BNP's fake AFA email is tribute to HOPE not hate's success

Some of our supporters have received an email today purporting to come from a group called "Real AFA" and claiming to "expose" Searchlight's HOPE not hate campaign. The language looks superficially leftwing and anti-BNP but the whole thing is a sham.

Behind it lies the BNP itself. It is full of the same lies that the BNP's chief lie-manufacturer Tony Shell has disgorged time and time again, combined with some nonsense copied from one or two pernicious "green anarchist" publications.

Most of it is not worth giving the time of day. But there is one point we would like to clarify to avoid any possible misunderstanding. The HOPE not hate campaign is not run by Searchlight Educational Trust but by Searchlight Information Services, which is not a charity. Money given to HOPE not hate is spent 100% on the campaign, that is on producing the huge quantity of leaflets, newspapers and other HOPE not hate material that our volunteers will soon be distributing around the country, the HOPE not hate bus tour in the second fortnight of May and the groundbreaking and highly effective online campaign run for us by Blue State Digital. It also includes paying decent remuneration (though no more than that) to a few additional people - trade union members - we have taken on to help our permanent staff ensure we can run the best possible campaign. This money does not benefit from any charitable concessions.

Searchlight Educational Trust is a separate organisation that carries out educational work against racism and in support of community cohesion. Its largest expense is quite properly on the people who carry out that work, just like a school's biggest expense is on its teachers. To try to attack SET because it pays its staff just shows how ignorant the writers of this nonsense are. How do they think educational work gets done?

That this email has been sent out now is proof of how hard we are hitting the BNP at the moment. The BNP' attempt to hijack Jesus came unstuck and they now have the whole of Christianity against them. We exposed a BNP organiser's despicable comments on how there was not a lot of point keeping disabled people alive. We revealed how the BNP, despite its attempt to dress in new clothes, still cultivates links with the most extreme nazis in Europe, most lately by means of the visit by the BNP's deputy leader Simon Darby to Milan, where he was greeted by Nazi salutes. And we have constantly exposed the BNP's fundraising scams.

Our exposés have hit the BNP hard. In London, where the fascist party needs only around 8.5% of the vote to get an MEP elected, the London organiser has admitted that the region has not raised enough money for a full-size leaflet for the mailout to every voter, so will have to make do with an A5 version.

Our campaign is, even at this early stage, so successful that political scientists from the London School of Economics and Trinity College Dublin recently predicted that the BNP is unlikely to win a seat in the European Parliament in June. That is, of course, not to say we can let up in our work even for a moment. The danger of the BNP getting one or more MEPs elected is still very real.

Be warned. There is no such organisation as "Real AFA". The email, while pretending to oppose the BNP, in fact is full of praise for the BNP's effectiveness and professionalism. It is no more than a rather pathetic attempt to silence the most effective anti-BNP campaign this country has seen to date.

And it will backfire on the BNP. Already HOPE not hate has received donations from people who have received the email, seen through its lies and shown what they think of it. If you want to show what you think about the BNP's barefaced lies, you can donate to the HOPE not hate campaign here.

Hope not hate

Radio Four documentary on the BNP - Turning right

Radio 4 documentary on the BNP - Turning right

As the dust settles on May's local elections, Gerry Northam traces the rise of the far right and investigates its claims to Christian roots and respectability. Andy why, in a recent nationwide poll, did a high percentage say they would "consider" voting BNP in the next general election?

A wide range of people were interviewed for this programme including Nick Griffin and specialists from Searchlight Information Services.

BBC Radio 4, Tuesday 8 May 8pm, repeated on Sunday 13 May at 5pm

Beware the Ides of March

A former British National Party election candidate has been left nearly £30,000 out of pocket after a court struck out his libel claim against Searchlight.

Sidney Chaney, a serial litigant from Basildon, Essex, brought his action against Searchlight Information Services, Gerry Gable and Sonia Gable over a leaflet that Searchlight published during the 2004 European election campaign. The leaflet referred to Chaney's correspondence with Frank Beck while Beck was serving five life sentences for sexual offences against children.

In February last year the court struck out the claim against Ms Gable and awarded costs of over £18,000 against Chaney. He failed to pay up. On 15 March this year the High Court in London agreed an application by Searchlight and Mr Gable to strike out Chaney's claim against both of them because of his failure to pay the costs and because he had circulated one of the defence witness statements without permission – an abuse of the court's process.

The court also took into account that Chaney had made "contradictory statements" about whether he had the means to pay the legal costs and had threatened a defence witness.

Delivering his decision, Mr Justice Tugendhat dismissed Chaney's claim that his primary objective in bringing the action was to clear his name. By circulating the witness statement, which contained details that reflected badly on both the witness and Chaney himself, Chaney had shown that he was prepared to blacken his own name to discredit the witness. Chaney had written to the witness threatening to circulate the statement, but had in fact already done so before the date of his letter.

Annoyed at the outcome, Chaney could not resist a bit of gratuitous racism. He complained to the judge that he was not getting legal aid, saying would have got it if he had been a "newcomer" but not as an "Englishman". Mr Justice Tugendhat pointed out curtly that no one gets legal aid for a libel action.

Further costs were awarded against Chaney and the judge refused him permission to appeal.

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