Racists blamed for Co Antrim pipe bomb attack

Councillor says attack on Polish family was 'negative and sinister' as homes evacuated and access to school restricted

A pipe bomb attack in Co Antrim on Wednesday was carried out by racists targeting a Polish family, a local councillor has claimed. Grainne Teggart, the SDLP's group leader on Antrim borough council, said the attack was racially motivated and described it as "negative and sinister".

"I condemn this attack. It's totally unjustifiable and inexcusable," Teggart said. "People in the area are angry at what has happened. This is not in their name. The positive contribution Polish families and other immigrant families make to the local community is in stark contrast to the negative, sinister and despicable contribution of those responsible for this. Not only is this an attack on the family, but everyone else in Antrim."

She said residents of the Oaktree Drive area had been evacuated from their homes, and urged anybody with information about the attack to pass it to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Following the discovery of the explosive device outside the Polish family's home at around 8am on Wednesday, a number of homes were evacuated and access to a local primary school was restricted.

Antrim town has in the past been home to a number of small racist factions linked to the now defunct Loyalist Volunteer Force as well as the Ulster Defence Association. Meanwhile, Republican dissidents are being blamed for a shooting in west Belfast in which a man in his 20s was shot in the legs. He was shot in the republican stronghold of Ballymurphy, the former home of the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams.

The PSNI said the shooting happened at around 9pm on Tuesday night in the Downfine Gardens area. Officers said five shots were fired during the attack, but the victim's injuries were not believed to be life threatening. It is understood the shooting was a so-called punishment attack, carried out by one of the organisations opposed to the political settlement in Northern Ireland.

Over the last year, the Real IRA and other hardline republican groups have increased the number of punishment shootings in nationalist areas across the north of Ireland.

Guardian

Never was so much owed by so many to so few...

In September 1940 the Battle of Britain against Nazi Germany was at its height in the skies above southern England. Aircrew who had escaped occupied Europe joined the RAF with many others from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and all parts of what was then the British Empire.

In India, ordinary people collected much needed funds to finance the building of Spitfires to join the battle and in tribute, many RAF squadrons were named after Indian cities. But of all the nations that joined the RAF, it was Polish pilots who in particular distinguished themselves, losing more lives proportionate to their numbers than any single other nationality in the Battle. United for freedom, against fascism.

Philosophy Football have produced a commemorative shirt (above) to honour the Polish contribution, listing the Poles who gave their lives to join the 'few', with the symbol of the Polish airforce they carried on their Spitfires and Hurricanes, and the words 'For Freedom'. Wear it with pride, against fascism then and now.

Philosophy Football

No peace here - the continuing shame of ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland

Matthew Collins investigates life for an immigrant family in Belfast

Just off Donegal Road in south Belfast they’re converting a city centre gravel car park into what looks like a wasteland. Local residents are doing their yearly dump of anything that burns. There are sofas, thousands of books, boxes and magazines and more than a couple of washing machines. Mattresses too, that’s obligatory. Almost anything that could be fitted into a car or a small van has been transported here and dumped.

The car park attendant turns a blind eye, though he must have noticed an articulated vehicle of some sort drop off 300 wooden pallets right in the middle of the faux wasteland. As we drive in, he holds his hand out for payment.

Five track-suited youngsters are guarding the rubbish. To them, this isn’t any old rubbish. This is their Protestant birthright – to hold a large bonfire on 11 July to signal the count-down to celebrating the glorious 12th. Except this year, the traditional marches by loyalist and Unionist Protestants have been moved to the 13th. Good Protestants do not drink and sing, march and bang drums on a Sunday. And while they guard, they drum, using proper drum sticks or, in the case of one, a set of spanners, in perfect symmetry.

Their spokesman, a large teenager who is not drumming, gives suspicious permission for photographs. Four days away from the big blaze, he’s concerned the picture will show their pyre looking a little underdone. “Hey English, come back in a couple of days and this’ll be much bigger,” he boasts. “And we’ll stick a Taig flag on top for you.”

A short walk away, in the Holylands district of inner south Belfast close to Queens University, I have an appointment with accountants. Holylands used to be a staunchly Protestant working-class neighbourhood, but as the university’s expansion has mirrored that of both the Catholic and the migrant communities, Holylands has become rows of streets with religious names as diverse as the tenants who reside there. As well as “losing” Holylands, some in the Protestant community feel they have “lost” Queens University too.

