master's program in Middle East studies.
Police in Teramo said both Moffa and Faurisson had to be escorted out of a cafe where they were having a small press conference on Friday after a group of about 100 people staged a lively protest in the street, shouting insults at them.
Moffa was also pushed by a protester, said police official Mimmo De Carolis. When reached by telephone, Moffa said the lecture had been canceled because of the attack but gave no other details.
The University of Teramo had cited security fears surrounding the lecture in announcing the closure of its campus housing the law, political sciences and communications departments. "(There is) a climate of tension which could put in danger the safety of the students," the university said in a statement.
Faurisson has caused outrage in France, arguing for a decade against evidence that Nazi Germany systematically destroyed the Jews. He maintains that no gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
The university administration had issued an official warning to Moffa to cancel the invitation, arguing that Faurisson's qualifications were "absolutely inadequate and don't deserve academic legitimation."
Moffa had cited his right to teach freely in defending his invitation to Faurisson.
"I want to specify that I am not a denier, but I think it is fair to allow a free debate and different interpretations of historical events," Moffa wrote on his Web site.
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center had urged the university to cancel the event.
"To welcome Faurisson is an embarrassment to Italian academia, offends the families of Italian martyrs who fell in fighting the scourge of fascism ... and encourages a perverse propaganda to incite a new generation to anti-Semitism and racist doctrine," the center said in a statement.
Last year, Faurisson took part in a conference in Iran, which gathered some of the most well-known U.S. and European Holocaust deniers, to debate whether the World War II genocide of Jews took place.
The gathering touched off a firestorm of indignation across the world and particularly in Europe, where many countries have made it a crime to publicly disavow the Nazis' systematic extermination of 6 million Jews.
International Herald Tribune
May 18, 2007
Blackburn taxi driver’s racist ordeal
A taxi driver was subjected to a frightening racist ordeal by a passenger who made a grab for him as he drove down the road.
Mumtaz Khan was abused by Steven Ashe who also ripped off his identity badge and put an arm around his neck. A judge described the incident as disgraceful when he sentenced 34-year-old Ashe to 12 months' supervision.
The defendant, of Christ Church Street, Preston, had denied an offence of racially aggravated common assault, but was convicted by magistrates and committed to Preston Crown Court for sentence.
Mr Khan, a driver for Intack Private hire in Blackburn, picked up three people near the Lotus garage in Rishton. He said the fare for drop-offs in Preston and Blackpool would be £40 to £45 and asked for the money up front. Ashe gave him £30 and said he would pay the rest later. During the journey Mr Khan could see Ashe looking at him in his mirror. Ashe said: "Don't give me evils or I'll rip your eyes out."
He insinuated that the driver was an illegal immigrant and added: "You aren't a proper taxi driver. Let me see your badge."
He ripped the badge off Mr Khan who gave him his money back and turned the vehicle around to go to the police station. Ashe then put his right arm around Mr Khan's neck to try and strangle him. He later took the keys from the ignition and threw them into a grass verge.
Judge Robert Brown said it had been disgraceful conduct. He told Ashe: "He could clearly have lost control and caused damage to yourselves or anyone else who was on the road at the time". Ashe was ordered to pay Mr Khan £200 compensation.
Blackburn Citizen
Mumtaz Khan was abused by Steven Ashe who also ripped off his identity badge and put an arm around his neck. A judge described the incident as disgraceful when he sentenced 34-year-old Ashe to 12 months' supervision.
The defendant, of Christ Church Street, Preston, had denied an offence of racially aggravated common assault, but was convicted by magistrates and committed to Preston Crown Court for sentence.
Mr Khan, a driver for Intack Private hire in Blackburn, picked up three people near the Lotus garage in Rishton. He said the fare for drop-offs in Preston and Blackpool would be £40 to £45 and asked for the money up front. Ashe gave him £30 and said he would pay the rest later. During the journey Mr Khan could see Ashe looking at him in his mirror. Ashe said: "Don't give me evils or I'll rip your eyes out."
He insinuated that the driver was an illegal immigrant and added: "You aren't a proper taxi driver. Let me see your badge."
He ripped the badge off Mr Khan who gave him his money back and turned the vehicle around to go to the police station. Ashe then put his right arm around Mr Khan's neck to try and strangle him. He later took the keys from the ignition and threw them into a grass verge.
Judge Robert Brown said it had been disgraceful conduct. He told Ashe: "He could clearly have lost control and caused damage to yourselves or anyone else who was on the road at the time". Ashe was ordered to pay Mr Khan £200 compensation.
Blackburn Citizen
From a vast Nazi archive, a panorama of misery in newly liberated Europe
Looking back at the first weeks after World War II, a French lieutenant named Henri Francois-Poncet despaired at ever fulfilling his mission to establish the fate of French inmates of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
For the living skeletons who survived the Nazi terror, the Displaced Persons camp set up two miles (three kilometers) away offered little relief from misery.
People still died at the rate of 1,000 to 1,500 a day. Corpses were stacked in front of barracks, to be carted away by captured SS guards. "Bodies frequently remained for several days in the huts, the other inmates being too weak to carry them out," Francois-Poncet wrote in a report for the Allied Military Government.
"As most of the survivors could not even give their own names, it was useless trying to obtain information as to the identity of the dead," he wrote. He reported a meager 25 percent success rate.
When the Third Reich surrendered in May 1945, 8 million people were left uprooted around Europe. Millions drifted through the 2,500 hastily arranged DP camps before they were repatriated.
A bleak picture springs with stark immediacy from typewritten reports by the Allied officers, found in the massive archive of the International Tracing Service in the central German town of Bad Arolsen. The Associated Press has been given extensive access to the archive on condition that identities of victims and refugees are protected.
Far from scenes of joyful liberation that should have greeted the end of Nazi oppression, the files reveal desperation, loss and confusion, and overwhelmed and often insensitive military authorities.
Many had nowhere to go, their families among the 6 million Jews consumed in the Holocaust, their homes destroyed or handed out to new occupants. Those who wanted to get to Palestine were shut out by a British ban on Jewish immigration to the Israeli state-in-waiting.
"Owing to ill treatment by the Germans, most DPs have a distrust and fear of the Allied authorities," said a September 1945 report signed by British Lt. Col. C.C. Allan. "Many DPs have sunk into complete apathy regarding their future."
Liberated concentration camps were transformed into DP camps. Food was still scarce — often just coffee and wet black bread — and medical care was insufficient, said a report written for President Harry Truman.
Inmates were kept under armed guard to maintain order. They still wore their old striped, pajama-like concentration-camp-issue uniforms and slept in the same drafty barracks through a bitter winter.
Compounding their misery, they could watch through barbed wire fences and see German villagers living normal lives. In some places, those villagers were forced to tour the camps and help with the burials or at least face up to what their Fuehrer had wrought. But it was scant comfort to the victims.
