400 and not out - Searchlight celebrates its 400th edition (part two)

400 and still fighting - Nick Lowles looks at how Searchlight has changed in recent years

Searchlight magazine has evolved over the past 33 years and will no doubt do so again in the years to come. However the fundamentals will remain the same.

During the early 1990s Searchlight reflected the changing scene on the British far right. The traditional fascist parties, the National Front and British National Party, were small and politically irrelevant and much of our focus was on the extra-parliamentary right, especially the emergence of an anti-state and terrorist ideology that derived from the United States.

Issue 126: December 1985

Initially this was spread through a number of nazi book clubs but later it was crystallised through Combat 18 (C18), a violent nazi group that took its name from the first and eighth letters of the alphabet, 1 and 8 – AH – Adolf Hitler.

Searchlight followed the formation of C18, from its early days as a stewards’ group for the BNP to its attempted bombing campaigns in the late 1990s.

As always, Searchlight combined reportage with propaganda and we can take partial credit for C18’s demise in 1998, as the group descended into internal warfare and many of its leaders were imprisoned.

A particular success occurred in the 1996-8 period when a succession of Searchlight exclusives shut down the production of nazi music in this country. This cut off a very rich seam of money flowing into the movement, some of which went directly into funding terrorism.

It was also Searchlight, in March 1999, that broke the story of nazis serving in the British Army. This was just one of several stories that was taken up by the national press. It was Searchlight that first revealed that David Copeland, the London nailbomber who killed three people and injured hundreds more in 1999, was an active fascist.

Three investigations that really stick out for me were the three-part exclusive into attempts by British and European fascists to launch a race war in South Africa shortly before Nelson Mandela became President; the exposé that the BNP leader’s personal bodyguard was suspected of being a Liverpool gunman responsible for several murders; and a two-part story about human trafficking from North Africa.

All three stories were not without personal and organisational risk. Our investigation into the fascist mercenaries heading to South Africa caught the interest of South African intelligence and we spent several weeks dodging the attention of Cliff Saunders, one of the main apartheid intelligence operatives in Europe during the 1980s.

The revelations about gunman Joey Owens led the police to warn me personally that they had picked up intelligence that my life was in danger. The third story, the appalling tale of human misery and exploitation, led a journalist to put his life at risk in North Africa while posing as a people smuggler.

Issue 256: October 1996

However, the real heroes of our magazine are those who feed us the information in the first place. There have been dozens of people who have infiltrated nazi and racist organisations for Searchlight over the years, and many more who realised the errors of their ways and came to us with information. I would like to pay tribute to Matthew Collins, who provided information during the early C18 phase, and Darren Wells, whose inside information from within the leadership of C18 helped stop further disturbances in Oldham and at least one bombing campaign. Finally, I would like to mention Andy Sykes, whose role as Bradford BNP organiser helped oversee the demise of the party in that city. Both Collins and Sykes are now dedicating themselves to fighting fascism.

In more recent years Searchlight has taken on a more campaigning role and this has been reflected in the magazine. On the ground reports, campaigning tips and more strategic overviews are now commonplace in the magazine.

Searchlight is a terrific campaigner and the Daily Mirror’s delighted to work very closely with it to champion Hope not Hate. The rise of the far right and BNP underlines why Searchlight will be as important over the next 400 issues as it was in the last 400.
Richard Wallace, Editor, Daily Mirror

In 2006 the HOPE not hate campaign was launched and over the past two years our work has been supported by the Daily Mirror. Two national bus tours, campaign videos, localised leaflets and tabloid newspapers have all taken Searchlight’s expertise into the community.

The magazine has also changed. In 2007 we began producing a quarterly full-colour Extra and also raised several thousand pounds for our colleagues in Russia who are facing an unbelievably violent onslaught.

Issue 379: January 2007

In June 2008 Searchlight produced a seminal article about the future of anti-fascism. Entitled Where Now? it challenged many of the orthodoxies of traditional anti-fascist activity and called for a more localised strategy to defeating the BNP.

Nothing is static and Searchlight will continually change to adapt to the challenges we face. However, our basic approach will remain the same as those set out when Searchlight first appeared in 1975. Searchlight will remain dedicated to defeating fascism.

Searchlight

Ex-BNP Member Fights Race Hate

A FORMER BNP organiser turned anti-racism campaigner has been in Coventry promoting the fight against hate crime.

