The far-right British National Party could win its first seat in the European Parliament by claiming just 8% of the vote, Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman will warn.Ms Harman is expected to say it would be "shameful" for the UK to elect a BNP MEP in the June 4 polls, just months after the US elected Barack Obama as its first black president. She will warn that Labour's analysis of recent council elections shows the BNP winning and coming second in seats traditionally held by all three main parties from the North West and North East to the Midlands, London, Yorkshire and Essex.
Speaking to the Progressive London conference, Ms Harman is expected to promise that Labour will use the 2009 European Parliament elections to "draw a line in the sand" against the advance of the BNP, which she denounced as "a party of racial hatred".
The proportional representation voting system used for Euro-elections increases the BNP's chances of winning a seat, she will warn.
"In the North West, where Nick Griffin, the BNP chairman, is standing, Searchlight estimates they only need about 8% of the vote to break through into the European Parliament," Ms Harman is expected to say. "That would be shameful for Britain just as the US shows the way forward by electing an inclusive, progressive president."
And she will add: "The BNP threat cannot be ignored. A new Labour analysis of council elections shows that even where they are not winning they are coming second in areas which are Labour, Liberal Democrat and Tory-held. Their poison is spreading. They are winning and coming second in the North West, the North East, the Midlands and London - from Yorkshire to Essex.
"Labour will, with a vigorous door-to-door campaign, not allow the BNP to peddle their pernicious lies that people have been 'abandoned by Labour'. It is Labour on the doorstep which will show this to be false and the run-up to elections on June 4 will be seized as an important opportunity to do this."
Ananova
"Labour will, with a vigorous door-to-door campaign, not allow the BNP to peddle their pernicious lies that people have been 'abandoned by Labour'. It is Labour on the doorstep which will show this to be false...."
ReplyDeleteIt's right that Ms Harman should be acknowledging the threat of the BNP and pointing out the 'pernicious lies' that it peddles but doesn't she think it's a little late for Labour to set out on a vigorous door to door campaign? Isn't that what Labour should have been doing for the past five years/ten years or so? And frankly, I think she has a bloody cheek implying that its wrong to believe that people have been 'abandoned by Labour'. People believe they have been because they have been.
Ms Harman could have made this a much better attack on the BNP if she'd left out the pro-Labour preaching and concentrated more on the BNP's lying.
Just to go back to the Bishop Williamson story: -
ReplyDeleteIt seems that the Pope Pius Society have well known links to the far right: -
In June 2001 Searchlight revealed how the SSPX was part of a sinister international network that sheltered James Kopp while he was on the run after murdering Barnett Slepian, a Jewish doctor who worked at an abortion clinic in New York. Kopp had carried out other sniper-style attacks in the USA before fleeing into the arms of similarly violent people in Europe including the UK and Ireland. He was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison after being extradited from France.
At the heart of this web was Derek Holland, one of Nick Griffin's comrades-in-arms in the late 1980s, long before Griffin became leader of the BNP. In those days they ran the Political Soldier wing of the National Front and linked up with extremists and financiers of terror around the world. The third man in the Political Soldiers' tripartite leadership was Patrick Harrington, now the general secretary of the BNP's trade union front group Solidarity. In 1988 the three of them went on a trip to Libya paid for by Colonel Gaddafi's foreign ministry.
The remains of the Political Soldiers are now part of England First, formerly the International Third Position, run by the convicted Italian terrorist and property millionaire Roberto Fiore, a one-time political and business partner of Griffin. The NOP has a long connection with Fiore and was a constituent organisation of the European National Front, a crration of Fiore that brings together hardline fascists and nazis from across western and eastern Europe.
I do not like to link to Stormfront, but several BNP supporters, probably with links to Harrington, seem to think that SSPX should link up with the BNP.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=365666&page=5
Apparently SSPX already support Jean Marie le Pen.
Ms Harman is expected to promise that Labour will use the 2009 European Parliament elections to "draw a line in the sand" against the advance of the BNP, which she denounced as "a party of racial hatred".
ReplyDeleteFair enough. How?