"As things stand now, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we do not exterminate them," wrote presidential envoy Earl G. Harrison in his famously quoted report to Truman after visiting that summer.
Known for its unparalleled collection of original concentration camp papers, the ITS, a branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, also safeguards the world's largest documentation on postwar DP camps. It has nearly 3.4 million names on its card index of those who sought designation as refugees eligible for aid.
Until now, the documents have been used only to trace missing people and verify restitution claims. But now the full breadth of the archive, filling 16 miles (25 kilometers) of shelf space, is to be opened to historians for the first time. At a meeting last week in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the archive's 11-nation supervisory commission agreed to begin transferring electronic copies this autumn to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Within weeks after the war, U.N. agencies and volunteer charities took over the DP camps, processing applications for relief and emigration. By 1947, a quarter million Jews — a piteous remnant of European Jewry — shared space with displaced Eastern Europeans fearful of return to what was now the Soviet bloc.
Also among the DPs were ex-Nazis.
Adam Friedrich's 1949 application to the International Refugee Organization to join relatives in St. Louis, acknowledges that for three years he belonged to the Waffen SS, the combat arm of Hitler's dreaded paramilitary organization. He also noted he had been imprisoned for 20 months after the war.
An IRO official scribbled on his form, "The applicant was forced to report to the SS in Jan. '42. Served in the infantry and took part in fighting."
Friedrich was rejected.
But U.S. authorities did not have that information four years later when he applied again through the U.S. Refugee Relief Act. Then, Friedrich reported he had been in the German army but said nothing about his SS service.
Decades after he obtained citizenship, the U.S. Justice Department uncovered Friedrich's past. He was stripped of his citizenship in 2004, lost a Supreme Court appeal, and was due to be deported when he died last July.
At Bad Arolsen, questionnaires and affidavits are stuffed into 400,000 envelopes which, including families, refer to 850,000 displaced people, and fill binders spreading over several rooms of floor-to-ceiling shelves.
The last DP camps were closed in 1953, so "When you feel the paper tug as you try to pull it out, that means no one has opened it for 40 or 50 years," said Rudolf Michalke, head of the archive's postwar section.
Some files contain detailed histories of survivors and the tortures they endured. Refugees relate their futile struggle to resettle after the war, and their hopes of rebuilding their lives far from Europe.
An Austrian pastry chef recounts the hostility he found when he returned to Vienna. "Given the large and increasingly negative climate against Jews, I have not been able to get a job and am forced to emigrate," he testified, seeking passage to Australia.
Others describe their tormentors, hoping they will be prosecuted.
A Polish Jew writes about "Workmaster Batenszlajer," one of about a dozen guards he named as particularly cruel.
"He made selections. Those who lost their strength because they were exhausted and looked bad were picked out and shot down," he wrote. Batenszlajer would pick four girls at a time and hold them for several days. "He raped them and afterward he took them into a wood and shot them down."
In a world where racism was rampant, finding a new home was not easy, as one Yugoslav-born man with Asian features learned. "Being a Kalmyk of Mongolian race, (he) is ineligible for most Anglo-Saxon countries," authorities scrawled on his form.
"The doors are closed to unmarried mothers," said a note from strongly Catholic Ireland.
Lining up employment in a new country was critical for obtaining a visa. Yugoslav-born Nikolai Davidovic, a mathematics professor who spoke seven languages and authored two textbooks, left for America in 1950 with his wife Larissa — but only after she had been promised a job as a maid.
Friedrich was not the only war criminal to slip through the screening process. Dieter Pohl, of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, estimates that up to 250,000 Germans and Austrians had participated in the Holocaust, but only 5 to 10 percent were ever punished — most of them in the Soviet zone. Altogether, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people committed crimes against humanity, he said.
But no one knew who the perpetrators were. "More than 90 percent of files on Nazi war crimes were destroyed," Pohl said in a telephone interview.
The U.S. zeal in pursuing former Nazis came late. In the war's aftermath, the Americans were more concerned about the looming threat from Stalin's Soviet Union.
In 1979, the Justice Department created the Office of Special Investigations to pursue ex-Nazis who committed visa fraud by lying about their past. Since then, it has won 104 prosecutions and denied entry at the U.S. border to 175 people from its watch list of 70,000 suspected persecutors.
"We are still very busy with World War II cases," said OSI director Eli Rosenbaum. "We have always routinely checked Arolsen's DP holdings when we've been investigating someone," he told the AP.
But the ITS files are far from complete, and unlike Friedrich, most former SS members concealed their crimes with lies or half-truths.
John Demjanjuk, a Ukranian-born camp guard who became an auto worker in Cleveland, reported in his refugee papers, seen in Bad Arolsen, that he had been a "worker" in Sobibor. Although Sobibor later became infamous as a death camp in occupied Poland, few people had heard of it after the war because it had been dismantled in 1943. Demjanjuk was awarded DP status.
In 1977, the U.S. government moved to revoke his citizenship, misidentifying him as "Ivan the Terrible," a notorious guard at Treblinka extermination camp. He was extradited to Israel, tried and sentenced to death in 1988. The sentence was overturned on appeal and Demjanjuk returned to the U.S., where his citizenship was restored — only to be taken from him again for concealing his work for the Nazis. He is now fighting deportation.
The file on Valerian Trifa, who became the U.S. archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox church and who once gave the opening prayer for the U.S. Senate, sheds light on the deceptions he deployed to win a ticket to the U.S.
Trifa, a leader of Romania's fascist Iron Guard, told refugee officials he had been interned in Dachau and Buchenwald, but he said nothing about the privileges or protection he received from the Germans, according to Paul Shapiro, who investigated the Trifa case in the late 1970s for the Justice Department. Shapiro is now director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Shapiro saw Trifa's file at ITS for the first time when he visited Bad Arolsen last year with an AP reporter. "I knew the facts that are in here, except for the manner in which he was treated in terms of his Displaced Persons status," he said, flipping through aging pages in the manila folder. "It's quite shocking when you actually see it."
Trifa relinquished his citizenship in 1980 after it was discovered he gave a speech in 1941 in Bucharest that unleashed a pogrom in which more than 150 Romanian Jews were killed. He left the United States in 1984 for Portugal, where he died three years later.
"To see someone receiving citizenship based on lies is not a great thing," Shapiro said. "If this stuff had been available then (in the 1970s), his case would have been resolved earlier. He would have lived fewer years in the United States."
International Herald Tribune
For the living skeletons who survived the Nazi terror, the Displaced Persons camp set up two miles (three kilometers) away offered little relief from misery.
People still died at the rate of 1,000 to 1,500 a day. Corpses were stacked in front of barracks, to be carted away by captured SS guards. "Bodies frequently remained for several days in the huts, the other inmates being too weak to carry them out," Francois-Poncet wrote in a report for the Allied Military Government.