The red hand of Ulster, traditionally painted or displayed on walls of Protestant neighbourhoods, has been replaced by red stars and fists, almost defiant symbols from a burgeoning, internationalist student population, with Palestinian slogans and flags marking the contrast with nearby loyalist neighbourhoods that fly Israeli flags. There are no Irish tricolours here, no overt Republican sloganeering next to stencilled graffiti saying “Stamp Out Racism” and “Kill Nazis”. A few rows of freshly painted empty houses is all that separates the old from, perhaps, an entirely new world.

Ismael and Ghizlane are both qualified accountants, not that anyone would know. A condition of their asylum application is that they are not allowed to work, so they have not worked since arriving from Morocco in 2004.

I’m ushered inside their cramped living room where the ironing board occupies most of the space, trying to avoid waking their three-year-old son sleeping on the couch while Thomas Tank Engine and Friends plays silently on the television. Ghizlane turns it off and nods in her son’s direction. “His favourite,” she whispers. The only other sound in the room is of inquisitive canaries hopping around excitedly in their cages. Upstairs the couple’s daughter sleeps. Later the family plans to celebrate her first birthday.

Ismael carefully lifts his son, gently running a hand through his thick mop of black hair, whispering an apology in softly spoken Arabic. The boy was born with spina bifida and his life is already a painful daily grind of visits to GPs and the hospital. His parents’ lives have for five years been a daily grind of uncertainty, torment, intimidation and assaults.

As asylum seekers with very little recourse to public funds, when thugs attack people like Ismael, 33, and Ghizlane, 26, they are entirely at the mercy of the voluntary sector and organisations such as NICEM (Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities) and NASS (National Asylum Support Service).

“I want to work,” Ismael begins, almost apologetically. “I didn’t come to Northern Ireland to take money. We both can work, we have both tried to work, to help and to fit in, but there is nothing they will let us do.” Despite their near perfect English, an interpreter is present who reassuringly nods when Ismael or Ghizlane shoots nervous looks in his direction. Ismael puts his son to bed.

In 2005 the family moved from emergency accommodation for asylum seekers to a property in south Belfast. On her first trip to the shops, Ghizlane, who wears a headscarf, was punched in the face by one of her new neighbours. Other shoppers and pedestrians stepped over her as she lay on the ground. “We did not call the police, we had been warned that people may be aggressive at first. I thought ‘is this normal’ but of course, it is not,” says Ismael staring at his feet.

NICEM’s figures show that fewer than 30% of victims report racist incidents to the police, although more than half suffer repeated incidents. For Ismael and Ghizlane, the “hundreds” of incidents of spitting, verbal abuse and physical threats continued for over two years, by which time they had come to the attention of NICEM.

They had a small group of friends from Belfast’s “tiny” Islamic centre who were desperately advising them. Regular taxi rides to the hospital for their son were exhausting the family’s limited finances and they were encouraged to apply for an emergency move. “The whole time we were there not one neighbour spoke to us even though it was obvious we had a child who was sick and we had very little support. Never. Not one friendly word.

“You smile at people and it was as if they do not see you. We hated leaving the house because we never knew what was going to happen. But of course we didn’t have to leave the house to find trouble.”

Accommodation described as “perfect” was found for them in west Belfast in 2007 on the advice of a social worker that fewer racist incidents are reported there. The family settled near the Falls Road and, more importantly, close to the hospital. “The first time I used the bus there, the driver said ‘hello’ and I was really amazed,” Ghizlane says with a rare smile. “This was where we wanted to live. The house was very cramped and there was a noisy pub a few doors down, but the people were friendly.” It seemed a better place to spend the hours between weekly English lessons and almost daily visits to the hospital. Ghizlane fell pregnant again. They approached 2008 with more hope than ever before.

On the morning of New Year’s Day, Ismael was having a cigarette out on his doorstep. It had been a noisy New Year’s Eve with excited celebrations that had kept the family awake, but they had not complained. They were attracted to the hustle and bustle of Belfast and the night had been joyful.

Ismael watched two men drinking from beer cans walking up the street towards the pub. They took offence at the tall but almost painfully thin man sitting on his own doorstep smoking a cigarette. According to Ismael, they threw a set of keys at him and told him to go inside, but carried on walking. After a few moments in the pub, they returned and attacked him with a knife, stabbing him in the hand and face.

