Fear of election gains sparks a bid to alter the law
Trade unions want the right under UK law to expel British National Party activists - and deny them membership - as part of Labour plans to check the electoral advance of the far right.
Labour backbenchers, supported by all the biggest unions, will unveil the plan on Tuesday when they put forward an amendment to the Employment Bill that would allow them to ban racists. The proposal - labelled 'Stalinist' by the BNP - comes amid concern that it could win as many as three seats in next year's European Parliament elections and make strong gains in council elections.
Labour MPs, many of whom feel threatened by the BNP's advances in their constituencies, are concerned that the party is encouraging activists to infiltrate unions in order to spread subversive, racist messages in the workplace.
Tony Lloyd, chairman of the trades union group of Labour MPs who has tabled the amendment, said it was vital that unions had the right to get rid of people working directly against their aims: 'What the unions are absolutely right to demand is the right to kick racists out of their organisations.'
Until now unions have had to work under a legal framework set down under the Thatcher government in the early 1990s which prevented them from excluding people because of their membership of a particular political party. The Tory rules were seen at the time as a ploy to prevent unions from excluding or expelling those who broke strikes or were Conservative party members.
But the government has to bring UK law into line with European law after Aslef, the train drivers' union, won a landmark case in the European Court of Human Rights which upheld its right to expel a driver who was a BNP activist.
A spokesman for Thompsons solicitors, the trades union law firm, said: 'The amendment would mean a union could expel or deny membership to someone whose membership of a political party runs contrary to the union's rule book.'
The BNP has 10,000 members across Britain and 46 councillors. Labour is worried that under the proportional representation system that will be used in European parliamentary elections next June it could secure seats in three of the 12 regions.
Experts say that, under the list system, the BNP would need as little as 7.5 per cent of the vote in northwest England and only 11 per cent in Yorkshire and the West Midlands to install Euro-MPs in the Brussels and Strasbourg parliament. Labour also fears the BNP could become the largest party in two councils - Barking and Dagenham in Essex and Stoke-on-Trent - in next year's council elections if its anti-foreigner rhetoric struck a chord during the recession.
MPs, anti-BNP campaigners and lawyers say the bill as recently amended in the Lords would leave the law in limbo and not guarantee the right of a union to eject BNP members. Nick Lowles, director of the anti-fascist group Searchlight, said: 'The current wording of the Employment Bill leaves us in the worst of all worlds. Aslef would still not be able to expel Jay Lee [the BNP member at the centre of the original European Court ruling] and unions would be left open to further legal action from the BNP.'
Lowles said the amendment would give clarity, letting unions discipline and, where necessary, get rid of individual members for activities contrary to a union's rules and constitution.
A Department for Business spokesman said: 'This is a very delicate issue that involves people's rights to freedom of association and their political beliefs. The government's approach will strike a balance between these rights. Our present position is in line with the cross-party opinion in the Lords and Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights.'
Observer
I think the unions really should wake up to a few facts. They really do not need to worry about the ‘threat’ from the BNP however threatening it may look on paper (which within itself doesn’t stand up either in my opinion)because they are out right bloody incompetent.
ReplyDeleteTake it from me, under Gri££in that party could’nt hit a barn door with a sawn-off shotgun.
Everything is either cheap, clumsy, unelectable or downright pathetic (or a combination of all of them) Anyone that ever joins who has half a brain will either quickly realise what a lie that ‘party’ is or find themselves purged for being a threat.
Think about that fact that on the BNP’s official merchandise web-page you can by badges that say ‘No Immigrants - No Bombs’ Humm, catchy! Now I don’t think that the wider British public are going to flock to these morons somehow! (A current membership of about 7,500 out of a population of 60,000,000 plus?)
Gri££in can get away with murder because he is a useful puppet,(money laundering, theft, Leeds Crown Court cases, the lot) staggering through British nationalism destroying all or any credible hope that it could ever actually achieve anything of any merit.
Richard Barnbrook I hear you say? My God, he is as nutty as squirrel shit!
He is no threat whatsoever and the perfect candidate for over-inflating people’s belief that the BNP could actually achieve something in the 2009 elections and help Gri££in get his pay off of a seat in Europe for being such a good little state moron.
(Whether he is complicit in this knowledge is almost irrelevant now).
Just think about this for a minute. A BNP party official and best friend of the party chairman, at the party’s annual conference attempts to have sex with two underage girls in his hotel room. The cover up was unbelievable ill-conceived resulting in the whole world knowing about it within a day or two.
Is the sexual predator concerned sacked and kicked out of the party for good?
Is he arrested and questioned by the police? Is he investigated by Social Services?
Is he named and shamed and public apologies made by the party?
.....or was he defended by another pervert (the actual chairman himself none other) with excuses made along the lines that he was only going what all ‘healthy young men do’? - Utterly sickening.
I have seen the footage of those girls concerned and they are clearly school kids. Like I say, for anyone to actually believe that rag-tag bag of bollocks for a political party could actually ever be a tangible threat is almost as big a laugh as they are.
Prediction for 2009? – Gri££in gets his pay-off and into Europe he goes. He leaves behind a proxy ‘Chairman’ covertly under his control thus maintaining the status quo; probably Kemp. The whole thing keeps staggering helplessly onward while still relieving the party plebs of their membership fees and donated cash.
BNP? = A nasty little fart in the breeze. Little else.