"As most of the survivors could not even give their own names, it was useless trying to obtain information as to the identity of the dead," he wrote. He reported a meager 25 percent success rate.
When the Third Reich surrendered in May 1945, 8 million people were left uprooted around Europe. Millions drifted through the 2,500 hastily arranged DP camps before they were repatriated.
A bleak picture springs with stark immediacy from typewritten reports by the Allied officers, found in the massive archive of the International Tracing Service in the central German town of Bad Arolsen. The Associated Press has been given extensive access to the archive on condition that identities of victims and refugees are protected.
Far from scenes of joyful liberation that should have greeted the end of Nazi oppression, the files reveal desperation, loss and confusion, and overwhelmed and often insensitive military authorities.
Many had nowhere to go, their families among the 6 million Jews consumed in the Holocaust, their homes destroyed or handed out to new occupants. Those who wanted to get to Palestine were shut out by a British ban on Jewish immigration to the Israeli state-in-waiting.
"Owing to ill treatment by the Germans, most DPs have a distrust and fear of the Allied authorities," said a September 1945 report signed by British Lt. Col. C.C. Allan. "Many DPs have sunk into complete apathy regarding their future."
Liberated concentration camps were transformed into DP camps. Food was still scarce — often just coffee and wet black bread — and medical care was insufficient, said a report written for President Harry Truman.
Inmates were kept under armed guard to maintain order. They still wore their old striped, pajama-like concentration-camp-issue uniforms and slept in the same drafty barracks through a bitter winter.
Compounding their misery, they could watch through barbed wire fences and see German villagers living normal lives. In some places, those villagers were forced to tour the camps and help with the burials or at least face up to what their Fuehrer had wrought. But it was scant comfort to the victims.
"As things stand now, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we do not exterminate them," wrote presidential envoy Earl G. Harrison in his famously quoted report to Truman after visiting that summer.
Known for its unparalleled collection of original concentration camp papers, the ITS, a branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, also safeguards the world's largest documentation on postwar DP camps. It has nearly 3.4 million names on its card index of those who sought designation as refugees eligible for aid.
Until now, the documents have been used only to trace missing people and verify restitution claims. But now the full breadth of the archive, filling 16 miles (25 kilometers) of shelf space, is to be opened to historians for the first time. At a meeting last week in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the archive's 11-nation supervisory commission agreed to begin transferring electronic copies this autumn to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Within weeks after the war, U.N. agencies and volunteer charities took over the DP camps, processing applications for relief and emigration. By 1947, a quarter million Jews — a piteous remnant of European Jewry — shared space with displaced Eastern Europeans fearful of return to what was now the Soviet bloc.
Also among the DPs were ex-Nazis.
Adam Friedrich's 1949 application to the International Refugee Organization to join relatives in St. Louis, acknowledges that for three years he belonged to the Waffen SS, the combat arm of Hitler's dreaded paramilitary organization. He also noted he had been imprisoned for 20 months after the war.
An IRO official scribbled on his form, "The applicant was forced to report to the SS in Jan. '42. Served in the infantry and took part in fighting."
Friedrich was rejected.
But U.S. authorities did not have that information four years later when he applied again through the U.S. Refugee Relief Act. Then, Friedrich reported he had been in the German army but said nothing about his SS service.
Decades after he obtained citizenship, the U.S. Justice Department uncovered Friedrich's past. He was stripped of his citizenship in 2004, lost a Supreme Court appeal, and was due to be deported when he died last July.
At Bad Arolsen, questionnaires and affidavits are stuffed into 400,000 envelopes which, including families, refer to 850,000 displaced people, and fill binders spreading over several rooms of floor-to-ceiling shelves.
The last DP camps were closed in 1953, so "When you feel the paper tug as you try to pull it out, that means no one has opened it for 40 or 50 years," said Rudolf Michalke, head of the archive's postwar section.
Some files contain detailed histories of survivors and the tortures they endured. Refugees relate their futile struggle to resettle after the war, and their hopes of rebuilding their lives far from Europe.
An Austrian pastry chef recounts the hostility he found when he returned to Vienna. "Given the large and increasingly negative climate against Jews, I have not been able to get a job and am forced to emigrate," he testified, seeking passage to Australia.
Others describe their tormentors, hoping they will be prosecuted.
A Polish Jew writes about "Workmaster Batenszlajer," one of about a dozen guards he named as particularly cruel.
"He made selections. Those who lost their strength because they were exhausted and looked bad were picked out and shot down," he wrote. Batenszlajer would pick four girls at a time and hold them for several days. "He raped them and afterward he took them into a wood and shot them down."
In a world where racism was rampant, finding a new home was not easy, as one Yugoslav-born man with Asian features learned. "Being a Kalmyk of Mongolian race, (he) is ineligible for most Anglo-Saxon countries," authorities scrawled on his form.
"The doors are closed to unmarried mothers," said a note from strongly Catholic Ireland.
Lining up employment in a new country was critical for obtaining a visa. Yugoslav-born Nikolai Davidovic, a mathematics professor who spoke seven languages and authored two textbooks, left for America in 1950 with his wife Larissa — but only after she had been promised a job as a maid.
Friedrich was not the only war criminal to slip through the screening process. Dieter Pohl, of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, estimates that up to 250,000 Germans and Austrians had participated in the Holocaust, but only 5 to 10 percent were ever punished — most of them in the Soviet zone. Altogether, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people committed crimes against humanity, he said.
But no one knew who the perpetrators were. "More than 90 percent of files on Nazi war crimes were destroyed," Pohl said in a telephone interview.
The U.S. zeal in pursuing former Nazis came late. In the war's aftermath, the Americans were more concerned about the looming threat from Stalin's Soviet Union.
In 1979, the Justice Department created the Office of Special Investigations to pursue ex-Nazis who committed visa fraud by lying about their past. Since then, it has won 104 prosecutions and denied entry at the U.S. border to 175 people from its watch list of 70,000 suspected persecutors.
"We are still very busy with World War II cases," said OSI director Eli Rosenbaum. "We have always routinely checked Arolsen's DP holdings when we've been investigating someone," he told the AP.
But the ITS files are far from complete, and unlike Friedrich, most former SS members concealed their crimes with lies or half-truths.
John Demjanjuk, a Ukranian-born camp guard who became an auto worker in Cleveland, reported in his refugee papers, seen in Bad Arolsen, that he had been a "worker" in Sobibor. Although Sobibor later became infamous as a death camp in occupied Poland, few people had heard of it after the war because it had been dismantled in 1943. Demjanjuk was awarded DP status.
In 1977, the U.S. government moved to revoke his citizenship, misidentifying him as "Ivan the Terrible," a notorious guard at Treblinka extermination camp. He was extradited to Israel, tried and sentenced to death in 1988. The sentence was overturned on appeal and Demjanjuk returned to the U.S., where his citizenship was restored — only to be taken from him again for concealing his work for the Nazis. He is now fighting deportation.