Ismael shouted for help and told Ghizlane, who had tried to come to his aid, to go back inside. Neighbours instructed Ghizlane to call only an ambulance and not the police. Terrified and confused, and watching her husband bleeding, she called both. “That was the end for us in west Belfast,” says Ghizlane sadly.

“When the policed arrived, they [neighbours] called us names for calling the police.” Both Ghizlane and Ismael required hospital treatment. The PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) did not take any statements from the couple, but advised them they would probably have to move away. “I wondered why,” says Ismael. “I had been attacked on my doorstep, why shouldn’t I call the police?” Perhaps the couple had not read the west Belfast “welcome pack”, which advises against calling the police to a racist incident.

“Nobody ever spoke to us again,” says Ismael. The silence can be intimidating too. Their landlord started demanding money from the couple that NASS had already paid. The community had withdrawn its support and the search for a new home began.

The family had been in east Belfast only five months before they had to move again. On 23 August 2008 four families in and around Imperial Drive were visited simultaneously by men with baseball bats and hammers and told they were “not welcome”.

“I had a month-old child now and here were young men with hammers and baseball bats telling us to leave by the end of the week. I called the police who came very quickly. My doors and windows were smashed and the people who did it were just standing there outside my house while the police were inside.

“The police took away the hammer and baseball bat for finger printing, but just came back and said we should leave. They were taking this very seriously, I don’t know whose finger prints they were, but although they did not make any arrests they were genuinely concerned for us.” The house was attacked three more times before they left in September.

Now they are in the Holylands, cramped in a house with damp that is making Ghizlane ill. “But the students are so very friendly,” she says. “Now it is the end of term a lot of them will go away and although the peace will be nice, it is nice when they are around.” With the bonfires being prepared and drummers already drumming, the approach of the 12th brings apprehension. “We want to be a part of this country,” says Ismael. “My children were born here. I could go and watch the parades and assimilate, but they just don’t seem to want me to, even though they do not know me.”

An assault on us all

“The Romanians have gone,” Patrick Yu tells me. And so has some of Patrick’s spark. In previous dark hours, somewhere inside Patrick there had still been a smile, a warmth, even when the Chinese community were fleeing south Belfast in fear of their lives three years ago. He seems genuinely drawn and distressed. “I miss David Ervine [former loyalist paramilitary and politician]” he tells me sadly. “There just seems no way into the paramilitaries like there used to be, to mediate and get this to stop.”

“This” is a spiral of violence that is seemingly out of control. The Irish media are firmly assured in the convenient belief that a mythical nazi Combat 18 unit is responsible for ethnic cleansing across the province. Patrick’s organisation NICEM is stretched to the limit. “What figures do you want?” he asks. “This morning’s, this afternoon’s or this evening’s racist attacks?”

Patrick doesn’t accompany me to Sandy Row, “Heartland of South Belfast Ulster Freedom Fighters”, the nom de plume for the UDA. He doesn’t think he can stomach a meeting with paramilitary spokesmen and anyway he has to drive to Stormont for a meeting about housing. “They don’t want to help because they fear, in the middle of decommissioning their weapons, people will think that they’re involved in racist violence and not sectarian violence. Why should the peace process only involve two communities?”

Patrick’s American assistant Jolena Flett nervously joins me in the back of Jackie McDonald’s car. She has kept us waiting a good few minutes while, I suspect, she was weighing up whether this was an entirely good idea. McDonald and his driver had arrived outside NICEM’s offices less than five minutes after I had rung him suggesting a cup of tea.

McDonald is the alleged (his emphasis) brigadier of south Belfast UDA and the alleged overall commander of the UDA. His official title is community worker. In his office, he is businesslike. He looks you straight in the eye when he speaks, on or off the record. And Jackie can talk, brilliant anecdotes with quick-fire humour. “The UDA is not ethnically cleansing anyone. Write that down, I’ll wait for you. But neither are we kneecapping or giving ‘digs’ in the stomach to people who are doing this stuff. Have a look at what the Unionist politicians have given these [loyalist] communities in return for votes. The great King Billy himself could ride down here on his horse at night and he’d be mugged.

