HOPE Not Hate Proudly Presents BILLY BRAGG

Click here for tickets from ticketline

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HOPE Not Hate Proudly Presents BILLY BRAGG

HOPE Not Hate Proudly Presents
BILLY BRAGG

+ Special Guest

Briana Corrigan

Saturday 12th March 2011

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2
in MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY UNION
OXFORD ROAD
MANCHESTER M13 9PR



Click here for tickets from ticketline

Click here for tickets from seetickets

HOPE Not Hate Proudly Presents BILLY BRAGG

HOPE Not Hate Proudly Presents BILLY BRAGG

+ Special Guest

Briana Corrigan

Saturday
12th March 2011

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2
in MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY UNION
OXFORD ROAD
MANCHESTER M13 9PR

Click here for tickets from ticketline

Click here for tickets from seetickets

Billy Bragg hits out at BNP following hate campaign against him

Singer blames BNP for dozens of letters sent to his neighbours

Billy Bragg has become the target of a hate mail campaign aiming to drive him out of the village he lives in. The singer, famously a campaigner for left-wing causes and anti-fascist organisations, has seen dozens of letters sent to his neighbours in the village of Burton Bradstock, Dorset, with some describing him as a "hypocrite" and "anti-British".

Bragg has claimed the anonymous letters, which have a Southampton postmark, are from a British National Party member and has urged his neighbours to bin them.

One letter ended with the sentence: "People of Burton Bradstock stand up for the British and kick this traitor out of your village and out of Dorset forever." In it Bragg was described as "useless as a singer and a man".

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Bragg described the letter as the "powerless ranting of a bitter individual angry that, even in a sleepy village, people reject the politics of racism". He also reaffirmed his commitment to fighting racism, adding: "I will campaign against racism wherever I find it."

Bragg has not, as yet, reported the letters to the police.

NME

Billy Bragg: Beating the BNP at Glastonbury, June 26th 2010

Show Racism the Red Card are taking part in a debate at noon on Saturday on Glastonbury's Leftfield Stage

The Leftfield Stage - Glastonbury festival's "Pop and Politics" Tent - is returning to Worthy Farm this year . It is curated by Billy Bragg, and Show Racism the Red Card are delighted to have been invited to take part in the afternoon debate he is hosting on Beating the BNP.

Billy Bragg is a musician and activist, born and raised in Barking. During the General Elections this year he was a very active ambassador of the Hope not Hate campaign against the BNP.

If you're at Glastonbury, please come and visit the Leftfield Stage (Saturday, 12pm) to hear more from Billy Bragg, who is joined by SRtRC's Leroy Rosenior and Tony Kearns, Deputy General Secretary of the CWU.

Show Racism the Red Card

BNP supporter spoofs 'The Spoof' (maybe)

Q: When is a spoof not a spoof? A: When it's BNP propaganda.

For those of you who have yet to come across 'The Spoof', it's an online repository of spoof articles, many of which look like they might be hysterically funny but turn out to be about as entertaining as reading back issues of Punch while waiting for the dentist to clean off the blood from the patient before you.

The article that caught my eye was titled 'IMF Shock "Only Nick Griffin's BNP Can Fix The British Economy!"'. With a title like that and with all we know about the BNP's financial corruption and mismanagement, it looked like essential reading, if only for the odd snigger after a busy day.

It started off fairly promisingly and looked like it might be a tad more subtle than the usual fare (like 'Scientist proves Kerry Katona doesn't actually exist' or 'Entire UK Population To Hide From Inspector Morse').

'Red faces all around when Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund amazed journalists and commentators at a news conference this morning In Berlin by announcing that only the British National Party has put forward enough spending cuts to save an almost certain imminent collapse of the British economy within the next few months.

Mr Strauss Khan endorsed the plans of Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP to make the real and substantial spending cuts necessary to cut the deficit and get Britain on track to regain her financial independence from abroad.

"Only the British National party" he said "has proposed enough cuts to prevent Britain from going begging for a bailout to the International Monetary Fund within the next few months of an election win by any of the three wings of the British One Party State."'

Hmm. That phrase 'British One Party State' seems strangely familiar...

'Mr. Griffin commented "Unlike the other parties we will hide nothing, we will open all the books on the economy to the British people and the British media and trust them to understand, instead of hearing bits of the facts filtered through the the spin doctors in Number 11 or the main party's phoney think-tanks."'