The file on Valerian Trifa, who became the U.S. archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox church and who once gave the opening prayer for the U.S. Senate, sheds light on the deceptions he deployed to win a ticket to the U.S.
Trifa, a leader of Romania's fascist Iron Guard, told refugee officials he had been interned in Dachau and Buchenwald, but he said nothing about the privileges or protection he received from the Germans, according to Paul Shapiro, who investigated the Trifa case in the late 1970s for the Justice Department. Shapiro is now director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Shapiro saw Trifa's file at ITS for the first time when he visited Bad Arolsen last year with an AP reporter. "I knew the facts that are in here, except for the manner in which he was treated in terms of his Displaced Persons status," he said, flipping through aging pages in the manila folder. "It's quite shocking when you actually see it."
Trifa relinquished his citizenship in 1980 after it was discovered he gave a speech in 1941 in Bucharest that unleashed a pogrom in which more than 150 Romanian Jews were killed. He left the United States in 1984 for Portugal, where he died three years later.
"To see someone receiving citizenship based on lies is not a great thing," Shapiro said. "If this stuff had been available then (in the 1970s), his case would have been resolved earlier. He would have lived fewer years in the United States."
International Herald Tribune
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Concern over party's 'Help in Hand' plan
Concerns have been raised by charities after the British National Party unveiled a plan to help elderly people in their homes.
The Help in Hand project for Corsham was launched by the far-right party this week with the aim of assisting the elderly with difficult tasks around the home. Age Concern Wiltshire operates similar schemes across the county and spokesperson Penny Church said there were several key criteria people entering the homes of the elderly should fulfil.
Mrs Church said: "Any scheme such as the project the BNP is suggesting should be made available across the whole community without restriction. Anyone visiting the homes of the elderly must have undergone a personal check by the Criminal Records Bureau. Those people must be made aware of the issues affecting vulnerable and elderly people and there must be a support network in place to support those people."
Adverts for the new service say BNP representatives will only visit at the request of home owners, but the North Wiltshire Care and Repair organisation has expressed concerns regarding anyone with a political agenda entering the homes of the elderly.
Project manager Becky Bell said Care and Repair only employed people who had undergone checks for criminal records and who had been insured for the tasks asked of them.
Mrs Bell said: "If I was advising elderly and disabled people on what to do to get help in the home, I would tell them to go to a recognised organisation such as Age Concern or ourselves. I would never allow anybody into my home that had not been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau and had not been validated by an official body."
BNP Corsham town councillor Michael Simpkins confirmed the service would be rolled out across Corsham this week and said it would be available to anybody in the community in need. Cllr Simpkins said most of those people taking part in the visits had been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau as part of their everyday employment. He added: "The people we will send around will be vetted and known to us."
Bath Chronicle
The Help in Hand project for Corsham was launched by the far-right party this week with the aim of assisting the elderly with difficult tasks around the home. Age Concern Wiltshire operates similar schemes across the county and spokesperson Penny Church said there were several key criteria people entering the homes of the elderly should fulfil.
Mrs Church said: "Any scheme such as the project the BNP is suggesting should be made available across the whole community without restriction. Anyone visiting the homes of the elderly must have undergone a personal check by the Criminal Records Bureau. Those people must be made aware of the issues affecting vulnerable and elderly people and there must be a support network in place to support those people."
Adverts for the new service say BNP representatives will only visit at the request of home owners, but the North Wiltshire Care and Repair organisation has expressed concerns regarding anyone with a political agenda entering the homes of the elderly.
Project manager Becky Bell said Care and Repair only employed people who had undergone checks for criminal records and who had been insured for the tasks asked of them.
Mrs Bell said: "If I was advising elderly and disabled people on what to do to get help in the home, I would tell them to go to a recognised organisation such as Age Concern or ourselves. I would never allow anybody into my home that had not been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau and had not been validated by an official body."
BNP Corsham town councillor Michael Simpkins confirmed the service would be rolled out across Corsham this week and said it would be available to anybody in the community in need. Cllr Simpkins said most of those people taking part in the visits had been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau as part of their everyday employment. He added: "The people we will send around will be vetted and known to us."
Bath Chronicle
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May 17, 2007
How many lies can you tell in a week? The BNP aims for the world record...
Well over a week after the non-aligned Independent councillor for Longton North (Stoke) Mark Leat decided he no longer wanted to represent the British National Party, the party issued a statement to The Sentinel, his local paper, to the effect that Leat had been thrown out for being idle.As much as we hate to defend anyone with any connection to the BNP, this is simply not true. Not even BNP supporters believe the statement - the usually supportive Stormfront nazi forum has several wry comments about this poor attempt to save face, including this one; 'Ah, the usual botched "cover story" from the Griffinites. They can't even get that out in good time, Leat has been listed as "non-aligned" on the council website for the best part of two weeks already!'
The BNP's idiotic Young BNP leader Danny Lake then tried to bullshit the world with a bizarre report on Nick Griffin's visit to Bath.
You may recall that Lake tried to get Griffin in as an official speaker at the university but the Holocaust-denying leader of the party was denied permission to speak following protests from numerous anti-fascist individuals and organisations. Lake, in desperation, booked him into a local pub - misleading the landlord as to who the meeting was for and what it was about. Searchlight rang and told the landlord and he promptly cancelled the meeting, saying; 'A young man visited me the night before and asked if he could book a room. It was a very casual arrangement. The moment Searchlight rang to tell me who was behind it, I opted to stop it. I feel that I have been hoodwinked into holding this talk.'
Lake's version is different. He claimed in his report on the BNP's web page; 'They then, true to form, proceeded to scare the proprietor into cancelling the event' though confusingly he then went on to say; 'I was promptly told by the proprietor that the event would not be going ahead as he has a largely student and multi-ethnic clientele and was not prepared for his business to suffer as a result of allowing us to continue.'
Lake fits right into the BNP mould - a liar through and through. He should do well in the party. Griffin was eventually reduced to talking to four students for ten minutes while twenty protestors made themselves heard nearby.
In one last blast of confusion, Lake drones on about free speech and democracy in his piece on the BNP's page, ending with; 'At the start of the next academic year...I will be hoping to force the university into allowing Nick to speak to a proper audience on the Bath University campus itself. So much for democracy then.
The latest little lie-fest from the BNP appears as a result of a neat little expose by the Bath Chronicle, which revealed that Mike Howson, the BNP's regional organiser for the mid-west and former council candidate for the party, who is one of the people responsible for the BNP's ludicrous vigilante group (sorry, 'community patrol') in Corsham and who is also an apparently highly-regarded air cadet youth leader, has a web site littered with 'white pride' and 'white nationalist' videos, some of which have swastikas prominently placed on them.