Andy Sykes spent a week in the city leading anti-racism training for police, youth workers, Youth Offending Services staff, Victim Support officers and firefighters.

The aim of the training was to promote awareness of racism and give people confidence to challenge it when they see it.

It is also hoped they will feed their training back to other people in their organisations and the communities in which they work.

As part of the training, participants had DNA samples analysed to reveal their ethnic background.

Alison Quigley, Coventry City Council's hate crime reduction officer, who organised the training, found she is genetically linked to people in Russia, Iran and Romania.

She said: "One of the key points of the training is to make clear that there is no such thing as people being biologically British.

"The anti-racism training drives home the importance of not just challenging racist behaviour but also having the background knowledge to pinpoint the factual inaccuracies that lie behind many racist beliefs."

Andy Sykes joined the BNP in 2001, thinking it was a progressive party concerned for the future of the nation.

He quickly became disillusioned and worked as a mole, passing information to the Trades Union Congress.

In 2004, he worked with an undercover BBC reporter on a documentary that provoked national debate about the far-right party.

ICCOVENTRY.CO.UK

The BNP Fundamentalist Sect - A Cult Of Fear

The stories featured on the Lancaster UAF blog, warn concerned citizens that the British National Party have recruited more candidates than ever for the forthcoming local and regional elections.

PARTY politics has, for a long time, been viewed, arguably, as boring and stagnant, and it is in this vista of apathy, that the mongers of hate, are attempting to spread their racist poison throughout society. The internet contains a plethora of current affairs blogs, some resourceful and honest, others, less than informative. Some anti-fascist, others, downright vulgar and racist.

Internet message boards contain blatant racist abuse, sometimes to commit murder, rape, and genocide, often with references to "vote BNP" and such like.

Thanks to an active network of "white nationalists", any newspaper story published on the Internet about racism, terrorism, or Islam, especially the ones picked up on Google news, is bombarded with dozens of follow up comments, racist and inflamatory in nature. Local newspaper comments boxes are regularly targeted, once an alert is raised on neo-nazi havens such as Stormfront or the Vanguard News Network.

Under the misguided premise of "free speech", Google News shockingly carries BNP press releases as "genuine news. Indymedia, an independent media site contains a strange mixture of useful information and troll misinformation, so you have to be careful of what you come across on search engines, and always read between the lines.....

BNP trolls are part of a well-oiled right-wing internet propaganda campaign, to:

(1) give what is effectively a neo-Nazi organisation, a mainstream veneer.

(2) spread hatred and intolerance of foreigners, non-white people, Roma communities, gay and lesbian people, and first and foremost, Muslims.

Any issues remotely connected with Islam, mosques, etc, are quickly targeted by a multitude of racist, pro-BNP message-board spam in a thorough and well organised manner. One person can post messages under an infinite number of false identities to distort genuine opinion, of, for instance, a debate about the location of a new mosque.

Lancaster UAF, strive to publish genuine news articles extracted from notable news sources, specifically to inform the public of the ongoing dangers of racism and homophobia.

Sizeable sums of money enters the coffers of the British far right, from various worldwide funding sources (including American white supremacist groups, and South African apartheid organisations), whereas, anti-racist groups like the UAF operate on a voluntary basis. For anti-racists, there is no commercial, merchandising aim in combating racism...

We simply value the equality and humanity of each individual member of society, regardless of gender, class, ethnicity, or nationality, and we aim to prevent hatred, violence, intolerance, and fear from destroying our free democratic society.

In trying to convince everybody they are a "proper political party", the Neo-Nazi BNP describe themselves "patriots", "defenders of freedom", and "upholders of democracy", and announce they are "protecting Britain" from "forces threatening Britain" (usually meant to represent non-white people).

BNP "politics" is all about skin colour and religious bigotry. If a nightmare ensued, and the BNP were to able take power (by ballot box or armed coup), as Nick Griffin himself has hinted through his tightly worded speeches, the human rights of most (if not all) citizens, would disappear overnight.

In defeating Nazi Germany (who BNP bigwigs still admire), Britain sent a message to the world that racial intolerance is not acceptable. Our society (like that of all countries worldwide) is not ideal, and let's not kid ourselves, discrimination and racial violence still happens on a worryingly daily basis.

