Live Nation drawn into BNP billboard row

BECTU has written to venue and theatre operator Live Nation criticising its parent company for selling advertising space to the British National Party.

Live Nation, which is now Britain's largest theatre group, was four years ago spun off from ClearChannel, the multi-national communications giant which owns more than 200 steet-side advertising hoardings in the UK, and runs LED screens in London's Picadilly Circus.

ClearChannel has caused a political storm by agreeing to sell advertising space to the British National Party in the runup to the European and council elections on June 4th. Anti-facist group Searchlight has organised a postal protest against the move which it says has prompted thousands of complaints to the company, although ClearChannel disputes the actual numbers.

Live Nation owns many landmark UK theatres, including the Edinburgh Playhouse, Liverpool Empire, Torquay Princess, and several West End venues.

In a letter to Live Nation's UK President, BECTU's General Secretary outlines the concerns of members in many of the company's venues that their employer could be accused of being indirectly linked to the British National Party.

The sale of advertising space by ClearChannel runs counter to a cross-party condemnation of the BNP, with parties like UKIP and the Conservatives making strenuous efforts to distance themselves from the BNP's racist policies.

The union has called for ClearChannel to cancel the BNP's planned billboard advertising campaign, and join BECTU in condemning the party's activites.

This is not the first time that the BNP has caused controversy in the arts world. In 2007 the English National Ballet's principal dancer Simone Clarke was outed as a BNP member, leading to protests from numerous civil groups including BECTU.

Text of letter from BECTU to Live Nation:

28 May 2009

Paul Latham
President
Live Nation UK

Dear Paul

RE: British National Party Advertising

It has been brought to BECTU’s attention that the British National Party has, apparently, recently been sold substantial advertising space on Clear Channel Billboards around the UK. I am sure you will appreciate that the activities of the BNP are abhorrent to BECTU members, and, like a great many decent people everywhere, they would be deeply concerned at the prospect of commercial companies making profits on the back of such activities.

Equally, I am sure you will also appreciate that, given the recent corporate history of Live Nation and Clear Channel, there will be particular concern amongst those of our members employed by you. I have no doubt that they would wish to be reassured that their employer is in no way associated with, or condones any promotion of, the BNP.

I would therefore invite you to reassure our members on this, by joining with BECTU in condemning the activities of the BNP, and expressing your opposition to Clear Channel selling advertising space to them. I would hope that you would also call upon Clear Channel’s owners to condemn the BNP, and to withdraw from this arrangement immediately.

Yours sincerely

GERRY MORRISSEY
General Secretary

BECTU

If you tell a lie big enough...

A British National Party claim on Monday that the police are investigating Searchlight for attacking a commercial company’s website is a lie of which Joseph Goebbels would be proud and further evidence of how the party’s election campaign is falling apart.

The BNP website went down for several hours over the holiday weekend. On Sunday evening the party claimed it had suffered a “massive Denial of Service Attack … emanating from Eastern Europe and Russia”.

The statement, which appeared on the blog of Simon Darby, the BNP’s deputy leader, continued: “On Friday the servers of Clear Channel, part of a huge conglomerate that provides billboard advertising, suffered a similar attack. Their IT professionals tracked the criminal activity back to a notorious ‘anti-fascist’ organisation.

“This organisation was protesting at the decision by Clear Channel to allow the BNP to display advertising in support of our European Election Campaign.” The statement claimed that Clear Channel’s lawyers were issuing writs against “the perpetrators” that would involve “the possibility of potential criminal charges including racketeering”.

A further statement on Monday claimed that the “Counter Terrorism Unit at Scotland Yard” was investigating the attack on the BNP website and that Searchlight “is now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police for a similar attack on the servers of Clear Channel”.

Clear Channel denied the BNP’s claims. A spokeswoman for the company told a Searchlight researcher: “I’ve checked with our IT department and we haven’t experienced any denial of service”.

Last week Searchlight asked people to email Clear Channel to protest against its decision to display BNP posters and over 5,300 people responded. So far Clear Channel is standing by its policy of allowing all political parties to advertise at the market rate though the company “does not support them in any way”.

The BNP knows well the difference between a denial of service attack on a website and an email protest campaign. Paul Golding, who runs the BNP’s “Operation Fightback”, has himself often asked supporters to email media outlets that have run anti-BNP stories and anyone else who has upset the fascist party.