One of the films added by Howson included text promoting white nationalists as 'ordinary white people who want to protect themselves from being mugged by multi-culturalism and raped by multi-racialism'. Another depicted a police officer being attacked on a public highway, images of the Israeli flag pierced by a dagger, American President George Bush taking a bite out of the neck of the Statue of Liberty and messages saying 'wake up, white people'. Howson's site is also linked to information about a group known as Unite Against Anti-White Racism.
Howson, remaining pretty casual about the whole thing, told the Chronicle that his Bebo [similar to MySpace] site was an information portal and if internet users did not like the content they did not have to watch it. 'My Bebo site is a private site and people on that site are friends and it is their choice to be so.'
The BNP though, obviously seeing yet another public relations disaster looming, quickly made up a story about how Howson hadn't known these items were on his site and how he zoomed into action to delete them. Then the party propaganda machine went into overdrive.
Suddenly and for no discernible reason taking it as fact that Howson's site was hacked and the information placed there completely unnoticed by him, the BNP attempts to give the story its own nasty little spin by implication, saying; 'We should say that we don’t believe that anyone on the Bath Chronicle was actually party to the hacking...' and 'This hacking follows on from a similar case from last year when a northern England BNP councillor [the King of the Standards Board, Paul Cromie] had his email account hacked into and 'adult images' emailed from it to the 'World and his Dog'.' Not content with claiming this little piece of over-exposure on a random hacker, the BNP decides to point the finger more clearly but still without any evidence at all, at a 'Left hacking scam'. Yes, of course.
For some reason, the BNP hierarchy can't get it into its thick communal head that to hand a website to a member of the BNP is almost certain to end in disaster. Despite numerous examples of BNP-related stupidity, such as Martin Reynold's Facebook lustings for a threesome with a couple of large women and Karl Newman's weird penchant for dressing up in nazi uniforms, the BNP still asserts 'that no-one...would be daft enough to post such obviously unacceptable material on such a public website'. Well apparently they do and all the BNP's lies, misleading hints and snidey comments are unlikely to stop that.
Even if they continue to churn them out at the rate they have over the last week.
Labels:
Bath,
Bath Chronicle,
BNP,
Corsham,
Danny Lake,
Griffin,
Mark Leat,
Mike Howson,
swastikas
United on screen in war on racism
Faith groups across Redbridge have joined forces on the TV screen to take a stand against racism. A video entitled Rise and Fall Of Racism has been produced for Redbridge Racial Equality Council (RREC) and was officially launched last week at Redbridge Town Hall.
Satnam Singh, of RREC, said: "Reports of racist incidents were said to have gone up in schools, but recently we've found they've fallen generally. We're not sure if it's because racism itself is falling or whether people just aren't reporting incidents. That's what this film aims to do - raise awareness of the need to report racism. It also provides a chance to hear different views on the problems."
But among the contributors is Hainault British National Party (BNP) Cllr Julian Leppert, who gives his view on racism problems locally. Cllr Leppert said: "The result is pretty much how I expected it to be. People have an obvious agenda. I guess I'm on it to make it more interesting and spice it up a bit. It mentions the Stephen Lawrence case, which is now 14 years old and for which no one was ever caught, yet down the road in Barking a few years ago, a white man called Christopher Yates was killed by three Asian men, yet this doesn't get a mention."
Mr Singh said Cllr Leppert had been approached about appearing in the video in order to ensure it was balanced. Other contributors in the film include Redbridge Council leader Cllr Alan Weinberg, Redbridge Police Chief Insp Carl Lindley as well as members of different faith groups, including Jagdev Purewal of the Punjabi Centre in Ley Street, Ilford.
Mr Purewal said: "I spoke about two things - one was about wearing a turban and being called a Paki. It's youngsters that do it, as they don't know the difference between a Pakistani and an Indian. But I also said about how relations between faiths are improving. I've attended numerous weddings between black and white people as well as mixed-faith weddings."
Raj Channan of Ilford Hindu Centre in Cleveland Road, Ilford, also comments on the video. Footage is shown of Cllr Weinberg saying he "detests" the BNP and of an anti-BNP rally in neighbouring Barking and Dagenham.
The 25-minute film is being made available to community groups and schools, which already look at racism issues through citizenship lessons. Mr Singh said: "We hope to have a web link of the video available by the end of the month, so people can watch it themselves. It's all about raising awareness."
Ilford Recorder
Satnam Singh, of RREC, said: "Reports of racist incidents were said to have gone up in schools, but recently we've found they've fallen generally. We're not sure if it's because racism itself is falling or whether people just aren't reporting incidents. That's what this film aims to do - raise awareness of the need to report racism. It also provides a chance to hear different views on the problems."
But among the contributors is Hainault British National Party (BNP) Cllr Julian Leppert, who gives his view on racism problems locally. Cllr Leppert said: "The result is pretty much how I expected it to be. People have an obvious agenda. I guess I'm on it to make it more interesting and spice it up a bit. It mentions the Stephen Lawrence case, which is now 14 years old and for which no one was ever caught, yet down the road in Barking a few years ago, a white man called Christopher Yates was killed by three Asian men, yet this doesn't get a mention."
Mr Singh said Cllr Leppert had been approached about appearing in the video in order to ensure it was balanced. Other contributors in the film include Redbridge Council leader Cllr Alan Weinberg, Redbridge Police Chief Insp Carl Lindley as well as members of different faith groups, including Jagdev Purewal of the Punjabi Centre in Ley Street, Ilford.
Mr Purewal said: "I spoke about two things - one was about wearing a turban and being called a Paki. It's youngsters that do it, as they don't know the difference between a Pakistani and an Indian. But I also said about how relations between faiths are improving. I've attended numerous weddings between black and white people as well as mixed-faith weddings."
Raj Channan of Ilford Hindu Centre in Cleveland Road, Ilford, also comments on the video. Footage is shown of Cllr Weinberg saying he "detests" the BNP and of an anti-BNP rally in neighbouring Barking and Dagenham.
The 25-minute film is being made available to community groups and schools, which already look at racism issues through citizenship lessons. Mr Singh said: "We hope to have a web link of the video available by the end of the month, so people can watch it themselves. It's all about raising awareness."
Ilford Recorder
Labels:
BNP,
Julian Leppert,
Redbridge,
Rise and Fall Of Racism,
video
‘BNP man’ racially abused officer
A Morden man, alleged to be a member of the British National Party, has been convicted of screaming racist abuse at a police officer after being arrested for his part in a drunken fight.
Jamie Sedgewick, 40, of Wolsey Crescent, subjected the Asian officer to a tirade of obscenities and racial abuse after he broke up a fight at the Hideaway Bar, Kingston Road, in March last year. Sedgewick, was alleged by the arresting officer to have been carrying a BNP membership card in his wallet, but would not comment on the issue during police interview. He was also found guilty of actual bodily harm at Kingston Crown Court on Thursday.