Odd then that Griffin can't even open the books (or indeed, balance them) for the BNP itself, let alone the entire UK, but there you go. The article continues:

'Before releasing the full economic policy as listed below this report, Mr Strauss-Kahn gave some interesting highlights drawn up by his advisors:

The British National Party will begin by carefully explaining to the British people the truth about the economy and explain why a number of jobs, but less than those proposed by the other parties, will be lost for a while in public services. It will seek to get the British people on board in the spirit of the Blitz, when Britains [sic] united together to make sacrifices now to lay the foundations for a strong economy in the future for their children...'

The article then drifts into a complete (and long) reproduction of the finance section from the BNP's manifesto. Not funny at all, in fact.

So who would post something like this? Well, that at least is easily explained because the item was provided by a writer named 'sarasara'. Sarasara's homepage turns out to be a YouTube channel packed with pro-BNP and EDL videos and this little image at the top, which might help to explain things.

A search of other stories by Sarasara reveals that he, she or it has been a busy little bee on the BNP's behalf. A story named Secret MI5 Report Highlights Nick Griffin Threat is another puff-piece for the BNP, while others attack the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Unite Against Fascism, Billy Bragg and anyone even vaguely anti-fascist or linked in any way to anyone who has dared to question the BNP.

In fact it's pretty clear where Sarasara's political sympathies lie, particularly when, on reading an article about a fictitious invitation to Nick Griffin to visit Israel, the phrase 'fascist far-left anti-Israel UAF' is used. Sarasara's 'satires' are no such thing - they are pro-BNP propaganda, pure and simple.

The Spoof, naturally, has a set of fairly familiar terms and conditions for the writers who submit their stories, one of which is:

'You must not use the website for any of the following...to impersonate any third party or otherwise mislead as to the origin of your content'

I would suggest that providing political propaganda in the guise of satire is breaching that condition and I would ask that readers complain about this to the site's webmaster or the site's administrator. It's one thing to be attacked by humour - we do it all the time - but it's quite another to have an innocent site (if it is one) used to unwittingly spread the BNP's filth, lies and idiocies.

Annoyingly, Mark Lowton, the owner (or at least the site registrant) of The Spoof, lives here in Lancaster, so purely because I'm a nosey bastard, I searched to see what other domains he had an interest in and immediately one popped up, so to speak - www.bountifulpenis.com. Says it all really, doesn't it.

On the front line of the war against the BNP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tribune

Billy Bragg clashes with BNP's Richard Barnbrook

Billy Bragg confronts Richard Barnbrook in Dagenham

Singer and activist engages in finger-pointing row with the BNP's London assembly member in east London

Billy Bragg was engaged in a finger-pointing row with a senior member of the British National party during a day of action in London, telling him his "racist fascist" politics offered no help to voters. Bragg was leafleting in Barking and Dagenham, one of the BNP's top target areas in next month's elections, when he bumped into the BNP's London assembly member, Richard Barnbrook, who has attacked the singer on his blog.

Bragg, who was born and raised in Barking, told Barnbrook: "You do not represent the people of Barking and Dagenham," as the pair became embroiled in a heated argument. "You are exploiting the genuine concerns of people here and you are making the problems worse."

Barnbrook, who was elected to the London assembly in 2008, accused Bragg of "mouthing away" and said the "ballot box will determine what happens".

The exchange came during a day of action against the BNP which saw 541 volunteers deliver 91,000 Hope Not Hate newspapers.

The BNP is due to launch its manifesto this week and has claimed it is on the verge of causing a "political earthquake". It claims it has a chance of taking control of Barking and Dagenham council and of gaining two MPs – in Stoke Central and Barking.

However, the far-right party's campaign has been beset by problems, and it appears to be floundering in the polls. Internal criticism over Nick Griffin's leadership came to a head earlier this month when publicity director Mark Collett was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill him. In Stoke, the party's number two target, Alby Walker, who led the BNP on the local council for four years, is standing as an independent in the general election.

Walker said he was leaving the BNP because of a "vein of Holocaust denying within the BNP that I cannot identify myself with."

Meanwhile Griffin, who is standing in Barking, has been forced to change the BNP's whites-only membership policy following a legal battle with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Last week the Electoral Commission announced it was launching a formal investigation into the party's 2008 accounts. These difficulties appear to have hit the party's ability to stand candidates in next month's local elections.

Guardian

A sunny day out in Barking & Dagenham...

Amazing day today in Barking & Dagenham. There were 530 volunteers at last count posting 82,000 Hope not Hate special newspapers through every door in the Borough. The papers were made in conjunction with the Daily Mirror, and featured some of the paper's best known columnists like Fiona Phillips and Oliver Holt.