I have just come across the weirdest catholic neo-nazi dating site, where Holocaust denial is a sexy chat-up line, and where weddings take place in Ku Klux Klan costumes lol: -
ReplyDeletewww.sspxsingles.com
The photos featured on the front page must surely not be BNPers as the Xmas voting contest most surely proves that they are predomintly mingers.
lol
"Roberto Fiore, a one-time political and business partner of Griffin"
ReplyDeleteIsn't he still involved with the Griffin family via those language schools?
http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/2008/02/language-school-run-by-italian-fascist.html
Until one of the parties start to take an interest in the poor and disenfranchised rather than forever looking to 'middle England' for votes, the BNP will continue to pick them up. If Labour and co start taking notice of the people in the way that they should, the BNP would disappear back into the fascist hole they came out of.
ReplyDeleteThat Scumfront link says that Bishop Williamson has publically ensorsed David Duke.
ReplyDeleteIf the Pope doesn't take action against Williamson, and rebanish him, the Catholic Church will be seen as endorsing fascism.
However, if the racist neo-nazi BNP does try to forge links with Catholic groups, they can kiss goodbye to all of their Rangers supporting football hooligans, who hate Catholics and the Irish, plus they won't win a single unionist vote in Northern Ireland.
This must put the BNP in a bit of a quandry!
"And frankly, I think she has a bloody cheek implying that its wrong to believe that people have been 'abandoned by Labour'. People believe they have been because they have been."
ReplyDeleteNow THAT is well said.
Indeed! BNP support in Scotland is at an all-time low. Take away the Rangers hoolie thugs and there will be no support north of the border.
ReplyDeleteIs there still a BNP Scotland group?
ReplyDeleteOr have they already been abandoned prior to a formal BNP link with the British section of the Pope Pius Society?
It seems the irrepairable damage to the Caholic church has already been done: -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14881
Williamson's Holocaust denial has now won official approval in the church.
As for the BNP making formal links with the Pope Pius Society, we shall have to wait and see what their reaction is.
Harrington must be having proverbial kittens, however if his dear one-eyed friend were to say no, he'd be choking up neo-nazi fur balls.
The following link does seem to suggest there is a secret intrinsic relationship already existing between the BNP and SSPX: -
ReplyDeletehttp://jloughnan.tripod.com/bpasemit.htm
If so, have the BNP already given up their unionist links?
That is the whole point, Labour only come out once a year with one leaflet and they think that is enough. Yet she thinks that will do the job.
ReplyDeleteIn fact her and her ilk who have actively promoted differences between communities to cultivate a Labour clientele are in part to blame for the rise of the BNP.
Obviously the stupid white working class need to be re-educated, how dare they vote for anyone but Labour!
Seth Reznik of Blue State Digital, who are masterminding the anti-BNP campaign, tells us how it's done:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/22/obama-online-labourlist-webcameron
Harman is part of the problem, not the solution.
ReplyDeleteShe, with her chattering class politics and double standards has done more than most to alienate Labour voters and hand them over to the BNP.
She and her kind have done more for the BNP than Nick Griffin ever has.
Harrington must be having proverbial kittens, however if his dear one-eyed friend were to say no, he'd be choking up neo-nazi fur balls.
ReplyDeleteSurely the poster means Holland since he represented the cathloic wing and broke away from Harrington?
Spot-on Denise,
ReplyDeleteBit rich for the Labour Party to go all preach on this in view of :
a) who's been running the country for the past decade?
b) who has been putting business ahead of the workers throughout that time?
c) who has 'talked up' the BNP in a very naive way?
d) and who opted for the dreadful 'party list' system for the Euro-elections, rather than transferrable vote?
Answers?
a) Labour
b) Labour
c) Labour
d) Labour
Please.....not all active Labour Party members share the views of Ms Harman, some of us have been on the front line tackling the BNP on the doorstep for some years now.
