Home Secretary seeks ban on BNP protesting near Home Office

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says she wants to prevent the BNP from targeting Home Office buildings for protests after a strong complaint from the Public and Commercial Services union

In a letter to PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka, Ms Smith says she shares our concern about the use of the Home Office as a "backdrop" for BNP demonstrations.

PCS wrote to the home secretary in April after the BNP held an anti-immigration demo outside Lunar House in Croydon, one of the department’s main immigration enquiry offices. With just hours notice of the event, the union organised a counter demonstration and pointed out that PCS representatives had previously been denied permission to hand out leaflets about members’ pay on the same spot.

The letter from Ms Smith makes clear that the Home Office will do everything it can to prevent similar demonstrations taking place near Home Office property, and that trade unions will be fully informed about any future demonstrations. Ms Smith also gives a "personal commitment that no such demonstration will be allowed to take place actually on Home Office premises".

PCS expects this pledge to be honoured by whoever takes over as home secretary if Ms Smith steps down, as has been reported, and the union will be taking this up at the earliest opportunity with Home Office management and any future home secretary.

The union also believes BNP members should be barred from employment in the civil and public services – as they are from the police and prison service – because their views are incompatible with the provision of universal public services, free from discrimination.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "It was an absolute scandal that the BNP was ever allowed even close to Lunar House, an office that provides an important and valuable public service to migrants and their families. But we are pleased that Ms Smith has given us a commitment that it will not happen again. If it is true that she is stepping down as home secretary then I will expect her successor to honour this commitment in every detail and see that this is taken forward as a priority.

"The fascist BNP has no place in our communities, it does not speak for ordinary people and its methods of scapegoating and victimising some of the most vulnerable members of our society must be opposed at every step. Furthermore, BNP members should not be allowed to work as civil and public servants and we will continue to press the government on this issue."

PCS

BNP members should be fired from Civil Service, says union

British National Party (BNP) members in the Civil Service should be fired, union officials have said.

At the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) annual conference in Brighton, delegates applauded the demand by Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, that government employees who were also members of the BNP should be sacked immediately.

"The government should sack all members of the BNP that work in the Civil Service," Serwotka said. "There is no place for the division sewn by the BNP and their xenophobic cry of "British jobs for British workers" given to us by Gordon Brown."

The comments come as a series of wildcat strikes by workers at refineries and power plants have begun in a row over a Welsh employer's breach of an agreement to employ local labour.

Serwotka also backed the refusal by postal workers to deliver BNP election leaflets due to fear of a public backlash.

However, a BNP spokesman told Personnel Today that Serwotka was hypocritical and "out of line". "This is coming from a man who says we're totalitarian and tyrannical, it's out of line and decries belief," he said. "He needs to lay down on a couch and get his head checked."

Currently, only the police and Prison Service prohibit membership of the BNP by its staff.

Personnel Today

BNP-backing officials in polls row

A Labour MP is urging Gordon Brown to ban members of the BNP from working on services dealing with the public after it was revealed that the Department for Work and Pensions has given permission for two civil servants to stand for the party in next week's local elections.

Michael Foster, MP for Hastings, is taking up the issue after the Public and Commercial Services union objected to Frank Swayne standing in Hastings and Daniel Thorlby standing in an inner city ward in Newcastle upon Tyne. Foster said yesterday: " It is outrageous that the DWP should have allowed these people to stand and I am asking the prime minister to look at this. We should follow the example of the police who do not employ members of the BNP because they would be perceived to be racist when dealing with the public."

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS, plans to launch an attack on the department's decision at the Love Music, Hate Racism rally in Victoria Park, east London, on Sunday. He will say: "This department is supposed to be about helping some of the most vulnerable people in society, and promoting equality. How can it possibly be right for active BNP members to be working there?"

Swayne handles claims from single parents at the Hastings Child Support Agency office while Thorlby handles pensions claims in Newcastle.

A DWP spokesman said: "Standing for election as a local councillor is, for a civil servant at this level, permitted by the civil service management code."

Guardian