Local boy and Bard of Barking, Billy Bragg, was amongst those leafleting the area, along with Jon Cruddas MP. Out on the doorstep, Billy had a frank exchange of views with Richard Barnbrook, the BNP's only London Assembly member.

Otherwise, the sun shone and there were lots of families, a perfect day for Hope. Then, all 500 people came back to HQ for a curry lunch and impromptu gig.

As well as a local gospel choir who'd signed up to Hope not Hate after getting eggs thrown at them on the way into church, Billy Bragg sang a tribute to his own personal Route66 - the less glamorous A13 - one of the only songs to feature rhymes with Wapping and Shoeburyness. He also sang Half English, and his favourite Woody Guthrie song, All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose.

"There are worse things than the BNP being elected in Barking," Billy told the crowd. "The worst thing would be if the rest of the country turned its back on Barking and decided it was full of racists. Because it's not."

Mirror

Musicians demand legal right to stop BNP selling their CDs on its website

A group of leading musicians, including band members from Blur and Pink Floyd, have demanded the right to prevent their music being used or sold for profit by the British National Party.

The far-right party raises money by selling a selection of nostalgic folk albums on its website - but many of the musicians featured have discovered that they are powerless to stop their work financing the party. In a letter to The Times tomorrow, members of the Featured Artists’ Coalition and Musicians’ Union have called for legally enshrined moral rights over the reproduction and sale of their material.

“We would, on behalf of our joint membership of over 31,000 members, like to have our opposition to the BNP’s politics and morals formally noted,” read the letter signed by artists including Dave Rowntree, from Blur, Nick Mason, of Pink Floyd, and singer-songwriter Billy Bragg.

“In the lead up to the European elections, it has come to our attention that the BNP is selling compilation CDs through its website in order to raise funds for campaigning. Many of the musicians featured on these . . . have no legal right to object to their music being used in this way.”

The BNP's commercial partner, Excalibur, sells a range of CDs including Proud Heritage, Rule Britannia and an album called West Wind, written by party leader Nick Griffin, which claims “to incorporate folk and more upbeat tempos to deliver a powerful message of how British people have been disposed”.

Paddy Gordon, bass guitarist for an Ulster band called Brier, was furious to find that his music was helping to fund the BNP’s campaign for next week’s European election.

“I got an e-mail from a friend saying: ‘have you seen where your music is for sale?’ My initial reaction was shock, now I am very angry,” he said.

“These BNP people are taking the proceeds from other people’s work. We don’t want any connection with such a party but we seem to be powerless to do anything about it.” Mr Gordon said the songs included on A Feast of Irish Folk were love songs with no political links.

Dame Vera Lyne, 91, threatened to take legal action against the BNP earlier this year when she discovered that her work, including the White Cliffs of Dover, was available to buy on the Excalibur website. Under current law, however, musical performers or composers have little or no ability to prevent retailers selling their work once it is sold by a wholesaler to a particular distributor.

Nigel McCune, national organiser at the Musicians’ Union, said that a moral right should be enacted in law to give musicians a safeguard against this kind of association.

“There is nothing as it stands to stop the BNP from acting in this way and there is nothing that the performers can do to prevent it. If a moral right came in you would then be able to test how far you could stretch it,” he said. “Billy Bragg, for example, could find his track New England for sale on a BNP website raising money for something that he has spent his entire musical life campaigning against. We would like to think that there should be a framework in this country sufficient to prevent something like that happening.”

The BNP made it clear today that they did not intend to remove the work of artists who did not want to be linked the party. A BNP spokesman said: “They’ve already made there money haven’t they? Once that music’s gone through a distributor. They’re politicising themselves to a high degree by doing this and we wouldn’t really be concerned by that. It’s up to us what we sell - we’re not changing. There’s no suggestion through this that artists support the BNP or otherwise. They’re barking up the wrong tree to be honest.”

Times Online

Livingstone turns spotlight on BNP 'threat'

Ken Livingstone’s campaign today turned the spotlight on the threat of the British National Party gaining a seat on the London Assembly.

The Mayor was out campaigning in Holloway to draw Londoners’ attention to the BNP threat. The BNP needs just five per cent of the vote to gain representation on the 25-member Assembly.

Ken Livingstone’s campaign said: "One of the things at stake in this election is London's future as a united diverse city, where all communities and individuals feel they belong. The British National Party is a direct threat to that unity. There are some policies where it is easy to see the BNP's fascist roots – the ban on building mosques, the wearing of the veil in public and housing allocation based on racial discrimination.