Victims of hate crimes come from all backgrounds, black, white, and Asian, but most frequently, immigrants and asylum seekers have become the main targets of violence and discrimination, fuelled by rabid tabloid hysteria, and most recently, Muslims, including women and children. The presence of a minority of idle, unconstructive, sniping brainless bigots in a council chamber fails to impact upon the normal workings of democracy, especially where the one-issue charlatans fail to show up for most council meetings, however, the overall aim of the BNP is greater than an attention-seeking ego trip.

WHENEVER and wherever the BNP have gained a foothold, racist attacks have often doubled overnight, as cowardly, lawless racist thugs see the presence of elected fascists in their town hall as a license "carte-blanche" to unleash violent and anti-social behaviour upon society.

In the sick and twisted minds of your average BNP-supporting hooligan, electoral representation is viewed as public support for their criminal activities, to the extent, many such racist attackers try to convince themselves they are murdering, killing, and maiming their innocent victims, with public support.

The British Nazi Party (BNP) (let's not be politically correct in not calling Nazis, Nazis), have "Channel Four documentary" Hitler worshipper Mark Collett in their ranks, and numerous more besides him, who have, on many occasions, expressed a sordid desire for our modern, eclectic, normally tolerant society to fragment into outright, bloody racial warfare.

In a joint operation with their "bastard cousins the National Front" and far-right football hooligan firms, they successfully fomented riots in Burnley, Oldham, and Bradford, giving a mere taste of what will be to come, if the BNP are not safely nipped in the bud. Let's not pussyfoot around this.

The neo-Nazi BNP want Christians, Jews, and Muslims, to fight one another in a ferocious blood bath. Thus, they "brush their anti-Semitism under the carpet" to help their PR, reaching out for the votes of Jewish people, to include as many ingredients as possible, into their doomsday soup, before their "war of reckoning" breaks out.

If you're reading this blog for the very first time, and you're white, employed, Christian, and middle class, and wander what relevance our anti-fascist campaign is, to you personally, assuming, as you do not live in a socially-deprived ghetto, remember the remorseful words of German pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the silence of the white Christian German majority to speak out during the Holocaust: -

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Like Nazi Germany, the racial and religious warfare that the BNP leaders hope and pray for, DOES affect you if you are white. Whenever there is a racist attack when the victim is, indeed white, Nick Griffin and co, rub their hands together in rapturous delight.

The BNP leadership relish news of all types of racial attacks, (with white as well as black victims), knowing full well that the more hate crimes are committed, the less stable and tolerant, Britain will be. So-called "revenge attacks" instigated out by local BNP organisers, increase the tension, as communities are segregated with mistrust, fear, and antipathy.

Wounds created by the far-right instigated riots of six years ago, are only slowly healing.

Organised racist groups like the BNP exploit anything and everything they lay their hands on, to help spread their propaganda and lies, like MRSA to an open sore.

In their election materials, BNP election candidates consistently tell cruel, damaging lies about Muslims, non-white people, and immigrants, particularly concerning asylum seekers receiving free council houses, etc, in their election materials, just as Hitler's Nazis did, spreading mistruths and false stereotypes about Jews, Roma, Eastern Europeans, gays and lesbian people.

Not everybody has the will, foresight, socioeconomic, or educational advantage to understand the highly complex world of party politics, particularly in the dumbed-down post Iraq malaise that is, Westminster affairs.

Deep in the depths of this apolitical landscape, lies and distortions prosper. Popular misconceptions about religion, coupled with xenophobia, and the War On Terror, racism and Islamophobia have flourished by exploiting public ignorance, and a reliance upon anti-immigrant tabloid sensationalism.

During the Nick Griffin racism trial at Leeds Crown Court, leering, jeering brainless BNP supporters with the net intelligence of two short planks, held aloft copies of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, showing headlines about "immigrants swamping Britain", as if such "insightful oracles of humanitarian thought" were somehow justifications for their dour, nihilistic hate trips.

Regardless of how many votes the BNP achieve, they will thankfully forever remain on the fringes of politics, which is exactly what Nick Griffin seems content to achieve.

The party's Fuhrers are extremely secretive, seldom revealing their true thoughts to the press, stuck within their dark, microcosmic, conspiratorial world of New World Orders.

For a party which seeks votes through demonising law-abiding Muslims, and heightening racial tension in stable communities, the BNP alarmingly share a common interest with fringe Islamic radical sects in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Cast your minds back to the Robert Cottage chemical weapons terrorist story as featured on this blog ("the retrial proper is to begin shortly"), it was Mr Cottage's troubled wife who alerted police to the evil plans of her disturbed husband.