We can only assume that the BNP has realised just how hard it is being hit by the constant exposés of its fascism and lies in the media and is desperately trying to divert attention from its difficulties by throwing out wild accusations against its opponents.

Last week the BNP placed on its website an interview with Helen Forster, a party member, that Golding recorded after her conviction for racist intimidation was exposed in the Daily Mirror. Although she had told the Mirror reporter that she was “still in the BNP”, she lied blatantly to Golding that she had never joined the party. The BNP then falsely claimed it had taken the “Daily Mirror’s scalp”. Promised writs from the BNP’s fake “lawyer”, Lee Barnes, failed to materialise.

Searchlight awaits Clear Channel’s writs and Metropolitan Police enquiries about a fictitious attack on Clear Channel’s website with bated breath. The BNP should remember that wasting police time is a serious criminal offence.

Meanwhile, whatever the real reason for the absence of the BNP’s website over the weekend, Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, could not let it pass without grabbing another opportunity to milk his supporters for money. Claiming ludicrously that the BNP had suffered the “largest cyber attack in recorded history”, he explained that they had been “forced to hire a Cyber Defence expert” and “need to invest in additional hardware and servers”. The items had to be paid for immediately, but “every penny we possess is allocated to the Euro Election Campaign”.

The party therefore desperately needed £5,000, so much so that Griffin had “personally donated £250 to this appeal to set things in motion”, no doubt yet another of the lies that seem to trip so easily from his mouth.

Hope not hate

The lies of the BNP exposed

Has anyone even seen one of these mythical billboards?

With the announcement that the BNP had sold billboard space by Clear Channel, Hope Not Hate launched a campaign "asking all our supporters to send a message to Clear Channel – demanding that they take down the BNPs racist propaganda." Not too long afterward, the official BNP website issued the following story in response;

Two British National Party election advertisement billboards in different parts of the country came under threat from mobs of Islamists this afternoon. One billboard was covered up after the mob intimidated the police by threatening to attack.

The first sign of trouble came in the West Midlands where an Islamist mob emerged from a local mosque after Friday prayers - where they had possibly been stirred up during the sermon - and threatened a BNP billboard advertising ‘British jobs for British workers,’ according to BNP press officer Simon Darby.

“The police were called in to protect the billboard, which they did, despite the mob taunting them, threatening Jihad and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and other such militant Islamist slogans,” Mr Darby said.

“The outbreak of militancy appears to have been coordinated, because at almost the same time, a BNP advertising billboard in Luton was surrounded by a similar mob. They were also shouting Islamist slogans and carrying items which were clearly intended to be used to set fire to it,” he continued.

“The billboards do not even mention Islam or Islamism, and merely call for British people to be given jobs, so the cause of the Islamist militancy obviously lies elsewhere,” he said.

According to Mr Darby, the local police in Luton then ordered that the billboard be covered up “for public safety.”

“In other words, mobs can threaten violence in the street and instead of being arrested, the police and authorities cower down and submit to whatever these mobs want,” Mr Darby said.

“Forcing the BNP to cover up its billboard underlines the fact that Britain is being colonised by Islam and that this is leading to the suppression of democracy.

“This is what the immigration policies of successive Tory and Labour governments have created: A situation where a violent mob of Islamists can dictate to the public which party they have a right to hear.”

Mr Darby said the BNP was not going to be intimidated into backing down. “We have too much at stake,” he said. “We are the only party which opposes the Islamification of Britain and we will not be put off by threats of violence from these people.

“The BNP will never stop until it has reclaimed this land for its indigenous people, so those who seek to destroy Britain had better accept this or leave.”

However, the BNP report contains absolutely no pictures or documentary evidence of this supposed event, and quotes nobody but press officer Simon Darby. More than that, a quick search on Google turns up no source on this besides BNP and 'white nationalist' sites, citing the official BNP site as the origin of the tale.

Especially given the fact that the party has been so quick to denounced supposed lies about them by the press, "lies" which I have revealed elsewhere to actually contain considerable truth to them, one might have thought they would have been more careful. I'd suggest, with more than a hint of glee, that this leaves them open to exactly the same kind of "Operation Fightback" from the Muslim community as they have been running against the corporate media.

Truth, Reason and Liberty