"They try to combine this bigotry with more mainstream-sounding policies to try to win votes but the true character of the BNP is extreme right wing politics. Like all fascist parties the BNP seek power with populist policies but their aim is to divide communities and foster hatred and violence.

"London's diversity is a major strength in the modern globalised world. Any kind of electoral success for the BNP would be a blow to London's economic future as well as to the harmony of our communities. We have to get across one simple fact: there's only one way to stop the BNP, which is by actually going out to vote against them. A low voter turnout will help the BNP get elected. For the fascists, success means getting a five per cent of the total London vote. The higher the turnout the harder it is for them jump the five per cent hurdle."

Singer Billy Bragg said: "The BNP will be relying on two things on election day: the anger of their supporters to propel them into the voting booth and the complacency of those who feel comfortable with a diverse London. Although small, the presence of the BNP on the London Assembly would give legitimacy to racists in the capital. Every vote cast for Ken Livingstone helps keep the BNP out."

At his campaign launch, Ken Livingstone was joined by Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murder teenager Stephen Lawrence who said: "Ken has fostered a culture where London's communities are treated with respect. The clearest sign of that is that racist attacks have fallen by over 50% since Ken has become Mayor despite going up in the rest of the country. That makes a real difference to the lives of many, many Londoners."

24dash

Billy's back with all guns blazing

I may have missed the opening 20 minutes - because I was watching the mighty Arsenal humiliate AC Milan in their own backyard (sorry Billy) - but it took nothing away from a stonking night all round for north London, thanks to a cracking set from the pride of Essex, Billy Bragg.

It was about my 20th Bragg concert and some 25 years since I first saw him at the Captain's Cabin off Haymarket, but he has lost none of his spark or fire. In fact, this was the best I have seen him play since the halcyon days of the ubiquitous GLC benefits and his annual New Year's Eve shows at the Hackney Empire.

It was helped, of course, by the delightful surprise of an encore that was the whole of his debut album, Life's A Riot, including a riotous climax of A New England, that brought the memories flooding back as almost the whole arena sung along word for word in unison. And the best thing about it was that you could tell that Barking-born Billy loved it as much as those of us in the audience, with a big grin on his face as he played songs that have not had an airing for many a year.

As he put it: "Some bands, like Echo and the Bunnymen, need the Albert Hall and an orchestra to play one of their old albums. I'll just do it as an encore on my guitar."

Before that, he had trodden the difficult path of mixing old favourites with new material with aplomb, with current single I'll Keep The Faith fitting in well among earlier gems World Turned Upside Down, Must I Paint You a Picture, Days Like These, Sexuality and a rare, but brilliant, Between The Wars. There were also cover versions, from The Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen In love to Glenn Campbell.

It was also the first time for about 15 years that I have seen him without a band or any form of accompaniment (not even long-time cohorts Wiggy or Hank Wangford) and it was nice to see he has lost none of his strength or power as a solo artist.

It also allows him even more freedom to amuse, entertain and inform the crowd with his views on anything and everything from the indignity of ageing to the continued threat of fascism and the British National Party, taking time out to namecheck the Recorder-backed Love Music Hate Racism Carnival at Victoria Park, Hackney on Sunday, April 27.

The set finished with an impassioned There Is Power In A Union and a plea for everyone to attend the carnival and vote against the BNP in the London Assembly elections on May 1, followed by the usual closer, Waiting for The Great Leap Forwards, complete with its traditionally updated lyrics - even if they were a bit similar to the last time I saw him in 2006.

So to the treat of that encore and what a treat it was. And he still finishes with the immortal words: "My name's Billy Bragg, I'm from Barking, Essex", just as he always did.

You can't keep a good man down.

Barking and Dagenham Recorder

Stunning line-up revealed for LMHR show at Glastonbury Festival

Saturday 23d June 2007, 6pm-12.30am
Left Field, Glastonbury Festival
(sorry - Glasto ticket-holders only)

We can now unveil - almost! - our complete line-up for our show in the Left Field at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. LMHR takes over the 5,000-capacity Left Field big tent for the Saturday night (June 23rd).

At 6.00pm, we kick off with a debate on how can we can best take on racism and fascists like the BNP, with guest speakers including some of the artists performing later along with LMHR, Unite and trade union campaigners.