She revealed in her sworn testimony that Mr Cottage had regularly boasted of wanting to shoot Mr Blair and Lib Dem peer Lord Greaves. His mind full of racist conspiracy theories surrounding 7/7 and 9/11, he planned to turn drunken bravado into action, stockpiling weapons for the advent of some final battle.

Chilling stuff, indeed!

In their polished, spin-doctored election broadcasts, and Radio Four soundbites, the media-savvy BNP make constant references to their battle against religious extremism, while saying very little about their secretive side, and their belief in conspiracy theories.

During occasional moments of heightened racist fervour, the goggle-eyed prince of spin allows the ugly truth to surface. Last weekend, a journalist from The Times captured a sinister "off-the-record" remark from Griffin, which encapsulated the murky world of violent national socialism stumbled upon by would-be chemical weapons terrorist Robert Cottage.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1672185.ece

Nick Griffin groundlessly accused the religion of Islam of deliberately poisoning white Britons with heroin (using the vile racist terminology: - "paki poison" - although, folks, he says he's no racist), despite the fact that the Koran (of which he claims he's an expert), forbids violence, racial and religious hatred, and decrees the use of all narcotics (not just alcohol) as a sin.

Poppy growing in Afganistan was crushed by the the Taliban as a heracy against God, but nothing short of brain power, stops a good (or in this case, evil) conspiracy theory.

There are always gullible people prepared to believe anything, even that the Moon landings were faked. The BNP's slander against Islam is thus tantamount to the blood libel of the "poisoned wells" which led to repeated genocides against Jewish people in the Middle Ages, and later, gave rise to Mein Kamph and the Holocaust.

Thanks for letting your cover slip, Nick Griffin. Humanity now knows, once and for all, like all lethal dictators, you are severely mentally deranged, and great a danger to society.

It is to be hoped the "men in white coats" arrive pronto to cart you off to the nearest "loony bin", before you can plan another Holocaust to deny, the mass slaughter of millions of innocent, law-abiding British Muslims.

To think, you had the guile to disown yourself from the actions of David Copeland, when both of you share the same lust for mass murder.

"You're about as much a true Christian as much as a fanatical suicide bomber is, a true Muslim".

GROSS Hypocrisy is the lifeblood of ordinary, everyday "brown-nosed" party politics (á la "weapons of mass destruction" and "cash for honours"), but (to take an Orwellian narrative), some hypocrisy is more blatant than others.

It doesn't take a degree in nuclear physics to understand that the BNP are guilty of everything they themselves are supposedly against. A party of law and order, they have thieves, rapists, wife-beaters, violent attackers, benefit cheats, and chemical terrorists in their alumni. Not forgetting their "street warriors", far-right supporting football hooligan gangs.

So much for the integrity of their Swindon street wardens.

A party of truth, Nick Griffin is a notorious Holocaust denier and anti-Semite.

A party of integity, they state an intention to end all overseas goverment aid, resulting in the deaths of millions of people worldwide.

A party of freedom, the BNP have expressed a candid wish to shut down the politically independent BBC, replacing it with a Goebbels-like propaganda weapon of racial hatred and division.

A party for the working class, the BNP would shut down all unauthorised (genuine, non-racist) trade unions, replacing it with the shadowy (Hitler-Youth like), whites-only BNP "trade union" Liberty.

Oh, and if you live in a deprived council estate in Dagenham, or elsewhere, and you are young and unemployed, living in bad housing, think again, if you believe a BNP government would leave you happy, wealthy, and contented.

Far right regimes all around the world, from Germany, Spain, Argentina, and Chile, have claimed to support the poor through their love of the nation, but, once in charge, have shown nothing but disdain for the marginalized poor, peasants, and the underclass.

Don't go thinking the BNP would spend money on public services such as schools and hospitals, let alone youth centres, where "dangerous young people" might develop their own anarchistic ideas. Money would be spent on controlling the minds and bodies of you, the people, and keeping the BNP elite in the lap of luxury, as per par with money-grabbing dictators.

Youth, as in the Hitler Youth days, would be tightly controlled.

Young people would not be permitted to have lives of their own.

Youth and community workers would disappear.

Priests and religious leaders would be tortured.

Anyone showing dissent, promptly executed.