“I call the police, I tell anyone who comes to me and says ‘Jackie, so and so has robbed me’ to call the police. We’ve put the guns away, we’ve had to. If people know who is behind these racist attacks, I’m telling them to call the police. We won’t get anything done for these communities if Jackie McDonald is the one going around dishing out law and order. And these kids behind these attacks in South Belfast won’t listen to a UDA with its guns put away anyway.”

Out on Sandy Row for a photograph, everyone says good morning. McDonald is warm and embracing of his people. People listen in to what he is saying. Perhaps he could condemn these racist attacks louder, then? “I do, but who writes it down and prints it big enough? I’ve been on all the marches, all the protests, but this does not work. I don’t want a far-right group filing the void here in these communities and it is only real work that can stop that from happening. But I do think, look at how many people are moving here into a shrinking community that’s crying out for help and political direction and I know the same things are happening in nationalist and republican communities too.”

Eastern Europeans bear the main brunt of Protestant anger. They’re accused of “Romanising” the empty streets in south Belfast, as well as taking the few remaining jobs. Over 40 Polish people from nine families have been “put out” (forced to leave) in south Belfast this year. The justification was “community anger” over football violence when the two countries played in the city earlier this year, but many worry that Polish children are “catholicising” Protestant state schools in the area and believe that the Poles all hold Republican sympathies.

Aleksandra Lojek-Madziarz, (pictured) a Polish journalist and community worker, feels this intensified when Polish football fans “stupidly” travelled from Scotland and unfurled an Irish tricolour carrying the letters “IRA”, presumably in support of Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc. Republican dissidents had carried out terror attacks shortly before the game.

“I like the people here,” she says. “They are good people reacting in some cases very badly to change. The Polish community is, however, quite strong and resilient and I am a patient person too.

“Comparatively, Northern Ireland is a wealthier place with a lot more to offer some Polish people, but we are not here to take anything from Protestant communities, we don’t want to vote them out of house and home or change their country. They don’t see that, because they do not feel the benefits yet in post-conflict Northern Ireland, and I can see that every day when I meet people who are really struggling, who still have poverty and other unresolved issues. They have to stop thinking of us as an historical enemy, because we do not come here with that burden or intention.”

Patrick Yu finally went to see Jackie McDonald on 10 July, about a letter he had received purportedly from the UDA’s youth wing, the Ulster Young Militants, telling him and NICEM to leave Ulster before the 12th or be “blown up”.

You may also be interested to read The name that fits the crime Matthew Collins investigates the anti-Romany violence in Belfast. From Searchlight Magazine July 2009

Searchlight

Migrant crime wave a myth - police study

Acpo report concludes offending no worse than rest of the population

A wide-ranging police study has concluded that the surge in immigrants from eastern Europe to Britain has not fuelled a rise in crime, the Guardian has learned.

The findings will be presented to the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, tomorrow when she meets chief constables to discuss the issue. Several of them had complained that they needed more money to deal with increases in migrant populations in their areas. However, the study prepared for the Association of Chief Police Officers challenges claims that up to 1 million people from EU accession countries have caused a rise in criminality.

The report finds that, despite newspaper headlines linking new migrants to crime, offending rates among mainly Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian communities are in line with the rate of offending in the general population.

A senior source with close knowledge of the report said: "Any rise has been broadly proportionate to the number of people from those communities coming into this country. People are saying crime is rising because of this influx. Given 1 million people have come in, that doesn't make sense as crime is significantly down."

The fall in the annual crime rate in England and Wales is accelerating, with a drop of 9% recorded by police in the year to September 2007, according to Home Office figures published earlier this year.

The report by Grahame Maxwell, chief constable of North Yorkshire, and Peter Fahy, who leads the Cheshire force, says that "resentment and misunderstanding" about why new migrants are coming to Britain has stoked tensions. It calls for businesses benefiting from the new workers to do a better job of explaining the economic benefit of migrant workers.

The report says: "While overall this country has accommodated this huge influx with little rise in community tension, in some areas sheer numbers, resentment and misunderstanding, have created problems." It adds that the immigration from eastern Europe has been different to previous arrivals, because it happened much more quickly. The report says that new migrants may be more likely to commit certain types of offences. Polish people are linked to drink-driving, and problems have arisen in central London with some Romanian children being used by adults to commit petty robberies.

There are also problems with people trafficking and exploitation, but while these may be more likely in some migrant communities, other types of offences are less likely to occur.