Then, from 7pm, we’re proud to present an eclectic line-up we reckon is unparalalled anywhere else at the festival. Our very special guest headliner is 100% confirmed but will be only be announced much nearer the time. All we can say is it’s a huge UK act that’s supported us in the past - and this will be the act’s only festival appearance this summer.

The rest of the line-up is more than special too:

Akala, Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly, Lethal Bizzle, Plan B, Noisettes, Rodney P (host), Killa Kela, Natty, No Lay, The Mentalists, DJs Skitz & Statik...

Throughout the weekend there’ll be an LMHR/UAF stall inside the Left Field, so if you’re going to the festival and can spare us an hour or two to help promote LMHR we’d like to hear from you too.

For more on the Left Field, go to http://www.leftfield.coop

Geoff Martin, Left Field Director, told us about his stage and what else is going on there at this year’s Glasto: “The Left Field is the area of the Glastonbury Festival site run by the trade union movement and where we celebrate the core union values of international solidarity, collective strength, fair trade, peace, freedom and tolerance. Set up in 2002, the Left Field has grown from being a beer tent with a drum riser in one corner to the biggest covered venue on site with a capacity of 5000. This year we bring back Left Field troubadors Billy Bragg, Mark Thomas, Tony Benn, the Beat and Glen Tilbrook and we are joined by some very special guests for 2007 including Lethal Bizzle, Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly! and Carlos Lozarro from Colombia who has survived eight assassination attempts by the right wing death squads.

With Shelter, we are bringing the affordable housing campaign right to the heart of Glastonbury and we are delighted to be flying two amazing bands, the Poise Rite and Habakuk, in from Poland to put a rock and roll edge on the campaign to recruit migrant workers into trade unions.

We know you’ll come down and see us at the Left Field - but stick around with us, enjoy the late night sessions on our second stage and help us reaffirm the campaigning spirit that is an essential part of Glastonbury.”

LMHR

Hope not Hate update: Day eight

This weekend was always going to be some of our important days of the campaign. Across the country activists were distributing anti-BNP literature. From Bradford to Luton, Burnley to Lincoln, hundreds of people were out.

Arguably the two biggest challenges we face in the forthcoming elections are in Sandwell and Stoke-on-Trent, where the BNP averaged 33% and 30% of the votes in the seats they contested in 2006. It was because of days of actions in these two areas that the Hope not Hate bus has taken a less than direct route from London to Scotland. Having travelled up to Sheffield and then across to Manchester and Liverpool we then headed back south to the West Midlands.

It almost got worse. The Dancing on Ice stars were supposed to join the bus in Birmingham but for reasons beyond our control this was not possible. An alternative date was given for the Saturday. So, as we left Birmingham on the Friday night we thought the plan was to go to Stoke-on-Trent and then head back south to Birmingham and then Sandwell before continuing the journey north. This plan was certainly testing the patience of our normally relaxed and accommodating driver. Fortunately another cancellation from the Dancing on Ice stars meant we reverted to our orginial plan which was to spend a day in Stoke-on-Trent.

A changeover of Mirror photographer and Ros having a day off meant that it was a slightly depleted team that headed off that morning. Our first stop was to Stoke City's Britannia Stadium where we met former Stoke player Terry Conway and Irish author Don Mullin. The pair had been drawn together by the legendary Gordon Banks. Terry was part of the 1972 FA Cup winning team alongside Banks, while Don is just written a biography of the man he describes as his hero.

Back onto the A50 we headed into Coalville, a former mining area which has fallen on hard times in recent years. We were later to learn that the area once had the nickname of the 'United Nations' due to the workers who moved into the area to work down the pits from across Britain and Eastern Europe. Anyway, today we were attending a Hope not Hate anti-racist fun day organised by the local Kids Zone project. Over 200 children and young people attended at some stage during the day. They were treated to a host of great activities, from a DJ school to a rodeo, face painting to a steel band.

A couple of miles away more serious activity was taking place. Almost 100 people came out for the Stoke-on-Trent day of action organised by local anti-BNP group NorSCARF and Searchlight. Over 10,000 copies of the Searchlight newspaper were distributed during the day, with most of the work concentrating on the BNP heartland in Stoke South. The day was rounded off by a performance a steel band and Billy Bragg, who had generously given his weekend to the campaign.

Stoke-on-Trent has been a major BNP target for several years and campaigning against them has taken its toll on many activitists during that period. However, the success of today has given new and seasoned campaigners a renewed lease of energy which they are determined to make the most of over the next few weeks.

The Watson household in West Bromwich East provided the evening's entertainment, which given the excesses of much of the tour was a welcome respite.

Hope not Hate