Oh, and there would be no freedom of any kind. There would most likely be workfare, slave labour, and the like. If you think McJobs are pretty ropey, just you wait until the MasterRace start using poor people living on council estates as cannon fodder.

Anti-racists are all too often dismissed contemptively as "do-gooders", as if doing good and thinking of others is wrong and stupid. Actually, it makes sense in caring, and thinking of others, regardless of their appearance, religious beliefs, colour, or social background. "Loving thy neighbour" isn't necessarily about morals, ethics, or religion. It makes common sense to live in a peaceful, tolerant society, where everybody can get on with their own lives without hating others, or worrying "who exactly hates me".

Ditch the suspicion. Ditch the paranoia. Ditch the lies, distortions, and mistruths of the BNP. Get a life, enjoy relationships, music, food, video-on demand, whatever. If you cannot enjoy life because you are suffering, alone, and having issues, don't allow yourself to be duped that things would be better under the BNP.

Things would get worse... much, much worse.

Another accusation aimed towards anti-fascists, is that we don't have fun. Well, if you truly believe such lies, you've never attended a Love Music Hate Racism gig in your life.

French Fuhrer Jean Marie LePen, recently suggested young, unmarried people should stick to masturbation instead of engaging in sex.

It seems the far right, while villifying Al Qaeda, are reliant upon puritanical Christian extremists for some of their votes, just as in America. Not only will abortions be banned, and gay and lesbian people be persecuted. Every aspect of your life, living in a fascist state, would be controlled and regulated.

Under the dark days of Nazi Germany, sexual freedom was stricly prohibited. Sex was limited to procreation, in particular, the production of a master-race of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan babies.

If you like the sound of being told what you can and can't do in bed, by your white supremacist Taliban-style government, and you regard this as kinda cool, be our guest... vote BNP.

You must protect the British Heritage, as your BNP keep telling you. They are indeed true. In those wonderful, halycon Victorian days, lovemaking by anything other than the missionary position was strictly forbidden. Just try to turn a blind eye to the BNP's swinging orgies and homoerotic action movies.

THE holier than holy are allowed indescretions...

Hitler's Nazis, while persecuting sexual freedoms of the masses, got up to all sorts of "alternative activites" behind closed doors.

Oh - don't go listening to drum and bass or r&b on your car stereo or IPod. A ban on music of non-Aryan origin likely, to please their far-right paymasters in the American Ku Klux Klan, racist folk music, banjos, and lute twanging, would be order of the day. Expect polyphonic renditions of Auty and Cromie's dreary pseudo-Celtic "pop classics", kids!

All your favourite Quentin Tarantino movies would disappear also, although don't believe this would mean you will be living in a less violent society. Authoritarian, unjust, cruel, and highly criminal society, living under fascist rule will spell years of unending misery.

If you're after patriotic escapism, don't expect Britain or England to be more successful at sports. Without black, Asian or Jewish prospects in football, rugby, and cricket, victories in major sporting events won't come easy, not that we will be allowed to compete for many trophies, once an anti-apartheid boycott on British sporting teams is established.

According to the BNP, Olympic double-gold medal winner Kelly Holmes, World Cup final try scorer Jason Robinson and boxer Amir Khan can never be British. Nor can Private Johnson Beharry, a black British soldier who recently won the Victoria Cross in Iraq.

Don’t forget, the British Army regiment with the most VCs are the Ghurkas.

Next are the Sikh regiments who fought in the Second World War. These people were proud to fight for the British Army.

Fascist Britain would be ostracised worldwide, meaning financial collapse and social decay, as investors from Europe, America, China, Russia, Australia, India, Ireland, and just about everywhere else, would sell up their shares, and stop investing in British industry.

Corporate responsibility is the name of the game - fair-trade coffee, environmentally produced lettuce, etc. Slave labour and mass murder of political dissidents, wouldn't go down well with share holders.

Forget Guantanamo Bay. The whole of the British Isles would be turned into a torture camp, with floggings and executions daily. Failing to salute a BNP official would result in immediate punishment.

Human rights abuses continue to this day across the world (check out Amnesty International to discover more). If supposedly sanitised neo-Nazis like the BNP were to "turn feral", and destroy democracy, Britain would well and truly, in the words of an Alf Garnett-style bigot, "go to the dogs!!!"

Thus, folks, the British National Party are dangerous, deceitful, and a threat to democracy.