Summing up, Recorder Plaschkes spoke of how Sedgewick had become embroiled in an argument over a stolen beanie hat in the early hours of March 19 last year. Sedgewick had been leaving the bar with family and friends when one of the party was accused by a drinker of having taken his hat. The drinker said that as he restrained and remonstrated with Sedgewick's friend, an unseen attacker jumped on him from behind and rained blows on him, leaving him with a severely bruised face.
Sedgewick had admitted hitting the man but said he was acting in defence of his friend, who he feared was about to be stabbed in the face with a dart.
When Sedgewick was later arrested by police outside the pub and bundled into a van, he subjected one of the officers to a sustained volley of racist abuse. Officers said Sedgewick had repeatedly screamed racial insults and right wing slogans while headbutting and kicking the door. Sedgewick denied this and said racist language was "not in his nature".
The jury acquitted Sedgewick of affray over an accusation he had shoved a police officer in the chest. His co-defendant and friend Martin Yaxley, 43, was cleared of the charges he faced of assault and affray. Sedgewick will be sentenced on June 7th.
Ealing Times
Jamie Sedgewick, 40, of Wolsey Crescent, subjected the Asian officer to a tirade of obscenities and racial abuse after he broke up a fight at the Hideaway Bar, Kingston Road, in March last year. Sedgewick, was alleged by the arresting officer to have been carrying a BNP membership card in his wallet, but would not comment on the issue during police interview. He was also found guilty of actual bodily harm at Kingston Crown Court on Thursday.
Summing up, Recorder Plaschkes spoke of how Sedgewick had become embroiled in an argument over a stolen beanie hat in the early hours of March 19 last year. Sedgewick had been leaving the bar with family and friends when one of the party was accused by a drinker of having taken his hat. The drinker said that as he restrained and remonstrated with Sedgewick's friend, an unseen attacker jumped on him from behind and rained blows on him, leaving him with a severely bruised face.
Sedgewick had admitted hitting the man but said he was acting in defence of his friend, who he feared was about to be stabbed in the face with a dart.
When Sedgewick was later arrested by police outside the pub and bundled into a van, he subjected one of the officers to a sustained volley of racist abuse. Officers said Sedgewick had repeatedly screamed racial insults and right wing slogans while headbutting and kicking the door. Sedgewick denied this and said racist language was "not in his nature".
The jury acquitted Sedgewick of affray over an accusation he had shoved a police officer in the chest. His co-defendant and friend Martin Yaxley, 43, was cleared of the charges he faced of assault and affray. Sedgewick will be sentenced on June 7th.
Ealing Times
May 16, 2007
Turning right - a review of last week's Radio 4 documentary on the far-right
[In fact, a review of all bar the last few minutes which was missed because the tape ran out. We weren't going to bother using this because of the damn tape but a few people have asked what the programme was like so this is for them.]A most peculiar programme, as most who listened to it would surely agree. It never quite managed to get to any particular point - something that might possibly be blamed on the constant attacks on the BBC's alleged bias towards the political left or right, depending on who is claiming bias at the time.
It begins in a Hampshire village, complete with duck pond and ex-Tory, ex-UKIP, now BNP organiser Roger Robertson. Robertson's political acumen is astounding. He blames immigrants for all Hampshire's ills (whatever they are), particularly last year's hosepipe ban. As we've pointed out before, the BNP chooses not to look at poor investment by the profit-fixated water companies nor the huge changes that are becoming apparent because of global warming - but immigration as the sole cause of water shortages.
The interviewer asked Robertson to take him to meet a typical BNP-supporter in the village. Robertson, a foot-shooting buffoon surely destined to lead the party in the future, took him to an elderly female supporter who promptly and helpfully announced; 'I suppose in a way I'm racist'.
A Cllr Haffey, who lives in the village next door, is an outspoken opponent of the BNP, pointing out how much damage has been caused by nationalism over the last century or so and how the BNP's leader and most of the officers that surround him have criminal records.
Robertson's unnamed acolyte, when asked about the BNP's reputation for thuggery, said that we had that completely wrong, going on to claim, oddly, that what we must be thinking of is Mosley's Blackshirts. After all, she pointed out, a lot of BNP supporters are Christian. So there.
The 2004 State of the Nation poll, which was the basis of the Joseph Rowntree Trust's assertion that 20-25% of the voting public would consider voting BNP in a future election, which led to Margaret Hodge's highly-damaging statement before last year's local elections, has recently been updated with the 2006 results, showing that the figure has dropped to around 10.3%, which bodes a bit for the BNP.
This ties in rather neatly with the dismal results of the most recent local elections where the BNP's optimistic dream of gaining a further 50-60 seats turned into a gain of just one (now lost thanks to a BNP councillor defection) despite a record-breaking 750 candidates.
The programme then moved to Barking and Dagenham where the leader of the BNP contingent on the council, pornmeister Richard (Dickie to his friends, believe it or not) Barnbrook, was interviewed. Curiously the interviewer chose not to ask Barnbrook about the lies told by the BNP to gain its seats (Africans for Essex, for example) nor to pick him up on his odd assertion that the BNP was there to represent the 'indigenous' population including first and second generation Africans and Asians, nor for his bizarre and unlikely claim that 1 in 5 first and second generation minority groups voted for the racist BNP. Rather the interviewer, in a brief spasm of interviewing prowess, mentioned the poor performance of Barking and Dagenham's BNP councillors.
According to the leader of the council, Charles Fairbrass, the BNP's attendance record is appalling - around 51% - which Fairbrass suggests is a direct result of the fact that they simply didn't expect to win. He also criticised the BNP contingent for not turning up to the training sessions for new councillors.
Barnbrook had no hesitation in accepting the attendance figure of 51% and the non-attendance at training sessions but blamed that on the fact that many of the BNP councillors work and, the training sessions being held during working hours, they simply couldn't get the time off. Curiously, though unsurprisingly, the interviewer allowed this to slide, though he should have pointed out that councillors are legally entitled to time off work to attend to council business (including training sessions) and receive generous payments to make up for any shortfall in wages. Besides that, if anyone has stood for council without checking with their employer first, they're an idiot.
Barnbrook also supervises the councillors for the BNP nationally. Strangely he appeared completely ignorant of all the serious convictions of the councillors he's supposed to be supervising. When asked about a BNP councillor convicted of assaulting his wife and a police officer, racially abusing a group of Asians and being banned from every football ground in the country, Barnbrook claimed to be unaware of him. Also James Lloyd, who left the tenancy of the Blue Lagoon pub at Tipton after a shooting and various other violent incidents and amid police claims that he failed to co-operate with the subsequent investigations. And what about the BNP councillor convicted of three assaults on members of his wife's family (David Enderby)? Again and again, Barnbrook claimed not to know anything of these individuals and, sadly, the interviewer gave up.