ReplyDeleteWe have not just woken up, realised there is an election and decided we need to draw a line in the sand, come on Ms Harman a lot of your activists drew that line ages ago........you just need to come out and work with us.
tulip
'not all active Labour Party members share the views of Ms Harman, some of us have been on the front line tackling the BNP on the doorstep for some years now'
ReplyDeleteThis is, of course, true. And Labour is hardly the only political group that can be criticised for not doing enough to oppose the far-right.
Harriet Harman warns of BNP threat in European elections
ReplyDeleteEqaulity [it's the Guardian, innit] minister warns that just 8% of vote could see Nick Griffin elected as an MEP
Harriet Harman, the deputy chair of the Labour party, warned there was a very real risk that the far-right British National party could make electoral gains at the European elections in June by exploiting the recession.
Harman, also the women and equalities minister, told the Progressive London conference in central London that Labour was gearing up for an unprecedented campaign to stop Nick Griffin, the BNP chairman, from becoming an MEP for a constituency in the north-west.
The minister, who is also the MP for Camberwell and Peckham, told a packed hall that the BNP sought to "spread division and despair" among those hit hardest by the recession by blaming the economic slump on generations of migrants.
The "BNP threat cannot be ignored", said Harman, citing a string of council byelections where the party had come second. "Their poison is spreading."
The anti-fascist body, Searchlight, estimates that Griffin, the BNP chairman, would need just 8% of the vote to break through into the European parliament, she said.
"That should be shameful for Britain just as the US shows the way forward by electing an inclusive, progressive president," said Harman. The minister said "every vote will count" at the June election.
"Labour will, with a vicious door-to-door campaign, not allow the BNP to peddle their pernicious lies that people have been abandoned by Labour."
She described the "real apprehension" facing Britain as a result of the credit crunch. "Recession is global but affecting people in all towns and cities in this country. There is a real sense that we are in unchartered waters with an uncertain future ahead."
Highlighting the government's measures to tackle the recession, the minister expressed her hope that a "new social order, with better fairness and equality" would emerge.
The fact that the recession "hits hardest those who can least afford it", made it more important than ever to address inequality.
Citing the recently published social mobility white paper, which proposes placing a duty on public sector bodies to have a fairer and more equal society, Harman said: "For those of you who argue that labour should put equality and fairness on the backburner .. we say very strongly that in principle unfairness and inequality is objectionable at the best of times but it is even more objectionable when people have got their backs against the wall."
"There will be no retreat from equalities," said Harman. "So instead of putting it back we are bringing it forward."
The minister faced a difficult day by agreeing to attend the conference session, entitled the Age of Change, which drew in a crowd representing a coalition of different interest groups.
She was booed by a section of the audience as she left the stage, before being barracked by a male sex worker in the front row who screamed at the minister during a question-and-answer session.
Thierry Schaffauser refused to be silenced by the chair, Jon Cruddas, the MP for Dagenham, as a he launched a multi-pronged attack on the minister, claiming that the government wrongly believed that all sex workers were trafficked or vulnerable victims, rather than individuals exercising their free choice to earn money by providing a service. The man was finally silenced following pleas from the audience.
Harman was one of a number of government ministers and Labour MPs who attended the event, which was organised by Ken Livingstone, the former Labour mayor of London.
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/24/harriet-harman-bnp-european-election
"some of us have been on the front line tackling the BNP on the doorstep for some years now"
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that's true and its sad that good activists tend to be lumped in with the bad or simply indifferent but you have to admit there is a shortage of doorstep activism around, no matter what party we're refering to. I hate to be defeatist and I intend to do what I can against the BNP in the future as I have done in the past but the phrase "too little, too late" popped into my head when I read the article, as I'm sure it did to a lot of other people.
Tulip, you are quite right. I have nothing but respect for your efforts.
ReplyDeleteBut when we have a Harman preaching comprehensive eucation for all while bussing her own kids across London for a non-comprehensive education we have a hypocrite on our hands.
She, along with her nu-Labour friends have done more than most to prove Orwell's assertion that some animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Denise, I wont argue with the points you raise in fact I agree with you, along with other issues such as student tuition fees and the war in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteBut,
I am a great believer in the fact that you cant change things from the outside......the perpetual optimist me.
tulip