You might think we are exaggerating what a BNP Britain, but who during the rise of Adolf Hitler, when many successful people joined the Hitler youth, imagined the Holocaust would happen?

THINK long and hard before using the BNP as a protest vote.

THINK what hardships and injustices a BNP government would inflict, not just upon the lives of others.

THINK how you personally would make YOUR OWN LIFE a bloody misery.

THE next time you hear a Griffin or Collett prattling on about freedom of speech and democracy, imagine their true genocidal intentions, the paranoid netherworld the social misfit Robert Cottage stumbled upon, a deluded philosophy of hardcore white supremacy that the slickest, most media-friendly ("we're not Nazis, lol") veneer, cannot cleanse.

Leopards cannot change their spots, and the BNP is part of a global network of hatred and fear far more deadly than Al Qaeda.

If the BNP are not as they claim, Nazis, why do they attend conferences and worldwide gatherings with the scum of the earth, enjoying the company of the Ku Klux Klan, and SS Veterans? An anti-racist blog, Unite Against Fascism's primary concern is for the victims of hatred and injustice, to make a better world (to paraphrase Martin Luther king) in which we will all be free, whatever our sexual orientation, gender, race, and background.

Muslims, gay and lesbian people, black, white, mixed-race and Asian, we are all at risk from the threat of organised racism. If you wish to find out more, check the links at the side of the blog for information, materials, etc.

Teachers, contact the Unite Against Fascism central office on 0207 833 4916, or Love Music, Hate Racism at 0207 924 0333.

Together we will do our bit to help make the world fairer and safer for everybody, by defeating the odious fascist threat. Life isn't ideal. At times, it's grossly miserable and unfair for us all, but please consider how much worse life would be under a BNP fascist dictatorship.

You cannot help but pity the smalltown, warm-beer, little Englander nostalgists whom the BNP are recruiting to their ranks to stand for election, as they get brainwashed from mild xenophobia into a worldwide white supremacist network of Norse gods, conspiracy theories, Stormfront, SS Veterans, eugenics, and the Ku Klux Klan.

Having discovered the fascist nature of the BNP, Andy Sykes and Maureen Stowe were faced with death threats and hate mail akin to leaving a sinister Wako-like religious cult. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3896213.stm)

ASK YOURSELVES: - Is this the behaviour of a bona-fide political party?

Hope not Hate Update: Day Eleven

We are entering the final stretch of the tour and it is really picking up momentum. The Daily Mirror is devoting more space to our activities, and local newspapers and radio stations are carrying their own reports.

There is a real buzz amongst the team. Maybe it is because the end is in sight but I would like to think that we are still on a high from Sandwell on Sunday. It is hard to describe just how brilliant the day was. A massive turnout of 221 people delivered over 45,000 newspapers in nine wards in the borough. We know from feedback from within the BNP that they are really gutted, none more so than BNP councillor Jamie Lloyd whose refusal to cooperate with police over a series of violent incidents dominated the front page of the local edition of our newspaper.

But mere figures can't express the brilliance of the day. There was a real buzz about the place and that certainly helped people do that extra bit of work to prevent the BNP from winning seats in May. There is already talk of another day of action in Sandwell before polling day.

Today we were in West Yorkshire and although the weather turned it was another great day. We began in Keighley where we met up with local folk from the Bracken Bank estate. This was once a firm base for the BNP but no more. Angela Sinfield, a woman who continues to inspire me, came along with several other mothers from the estate. It was people like her who led the fightback against the BNP and are now determined to work to improve the local area. The principal of the college was also there, telling us how her students were involved in a project to improve local community facilities.

Next stop was Bradford city centre. Bradford has had its problems over the years but there is a lot of great stuff going on locally that is rarely reported. One project involves former local BNP organiser Andy Sykes going into local schools to warn kids about the dangers of extremism. Tong School's head is the first to say that Andy's work has had a profound impact on the young people there.

In the afternoon we headed into Heckmondwike, in Kirklees. The BNP has a firm base here but Labour is running a really hard-hitting local campaign and becoming increasingly confident. A Brazilian band played outside the Morrisons car park while we distributed t-shirts, newspapers and badges.

In all three locations the local media covered our activities.