The programme then moved to the cosmetic changes that have been made to the BNP. Nick Griffin, busily re-writing history, stated that the BNP evolved out of the old National Front, where there had been a 'neo-fascist strain', a 'racist strain' but not, according to him, a 'thuggish strain', describing any suggestion as 'massively over-exaggerated'. When asked if all this was behind the party, Griffin said yes, but it all takes a long time. It certainly does - the BNP moved away from the NF in 1982, a quarter of a century ago.
Griffin 'accepted' that anti-semitism had been a part of the party ethos but was no longer. When asked if he still believed the Holocaust was the hoax of the 20th Century, he responded;
'No, I do not.'
'What made you change your mind?'
'Primarily European law. If I say that now or believe that now, I'm liable to be extradited to France...I believe what the law says I must believe.'
Startlingly, the interviewer didn't take this any further.
Moving on to the BNP's attempted exploitation of Christianity for its own ends, the programme interviewed former BNP councillor (deservedly ousted in May this year) and fake-vicar Robert West, the leader of the BNP front-group, the Christian Council of Britain.
West, sounding uncannily like Andy Hamilton, was allowed to sermonise on what he perceived to be the evils of multiculturalism, claiming the purity of races as 'God's will', a phrase that certainly made me nervous. Picking selected chunks from the Bible, he spoke against race-mixing, claiming that God's command is that nations should live apart.
The Anglican Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, rejected this outright, stating that the claims made by West were similar to those made in South Africa to justify apartheid.
'It's nonsense, it's wrong and it's not at all in the spirit of the Gospel... I think what the BNP is doing is making use of a flag of convenience, namely the Christian heritage of the country. In the past they've spoken about the 'real' religion of the country being pagan worship of the Norse gods.'
From there, the programme went off to Griffin and West's bizarre ideas on Islam, neatly and concisely demolished by Inayat Bunglawala, spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain, then drifted into apocalypse-mode with a discussion about the possibility of civil war.
Griffin quoted the arguably-insane Rear-Admiral Parry, who claimed last year that Britain would be in the grip of civil war within five years. While acknowledging this and stating that he believed this to be true, Griffin also stated that he expected the BNP to be in government (by which we assume he means would have enough MPs to control the government) by 2040, indicating that he at least has a rich fantasy life.
Finally, the programme wondered if, after its dismal performance in the recent local elections, the BNP can still hope to become a serious political force. Professor Peter John of Manchester University responded:
'I don't think so...Local campaigns maybe - nationally, no.'
Labels:
BBC,
BNP,
Christian Council of Britain,
MCB,
Nick Griffin,
Radio 4,
Robert West,
Turning right
Hatewatch - for the week of May 16th 2007
Black Supremacist Sect Leader Dies
Yahweh Ben Yahweh, the self-professed "Black Messiah," who preached hatred of whites and drew followers into a murderous brotherhood, died of cancer at 71 after serving 11 years of an 18-year federal prison sentence...
'Aryans Club' Bomb Threat Shuts Down High School
The FBI is investigating a bomb threat and racist graffiti by members of a group calling itself the "Scotts Valley Aryan Club."
Gang Member Arrested for Hate Crime Shooting
A Latino gang member was charged with a hate crime for allegedly yelling a racial slur and firing a shot at a black man who was pumping gas...
U.S. Hate Groups Recruiting in Australia
The White Legion Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Stormfront last month distributed recruiting materials targeting "Aboriginal crime" and "Jewish control of the media" in three Australian cities...
Southern Poverty Law Center
Yahweh Ben Yahweh, the self-professed "Black Messiah," who preached hatred of whites and drew followers into a murderous brotherhood, died of cancer at 71 after serving 11 years of an 18-year federal prison sentence...
'Aryans Club' Bomb Threat Shuts Down High School
The FBI is investigating a bomb threat and racist graffiti by members of a group calling itself the "Scotts Valley Aryan Club."
Gang Member Arrested for Hate Crime Shooting
A Latino gang member was charged with a hate crime for allegedly yelling a racial slur and firing a shot at a black man who was pumping gas...
U.S. Hate Groups Recruiting in Australia
The White Legion Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Stormfront last month distributed recruiting materials targeting "Aboriginal crime" and "Jewish control of the media" in three Australian cities...
Southern Poverty Law Center
Labels:
Aryan Club,
Australia,
Hatewatch,
Jewish,
Ku Klux Klan,
SPLC,
Stormfront
BNP audience outnumbered by protestors
The appalling Danny LakeThe controversial politician was forced to rearrange the venue three times after anti-fascist campaigners trailed organiser and Young BNP leader Danny Lake around the city. Mr Griffin had been due to speak at the University of Bath on Monday night but the invitation was withdrawn last Thursday after protests from academic staff and students. Eventually he addressed just four students in a talk lasting less than ten minutes.
The event, on a grassy area below the Royal Crescent, saw the audience outnumbered by protesters. The politician was flanked by several security guards and watched by 14 protesters and 13 police officers.
He said he would now be making greater use of the internet after his proposed meeting at the university's Claverton campus became the latest in a long line to be banned after student and staff protests.
The university authorities withdrew their permission for the meeting because of fears of disruption at a time when many students are taking exams.
"I was going to talk to politics students at the university, not about how they should join the BNP but why we are getting more support," he said. "Instead of going to universities, I am now going to make a series of films for students which I will put on the internet and produce leaflets to give out, so if students want to find out about the BNP, they can read it online, without being chased down by neo-Stalinists."
As Mr Griffin was repeatedly heckled by protesters, he answered students' questions about allegations he is a holocaust denier, believes Islam is a barbaric religion and supports capital punishment.
First year politics student Richard said: "Most people were too intimidated to come as soon as he was banned as they were worried others would label them a BNP supporter, which I'm definitely not. I don't really know what his motivation was and don't like his policies but it's important for a politics student to emphasise the importance of free speech and I was curious."
Another student, Anthony, said: "I wanted to speak to him more about his racial policies which make me feel very uncomfortable. It's those who banned him from speaking who are the fascists."
Mr Lake said he hoped to invoke the Education Act to secure Mr Griffin a platform on campus at the university.
The talk was originally scheduled for 150 politics students at the university, but sparked a furore among academic staff, students, trade union representatives and members of Unite Against Fascism. The invitation was withdrawn after the students' union voted against it and university administrators raised concerns about security. Vice-chancellor Prof Glynis Breakwell was also presented with a petition.
Mr Lake had rescheduled Mr Griffin's visit for a smaller audience at the Assembly Inn in Alfred Street but that was cancelled once the landlord, Ian Collins, was tipped off by anti-fascist organisation Searchlight.
Mr Collins said he decided to cancel the moment he knew who was involved. He alerted police who sent two riot vans to a second meeting place in George Street.
"A young man visited me the night before and asked if he could book a room," said Mr Collins. "It was a very casual arrangement. The moment Searchlight rang to tell me who was behind it, I opted to stop it. I feel that I have been hoodwinked into holding this talk."
