BNP leaflets will go undelivered

The extremist British National Party face the prospect of seeing their election leaflets go undelivered, the postal workers leader has warned.

Billy Hayes, who leads the Communication Workers Union, sent a reminder that his members are fully entitled to refuse to handle any BNP material. Hayes told OBV: “The union’s position is we negotiated a conscience clause where every individual members is entitled to refuse to deliver if the find it offensive to deliver leaflets for fascist parties.”

Asked whether that could mean widespread refusal to deliver BNP leaflets, he said: “It’s quite common, yes. You don’t get many people in Stockwell [for instance] wanting to deliver BNP leaflets.”

The union leader was speaking during a visit to Operation Black Vote’s east London offices. Hayes stressed that it was important for political parties to get his members on their side, but added that he had no intention of following his predecessor into politics.

Asked if he was ever tempted to follow the CWU’s former general-secretary Alan Johnson, he replied: “Only in so far as representing my members. I have no desire to be the Home Secretary just yet.”

OBV

‘We should have challenged the BNP years ago’

The decision of Trevor Phillips’ equalities body to the British National Party to court over the far-right outfit’s “apartheid constitution” is a brave gamble, but one which seems to enjoy fairly widespread support

One community activist, who first mooted the idea of challenging the BNP’s very legitimacy three years ago, said he couldn’t understand why it had not been done earlier. Nic Careem, a former Labour activist from Camden in north London, who is now with the Conservatives, said he originally argued that black and Asian people should join the BNP en mass to cause chaos and expose the extent of racism inside the party of Nick Griffin.

He told OBV Blog today: ‘I was speaking about this at meetings three years ago, saying that we should challenge the BNP’s legitimacy from within. I’m glad that the equalities commission are now doing it. I’ve never understood why the old CRE [Commission for Racial Equality] never challenged it.’

It’s doubtful whether many Black people could be persuaded to become BNP ‘entryists’ in order to destroy the far right party from within, but there is certainly merit in the legal challenge to the BNP’s constitution, which forbids non-white people from joining.

The point about the BNP’s policy of discriminating on the grounds of race matters because they are a party that on the surface competes for the votes of all voters, and seeks to govern for all races, even though we know that, in their hearts, they only wish to serve white people.

It’s a very different situation compared, say, to the Black Police Association, a body that does not seek to police only for Black people but wants to a quality service for everyone. The BPA, like any Black association in a large public authority, is simply a coming together of Black people to lobby for equality.

Unlike the BNP, who want to actively discriminate in favour of white people, I have never come across any BPA member who wants preferential treatment for Black officers. The key difference seems to have been lost on Telegraph columnist Gerald Warner, who claims today that the move against the BNP by the Equality and Human Rights Commission will end up “backfiring” and lead to the BPA being outlawed. Warner writes:

“Many people feel considerable unease about our police force being Balkanised into ethnic groupings. (Would a National White Police Association be tolerated?) It is difficult to avoid the impression that Trevor Phillips is tugging at a thread on his pullover that could unravel the whole garment.”

While Warner is voicing a commonly-held opinion, his misguided views need to be challenged head-on if the EHRC’s legal action against the BNP is to be taken seriously by the public at large.

There is a world of difference between an organisation that believes in racial supremacy, and a group that comes together because they know strength-in-numbers is the only way to tackle institutional racism. But it’s time to make this argument all over again now.

OBV

Muslims feel like 'Jews of Europe'

Minister's shock warning on rise of anti-Islamic prejudice

Britain's first Muslim minister has attacked the growing culture of hostility against Muslims in the United Kingdom, saying that many feel targeted like "the Jews of Europe".

Shahid Malik, who was appointed as a minister in the Department for International Development (Dfid) by Gordon Brown last summer, said it has become legitimate to target Muslims in the media and society at large in a way that would be unacceptable for any other minority.

Mr Malik made clear that he was not equating the situation with the Holocaust but warned that many British Muslims now felt like "aliens in their own country". He said he himself had been the target of a string of racist incidents, including the firebombing of his family car and an attempt to run him down at a petrol station.

"I think most people would agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe," he said. "I don't mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost – and still is in some parts – to target Jews, many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way.

"Somehow there's a message out there that it's OK to target people as long as it's Muslims. And you don't have to worry about the facts, and people will turn a blind eye."

The claims are made in an interview to be broadcast on Monday in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme to coincide with the third anniversary of the London bombings of 7 July.

A poll to accompany the documentary highlights the growing polarisation of opinion among Britain's 1.6 million Muslims, who say they have suffered a marked increase in hostility since the London bombings.

The ICM survey found that 51 per cent of Britons blame Islam to some degree for the 2005 attacks while more than a quarter of Muslims now believe Islamic values are not compatible with British values. While 90 per cent of Muslims said they felt attached to Britain, eight out of 10 said they felt there was more religious prejudice against their faith since the July bombings.

The Dispatches film, "It Shouldn't Happen to a Muslim", presented by the writer and broadcaster Peter Oborne, examines claims that negative attitudes to Muslims have become legitimised by think-tanks and newspaper commentators, who use language that is now being parroted by the far right.

Mr Malik, who narrowly escaped serious injury when a car was driven at him at a petrol station in his home town of Burnley in 2002, said he regularly receives anti-Muslim hate mail at his constituency office in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, which has the highest BNP vote in the country and was home to Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the suicide attackers who killed 52 people in London in 2005.