While most of the team headed over to our hotel in Leeds, Greg (one of the camera crew) and I returned to Bradford for the formal launch of Hope not Hate Yorkshire. Over 300 packed into a banqueting suite to hear Jon Cruddas MP, Marsha Singh MP, and host Imran Hussain welcome the campaign. The Hope not Hate workers, Paul Meszaros and Lorraine Fitzsimons, gave a brief summary of the campaign. Angela Sinfield was again on hand to stress the importance of tackling the tough issues. With the speeches over it was time for another curry – our sixth on the tour so far!

Greg and I eventually arrived at the hotel at 10pm. It had been another long day. Given that the others had been here since 5pm you would have thought they would at least have cleaned up the bus. But no, we found them in the bar … again.

Hope not Hate

Hope not Hate update: BNP 'agent' boards our bus of hope

Nazi salutes...the talk of violence...it all started to make me feel sick

Looking out over his home city of Bradford, where the Daily Mirror Hope Not Hate bus is parked below him, Andy Sykes shakes his head. "We've got a long way to go in this city," he says. "But one day we'll get the BNP voted out of Bradford."

Now a committed anti-racist, Andy knows the British National Party's agenda well. For three years he was the Bradford and Keighley organiser for the far-right party and witnessed at first hand the hate at its heart.

"There were a few things that attracted me to the BNP," Andy, 38, says. "It was 2001. I didn't agree with the war in Afghanistan. The BNP was putting out leaflets saying that the council was taking up to 3,500 asylum seekers. I knew nothing about asylum seekers, but the BNP was saying there were drug dealers, rapists, murderers and paedophiles coming."

He shrugs. "It concerned me. I knew the BNP was a far-right organisation but it seemed very plausible. They were all dressed in shirts and ties and seemed respectable. I did have a feeling inside that it was wrong to listen to them. I'd had black and Asian friends growing up but the BNP seemed to answer concerns that I had."

Andy, a printer at the time, started going to a few meetings at night.

"They would tell you there was a conspiracy... things that weren't being reported in the media and the police were ignoring them. It just seemed to add up." It added up because it was mostly malicious propaganda. "It was just before the 2001 riots in Bradford and there was a lot of tension around," Andy says. "So I became a member, but within a few weeks I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with what was going on. There were Nazi salutes and talk about violence against anti-BNP leafletters and trade unionists. There was so much outright racism and anti-semitism. Beyond the respectable veneer, it was a nasty party."

Andy became so worried he went to speak to his union.

"I ended up talking to Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation. They asked if I would stay inside and pass them information."

Andy intended to leave after a few weeks working undercover, but then the BNP promoted him to Organiser, placing him at the heart of the organisation at national level.

"It wasn't easy. You had to be one of the boys," he says. "You had to agree with things that made you feel sick. But as a parent, I didn't want my child growing up in an area overrun with fascists and racists. That's why I did what I did."

The party's strategy was chillingly simple.

"The BNP would focus on a single issue. In Keighley it was a supposed Asian paedophile ring. In fact the ring was comprised of white and Asian people and wasn't a race issue at all, but the BNP would exploit it. They look at the electoral registers and target areas that are 90 per cent or more white and then knock on doors talking about mass immigration and asylum seekers. They'll talk about broader issues too like anti-social behaviour, drug problems, and local issues like traffic calming. Things close to people's hearts. The race stuff is lower down on the leaflet - trying to trick people into voting for them."

His new role brought him into contact with key figures like BNP leader Nick Griffin and French fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen.

"One of the things I'll never forget was being at a meeting with John Tyndall, the founder of the BNP and listening to him ranting - a racist, anti-semitic attack on Asians, blacks and Jews."

During his time inside the BNP, Andy was able to get warnings out to people the BNP was planning violence against. Andy had the total support of his wife, Susan, throughout. "I couldn't have done any of this without her," he says. "We always had each other's trust."

No one else knew the truth and friends began to avoid him. "I wanted to tell them, but couldn't," he says. In 2003, the BBC approached Andy to help them film secretly inside the Bradford and Keighley BNP. Called The Secret Agent, it turned his world upside down.

"I've been hospitalised. I've had to physically defend myself in the street. I've had people arrested on my property. My tyres have been slashed, I've had rocks thrown at my car - but I've never regretted making the film."

Now Andy is a youth worker, running school projects that are aimed at preventing extremism from taking hold. "The BNP will lie to you and say they are going to change the world, but they won't change anything," he says. "They are only interested in dividing your community."

TODAY: The bus will visit the set of Emmerdale

Mirror