The reports calls for new agreements with east European countries to share intelligence and information on less serious crimes, such as domestic violence and serial theft. It also calls for immigration authorities, schools and the health service to share information with police about new nationalities in their areas.

The report is primarily based on intelligence gathered by detectives about crime patterns in different areas of England and Wales. Police recording codes only contains the category "white Europeans" covering people originating from France to the Urals. The report says more analysis is needed.

The source with close knowledge of the report said: "Given the number coming into the country, the problems have been very few in terms of criminality, increases in crime or community tensions. Most are coming here to earn money, most are professionals with qualifications, and they work then go home."

The report says areas that have faced most demands include Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire because of the demand for agricultural workers, as well as Slough. Cambridgeshire's chief constable, Julie Spence, has warned of increased demands on her force and Kent's chief constable, Mike Fuller, also reportedly wrote to ministers saying that the government's failure to give his force more money was not taking account of the extra demands on his officers.

Guardian

The reality of racism - gang escape jail over brutal attack

(click on image to enlarge)

A gang of men who subjected two Polish workers to a “cowardly and vicious” attack before leaving them in a pool of blood have escaped immediate jail sentences.

Norwich Crown Court heard the gang of seven attacked Tadeusz Broniak and Marcin Rapacz after finding them sitting outside the Hog's Head pub in King's Lynn high street. The brutal attack was caught on security cameras and played before the judge who described it as a “ferocious and unprovoked attack on two vulnerable men”.

The victims were repeatedly punched, kicked and spat on and were fortunate to suffer nothing more than cuts and bruises. The footage showed the offenders walking away from the scene, leaving the victims lying on the floor covered in blood.

Speaking after the case, King's Lynn section inspector Colin Williamson said: “This sickening assault took place against a backdrop of drunken aggression. The CCTV footage is shocking.”

Jody Tooke, 25, of Saddlebow Road, King's Lynn; Ben Watson, 20, of Chadwick Square, Lynn; Ben Winchester, 21, of Wisbech Road, Lynn; John Plummley, 22, of Burnham Avenue, King's Lynn; Jack Nesbitt, 20, of Hinchingbrooke Close, South Wootton; Christopher Tibbs, 22, of Saddlebow Road, Lynn all pleaded guilty to violent disorder on November 4 last year.

Liam Wintin, 19, of St Edmundsbury Road, Lynn, was convicted of violent disorder following a trial. Alfie Tooke, 21, of Ouse Avenue, Lynn, who had denied inciting others to use or threaten violence, was cleared by a jury following a trial earlier this month.

The court heard the gang went to the Hog's Head after hearing that the two Polish men had been making it difficult for bar staff and refusing to leave. They were also said to have threatened Alfie Tooke so the gang went to the Hog's Head “to sort out the two Polish men”.

Mr Justice Cooke imposed a year's jail sentence on all the men suspended for two years and ordered them to do a total of 1,280 hours of unpaid work. He said they were all in employment and felt they were all capable of making their way in life as civilised members of society.

But he warned: “Your actions on that night stem from the amount of drink you consumed.”

He said they had acted as “unthinking teenagers” and said: “Stay off drink and think about what you drink.”

The men's counsel said they had all been disgusted by their behaviour. Some members of the gang had written letters of apology to the victims. Benedict Peers, for Tibbs, said: “When he first viewed that recording, he himself was shocked.”

Outside court Insp Williamson pledged that officers would do all they could to stamp out alcohol-fuelled violence. The men's names have been forwarded to the local Pubwatch group to be considered for a town-wide pub ban.

Insp Williamson said: “Alcohol-fuelled violence is not acceptable in this town or any other and a lot of work is being carried out by the police and partner agencies to weed out individuals like this whose lawless behaviour ruins everyone else's night out.”

A new Nightsafe scheme - based on successful operations in Norwich and Yarmouth - has since been launched.

[Watch the video by clicking on the link]

EDP24

The dark reality lying behind the new-model BNP

Cambridge University law graduate, father-of-four, and small scale organic farmer whose home-grown meat is humanely produced... Meet Nick Griffin, the public face of the British National Party – sharp-suited, articulate, and politically ambitious. It’s an image that has been carefully honed to give the BNP mass appeal, which party officials hope to translate into electoral success.