Sgt Dave Kay, of Avon and Somerset Police, said: "We knew the BNP were planning to have some sort of event and there was the possibility of group or groups opposing it. We explained to both parties that we are here to keep the peace, are not taking sides and did not want to be in a position where we had to intervene."
One protester, Simon Fitzmaurice, 19, a student from Bath Spa University, said he found out about the event on the internet.
"I'm from near Harrogate in Yorkshire where the BNP actually hold a seat so I felt I had to be here."
Bath Chronicle
Labels:
anti-fascist,
BNP,
Danny Lake,
Nick Griffin,
Searchlight,
UAF,
University of Bath
Protest against the BNP - Protest at Sadie Graham's first council meeting
7pm Wednesday May 16th Broxtowe Town Hall, Beeston
The election's last week did not see the breakthrough that the BNP hoped for. The BNP increased overall their number of council seats by one, to 50 seats. Locally, the BNP came last in Hucknall, and also did not win in Kirkby in Ashfield.
The bad news is that Sadie Graham - the East Midlands BNP organiser - won in Brinsley. This BNP councillor has since been getting her face about on the local news and papers. The elections may be over but the campaign goes on...
Protest at Sadie Graham's first council meeting
7pm Wednesday May 16th Broxtowe Town Hall, Beeston
A protest has been called at the first Council meeting where Sadie Graham is sitting. We need as many people there as possible to make our feelings clear! Let her know that we will be there to oppose her racist and fascist policies, and the campaign goes on. We will be meeting between the Lions in Market Square from 6pm and taking megaphones, posters, placards, leaflets, and of course, PEOPLE!
Bring yourself, your friends, your school/college/work mates, and anyone who is against the BNP.
The election's last week did not see the breakthrough that the BNP hoped for. The BNP increased overall their number of council seats by one, to 50 seats. Locally, the BNP came last in Hucknall, and also did not win in Kirkby in Ashfield.
The bad news is that Sadie Graham - the East Midlands BNP organiser - won in Brinsley. This BNP councillor has since been getting her face about on the local news and papers. The elections may be over but the campaign goes on...
Protest at Sadie Graham's first council meeting
7pm Wednesday May 16th Broxtowe Town Hall, Beeston
A protest has been called at the first Council meeting where Sadie Graham is sitting. We need as many people there as possible to make our feelings clear! Let her know that we will be there to oppose her racist and fascist policies, and the campaign goes on. We will be meeting between the Lions in Market Square from 6pm and taking megaphones, posters, placards, leaflets, and of course, PEOPLE!
Bring yourself, your friends, your school/college/work mates, and anyone who is against the BNP.
Labels:
BNP,
Broxtowe,
fascist,
racist,
Sadie Graham
May 15, 2007
BNP man joins council amid angry protest
Crowds gathered outside Corsham Town Hall last night to protest against BNP councillor Michael Simpkins taking up his rightful seat on the parish committee.
Residents clutching photos of black relatives and trade union members bearing banners shouted anti-BNP chants when Mr Simpkins arrived for the first full council meeting since the election.
Flanked by his close protection team, four BNP members dressed in black, the Rudloe councillor walked briskly through the protesters shouting something incomprehensible and disappeared into the council chamber. The chants of "Bad for you, bad for me, stop the racist BNP" followed him inside and the councillors around the table fell silent until the voices stopped.
As police officers outside looked on and the BNP bodyguards lingered inside the door, there was a clear and identifiable moment of stillness and reflection before chairman Allan Bosley called the meeting to a start.
Corsham residents Steph Cleverley, her 21-year-old son Kyle and their friend Gillian Fleming, came to protest against Mr Simpkins, who took his seat unopposed without winning any votes.
Mrs Fleming said: "Lots of people in Corsham think the way we feel but are afraid of the BNP. Everyone in this country is entitled to an opinion, including the BNP. We have lived here a long time and there has never been any problems. We have all lived together side by side in relative peace and I do not see why the BNP seeks to create divisions and hostility based upon a person's ethnicity."
Mrs Cleverley's grandfather Reginald Seymour Thornhill was one of the first generation of black people to move to Britain. She said: "We are proud of our history and heritage but simultaneously proud of our local community and place in the community of Corsham."
Mr Simpkins plans to work hard on the town council and represent the views of the people in his ward. He said: "There was no sense of animosity from my fellow councillors. The protesters were mainly from Bristol and they have a right to protest but why didn't they stand against me in the election? I was accompanied by a close protection team because there have been incidents in the past of lefties attacking BNP members in the street."
Asked whom he represented, Mr Simpkins said: "The BNP is a party for indigenous British people. Black, Asian, Chinese, Aborigine, Maori and Eskimo people cannot join."
Tim Lezard, who organised the protest, said: "Nobody voted for Mr Simpkins and therefore he does not represent anyone in Corsham. Local people have to stand up against fascists."
Gazette and Herald
Residents clutching photos of black relatives and trade union members bearing banners shouted anti-BNP chants when Mr Simpkins arrived for the first full council meeting since the election.
Flanked by his close protection team, four BNP members dressed in black, the Rudloe councillor walked briskly through the protesters shouting something incomprehensible and disappeared into the council chamber. The chants of "Bad for you, bad for me, stop the racist BNP" followed him inside and the councillors around the table fell silent until the voices stopped.
As police officers outside looked on and the BNP bodyguards lingered inside the door, there was a clear and identifiable moment of stillness and reflection before chairman Allan Bosley called the meeting to a start.
Corsham residents Steph Cleverley, her 21-year-old son Kyle and their friend Gillian Fleming, came to protest against Mr Simpkins, who took his seat unopposed without winning any votes.
Mrs Fleming said: "Lots of people in Corsham think the way we feel but are afraid of the BNP. Everyone in this country is entitled to an opinion, including the BNP. We have lived here a long time and there has never been any problems. We have all lived together side by side in relative peace and I do not see why the BNP seeks to create divisions and hostility based upon a person's ethnicity."
Mrs Cleverley's grandfather Reginald Seymour Thornhill was one of the first generation of black people to move to Britain. She said: "We are proud of our history and heritage but simultaneously proud of our local community and place in the community of Corsham."
Mr Simpkins plans to work hard on the town council and represent the views of the people in his ward. He said: "There was no sense of animosity from my fellow councillors. The protesters were mainly from Bristol and they have a right to protest but why didn't they stand against me in the election? I was accompanied by a close protection team because there have been incidents in the past of lefties attacking BNP members in the street."
Asked whom he represented, Mr Simpkins said: "The BNP is a party for indigenous British people. Black, Asian, Chinese, Aborigine, Maori and Eskimo people cannot join."
Tim Lezard, who organised the protest, said: "Nobody voted for Mr Simpkins and therefore he does not represent anyone in Corsham. Local people have to stand up against fascists."
Gazette and Herald
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