The MP said the negative portrayal of Muslims in the media, including a story run by several national newspapers in December last year wrongly stating that staff in the Dewsbury and District Hospital had been ordered to turn the beds of Muslim patients towards Mecca five times a day, was a key example of how his co-religionists were being alienated from the mainstream.

He said: "It's almost as if you don't have to check your facts when it comes to certain people, and you can just run with those stories. It makes Muslims feel like aliens in their own country. At a time when we want to engage with Muslims, actually the opposite happens."

The Dispatches programme also speaks to Andy Hayman, the former Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner who was Britain's most senior anti-terrorism officer until he resigned last December. Mr Hayman, who was criticised for failing to tell senior Scotland Yard officers that an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, had been shot dead after being mistaken for a suicide bomber, is asked why he thinks it is important to engage with Muslims expressing extreme views.

Mr Hayman said: "Because we're tackling head on the people that we feel are at the heartbeat of this whole complex agenda. Not to have a dialogue with them would seem that we are apprehensive, we're scared, we're frightened... So even if it's appeasement in some quarters, that is still a conversation that is not being had and needs to be had."

Mr Malik's comments were backed by Simon Woolley, a member of the Government's task force on race equality, and co-founder of Operation Black Vote. He said: "On an almost daily basis, there is rampant Islamophobia in this country, the effect of which is not for our Muslim community to get closer to a sense of Britishness but to feel further away from a feeling of belonging in British society."

Independent

Race, diversity and 1 May

Operation Black Vote's Simon Woolley on the closest run and bitterest mayoral contest to date

This third London Mayoral contest will be by far the closest run yet. It’ll also be the bitterest.

Of course, a bittersweet dynamic of this fierce contest should lead to a better-than-average voter turnout - crucial if the BNP are to be denied any Greater London Assembly seats. But my worry is that many Londoners will be left feeling ‘don’t we deserve a better contest than this?’.

Unlike the previous two mayoral elections race has taken centre stage and I’m sorry that it has because London generally has a lower level of racial tension than we have seen in recent years in Paris, Bradford, or Birmingham.

For hundreds of years, particularly in the last 50, the capital's teeming diversity has been its strength. Diversity won us the 2012 Olympic games. But that’s not to say there aren’t tensions, or that tackling race inequality is no longer a priority.

The fact is that for the vast majority of people living in the capital, particularly the young, their identity as a Londoner is worn as a badge of honour. The identity of race and religion are not diminished, however, whether or not you are born here; the inclusive nature of London is very appealing. The biggest problem young Londoners face is not a racial divide but rather a territorial division that pits one neighbourhood against another - that's a serious problem for any mayor.

The capital's identity politics, as in the politics of voting, also takes on a life of its own. When the novelist Jeffrey Archer began his ill-fated quest to become the capital's first Mayor he made it his business to schlep all over the capital in an attempt to win over potential voters.

He courted the black vote so much that it was said he would go to the opening of a fridge if he knew there would be a black audience. It began to pay dividends. Archer would tell anyone who would listen, that he was not like his then exceedingly unpopular Conservative Party. His politics, he argued, were ‘for a world beating multicultural city, dynamic as they are different from the ‘run of the mill politics’. In a poll commissioned by Operation Black Vote (OBV) back in 1999 asking black communities who they would vote for as Mayor, Archer beat Livingstone, Trevor Phillips, and Susan Kramer. The next Tory candidate Steve Norris continued Archer's narrative that celebrated multicultural London.

So, why has race negatively come to the forefront this time around? There are two main factors. The first has been the wholly disproportionate attention towards Ken Livingstone’s former equality aide Lee Jasper, and a number of black groups and individuals, including Doreen Lawrence and Pastor Nims.

No-one in the black community condones financial wrongdoing but many have asked, was the scale of this focus on these allegations fair, and how come everyone targeted by this media onslaught just happens to be black?

The second element has come from Boris Johnson himself. His remarks about Africans and Africa have forced him to make an unreserved apology. Johnson has had to learn quickly that the politics of London demands that it’s not enough not being a racist, you have to be a passionate anti-racist.

There is a third racial element, which until last week largely went ignored. The Ken v Boris Punch and Judy Show has focused attention away from the politics of race hatred: BNP. Masquerading as democrats, and even courting their once archenemies - the Jewish community - the BNP are hoping their claim that they are no longer bigoted boot boys will win acceptance.

If they can keep up the charade, and there is a low voter turnout, the BNP would hope to pick up one or two Assembly seats. The result would be disastrous for London. The very essence of what brings people to London from all over the world to a multi-cultural metropolis would be threatened by politics that has its roots in fascism.

Some commentators have suggested the BNP’s success might not be a bad thing as it would shake up the mainstream parties. I disagree. Any far right political success directly translates into racial abuse, verbally and physically. Worse still their bigoted ideas would, even more, seep into mainstream thinking.

Last week, the mainstream candidates stopped attacking each other to unite against the threat of the BNP. Speaking at OBV’s coalition against the BNP, Boris Johnson declared that Londoners must register to vote and defeat the BNP. Ken Livingstone argued that as well as attacking the capital's cultural identity the BNP’s racial hatred ‘would turn visitors away’.

I agree with both of them and would add that, if we value what we have in London, lets protect it on May 1st.

New Statesman