In tomorrow’s local elections, his party has fielded more local candidates than ever before – six in Carlisle, and eleven across Cumbria. The effort being ploughed into the county by the BNP is evidence of what Griffin said in a previous election – that they see Cumbria as fertile territory in their battle to win political power.

But what lies behind the slick media-savvy image of the modern day BNP?

Is the party really a natural home for those who want to foster racial division? Does the party really want to bring an abrupt end to Cumbria’s transformation into a multicultural society, paving the way for an all-white United Kingdom?

At least part of the answer can be found in the glossy election leaflet being distributed by the party’s candidate for Carlisle’s Harraby ward, a self-employed joiner called David Fraser. Setting out his personal manifesto, he writes: “I’m Carlisle born and bred. On leaving school, I served my apprenticeship as a joiner and have been self-employed in my chosen trade ever since. I’m passionate about Cumbria and am very concerned about the job losses in the area. On top of this, we have now had an influx of cheap migrant labour undercutting the wages of the local workforce and putting even more pressure on the job market. Something must be done about this, which is why I have joined the BNP.”

In an interview during a previous election, Griffin told the News & Star: “Cumbria is one of those areas which is like England used to be, and most of the people living there want to keep it that way.”

To the many foreign workers now living in the county, working for companies such as McVitie’s, Fraser’s manifesto and Griffin’s words must be deeply disturbing. The News & Star spoke to several people who say they have good reason to fear the BNP and its values.

Justyana Zmuda, a 25-year-old Polish woman working in Carlisle for Riverside Recruitment, is appalled by the prospect of a Cumbria turning its back on foreigners. She is among hundreds of eastern European workers who have made a home for themselves here. Bubbly, happy, and relaxed, she came to the UK three years ago after completing a finance degree in Gdansk. She has an English boyfriend, and has progressed from a job as a barmaid to become Riverside Recruitment’s European welfare consultant, helping migrant workers to work in Cumbria.

She said: “This is a democracy and people can say whatever they want, but Cumbrian people are intelligent enough to know that foreign workers are not taking their jobs. Without them, the economy of Cumbria would not be so good. The reason there are so many Polish people in Carlisle is that they are good workers. We’re not taking jobs from anybody else. It doesn’t matter whether a worker is English or Polish – they’re paid the same.

“What difference does it make if your nurse in hospital is Polish or English? I’m going to college as well and so many of my friends are of different nationalities – from Japan, Germany, Ireland and Iran. They’re lovely people.”

Some local BNP opponents say the party has a long association with people fond of intimidation – a claim vehemently denied by BNP officials in the county.

Racist Derek Potts was last year jailed after he admitted pushing 36 offensive letters through the letterbox of the Bangladeshi family who run the Lazeez takeaway on Blackwell Road, Currock. Some of the papers he posted bore the BNP logo – though the party insists Potts has never been one of their members.

Speaking this week, the takeaway’s owner Asma Khatun, a married mother of three who came to the UK when she was three, said: “I’m scared of the BNP. But Carlisle is my home and I’m not going to let anybody make us leave.”

Though the BNP and the National Front are separate parties, she has bitter memories of the latter’s attempts to foster racial tension in Bradford during her childhood. She fears tense ethnic divisions could be the result if the BNP were to see a surge in its grassroots support.

Mrs Khatun, who runs the restaurant with her husband Liakoth Ali Khandoker, said: “I remember the National Front marching through the streets, shouting words like ‘Paki’ at us. Elderly people stayed in their homes. I was only eight but I remember being really scared. The letters pushed through our door were really threatening, telling us to watch our backs, going on about Islam and calling us terrorists. This is a free country – why can’t people be civilised?”

Also afraid of the BNP is would-be Labour councillor Johanthan Wood, an 18-year-old sixth former who is studying at Workington’s Sixth Form College. A candidate for Silloth in the Allerdale elections, he recently launched an anti-BNP leaflet campaign with his pal 19-year-old Duncan Money.

Both subsequently saw their names and pictures posted on the white nationalist website Redwatch, which goes under the slogan: “Remember places, traitors’ faces. They will pay for their crimes.”

Jonathan said: “We construed that as a threat. We’ve also had trouble from Combat 18, who take their name from the initials of Adolf Hitler, the first and eighth letters of the alphabet being his initials. We’ve had death threats from them over the phone and the internet.”

The threats came within weeks of Jonathan and Duncan launching their anti-BNP campaign, though the BNP again insists they have no knowledge of and would not sanction that kind of behaviour. They have no links with the two organisations involved, they say. Jonathan added: “It’s just encouraged me to bring these people out into the open.”

The BNP’s campaign organiser in Cumbria is Clive Jefferson, a 40-year-old Cumbrian father of two from Cockermouth in west Cumbria. He argues that the BNP has been tarnished by but not dominated by its past association with undesirables, many with criminal convictions. “The BNP is not the National Front,” he declared.

He said: “We’re good, genuine people. The BNP nationally, and locally says categorically that we don’t hate or dislike anybody. We’re not against anybody. We’re for British people. We ‘re a legal, democratic party. We want to listen to and represent people – the other parties have forgotten their grass roots.”

Asked if the party is racist, he insists it is not, but admits the BNP want to see and end to what he calls the “multi-cultural experiment” which he regards as a disaster. Mr Jefferson speaks of Britain as a country with porous borders, flooded with illegal migrants. He expressed contrition when confronted by the criminal background of Nick Griffin, convicted in 1998 of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred. The offending material was his publication The Rune, which included anti-semitic material and even denied the Holocaust ever happened. He summed up the atrocity in a single word: “Holohoax”. He wrote: “I am well aware that orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into soap and lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat … I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria.”

Again, Mr Jefferson springs to his leader’s defence, with the words: “It was a horrible conviction, a nasty thing. I know Nick Griffin personally, and I trust him. He’s been convicted of having a different view of history. He’d been given evidence which questioned the magnitude of the Holocaust. But he does accept the Holocaust as a fact and understands the evidence he was presented with was not correct.”

He said his party had been targeted by a misleading leaflet linking his party to Derek Potts, who he said had simply got hold of BNP literature for his personal hate campaign against the restaurant owners.

“I apologise if that woman feels uncomfortable with our presence here,” he said.

Commenting on Jonathan Wood, he said: “There is nobody from the BNP threatening anyone and if there is I will discipline them. They will be removed from the BNP – it will not be tolerated.”

Mr Jefferson, a former electrical engineer, said he was inspired to join his party after a near fatal accident which showed him just how uncaring Britain has become. But his defence of the BNP cut little ice with Paul Jenkins, spokesman for the Cumbria Unite Against Fascism pressure group.

He said: “The BNP definitely pose a danger because in every single area where they are active, and where they have won council seats, racist attacks increase massively: we’ve seen that in Burnley in Lancashire, in parts of Yorkshire and in Barking in Dagenham. They tend to sneak in where there is a low turnout at elections. In terms of the wider dangers they represent, the important thing is what their leaflets do not tell you. Their aim is an all-white society. Nick Griffin said that in 2002. Their publicity officer Mark Collett claimed that Hitler’s Germany was a better place in which to live than some parts of Britain. That’s the real politics of the BNP.”

One man who has seen for himself what right wing extremism can lead to is Holocaust survivor Arek Hersh, a concentration camp survivor liberated by the Russians on January 8, 1945 and then evacuated to Cumbria. Now aged 78, Mr Hersh feels that it is his duty to speak of the horrors he saw as a child in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps.

He said: “I was eleven years old when I was taken from my home in Poland and put in the Otochono labour camp in the west of the country. I was there 18 months and out of the 2,500 people put in there, only eleven survived and I was one of them.”

In the months that followed, Mr Hersh was moved from one hellhole to another: from Otochno to Lodz ghetto, and then on to Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps. He was liberated by Russian soldiers after he and fellow survivors – starving, terrified, and skeletal – spent a month living in open cattle trucks sent to Czechoslovakia. Of the 120 people in his wagon, only 40 survived. Of the 3,000 who made that same journey, only 600 lived to see freedom.

Mr Hersh said: “It was absolutely horrendous. Nothing I can say could describe the horrors which these people perpetrated against us. People died every day – beaten, starved to death. The gas chambers and crematorium were working day and night. I can’t get it out of my head, and I had nightmares for 30 years. I lost my entire family, except for my sister Mania, who died 18 months ago. I lost my mother Bluma 39, my father Szmuel, 42, my sisters Itka, 18, and Dvora, seven, and my brother Tovia, 16. If you forget history, it repeats itself. It was 62 years ago, but it’s very important to remember what happened.I’ve witnessed things that nobody should ever have to see.”

News and Star