The prospective Tory candidate caught up in a racism row in Sandwell insists that he has done nothing wrong. But he admits signing nomination papers for the BNP in 2008.
Tony Roper unsuccessfully complained to the standards board after Labour councillor Derek Rowley accused him of being a racist – a result which has almost certainly cost him his hopes of standing in the Princes End ward in the forthcoming local elections.
Roper denies the claim that he once signed the nomination forms for National Front candidate John Salvage, and refutes the suggestion that he made any racist reference to Sandwell’s deputy mayor Amadul Haque in a row over Xmas lights.
“I did say he was the wrong colour, but that was a reference to his political beliefs” Roper said.
And he added: “I am not a racist. I have served on many committees and worked with every colour under the sun.”
He did, however, admit signing nomination papers for a BNP candidate in 2008, a decision which cost him a place on the board of governors at the Alexander School in Tipton.
“I signed the papers but I did no canvassing, no leafleting…I could chop my hand off now, but I did it because I wanted Labour out. They’ve ruined this town [Great Bridge].”
Roper accused Cllr Rowley of being a “bully boy” and said he would be complaining to the ombudsman, after the standards board failed to call him to make a personal representation – relying instead on written evidence.
The Stirrer
Showing posts with label Sandwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sandwell. Show all posts
March 08, 2010
June 05, 2008
Where now?
The British National Party’s success in the London Assembly elections coupled with its small but continued progress across the country provides an ideal opportunity critically to assess where the campaign against the British National Party is going.
For the past few years we have successfully limited the advance of the BNP in local elections, even reversing its fortunes in some of its traditional heartlands such as Sandwell, Oldham and Bradford. Even Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has publicly admitted that we have developed an election operation that can beat the BNP almost everywhere.
But the truth is that as each year goes by our job is getting harder. There is an ever-growing list of wards at risk to the BNP, it’s becoming more difficult to turn out our voters and even when we do prevent the BNP from winning we do so by increasing turnout rather than necessarily reducing the BNP’s support. In today’s political climate we can sometimes feel a sense of relief just by keeping the BNP down to 30% support in key wards.
It is perfectly feasible to continue this approach over the next couple of years. We will defeat the BNP in many more wards than they win and perhaps we can hold them at bay long enough for wider external factors to fundamentally undercut the BNP’s support.
Or we can perhaps try a radically different approach.
This essay will look at possible approaches. It is the opening of a discussion about where we go now. There are no simple or easy solutions of course, no one anti-fascist strategy can defeat the BNP on its own. However, as I shall try to explain, unless we do something radically different the situation will get a lot worse before it gets better.
To do that we need to really understand what is going on.
We are currently witnessing a tangible change in British politics. The old traditional voting patterns are fragmenting as voters increasingly shop around for a party that best articulates their concerns and even prejudices.
The emergence of the BNP is just one consequence of the change under way, and it is a change far more fundamental than many political commentators and politicians appear to register. It is also primarily an issue affecting the Labour Party.
Labour’s support among its traditional working-class voters has been shrinking for many years and this goes well beyond the current decline in fortunes for the Brown Government. In many core Labour heartlands the party’s support among social groups C2 and DE was at a lower level in 2005, when it won a general election, than in 1983 at the height of its electoral unpopularity during the Thatcher years. It is a point graphically made in the excellent book by Alexander Lee and Timothy Stanley, The End of Politics: Triangulation, Realignment and the Battle for the Centre Ground.
In 1997, 50% of C2 voters and 59% of DE voters supported Labour. By 2005 this had dropped to 40% and 48% respectively.
This drop has been even more pronounced in many core Labour areas. In Sheffield Central Labour polled over 60% of the vote in every election between 1983 and 2001, yet in 2005 its vote fell to 49.9%. In Burnley, Labour’s share of the vote dropped 38.5% during the same period.
“In Yorkshire and Humberside, the North and the North West the swing may have not significantly affected the return of Labour MPs to Westminster but majorities have been seriously diminished and the party’s share of the vote dramatically reduced,” say the authors of The End of Politics.
Some of these disappearing voters switched to other parties and in local elections this was often the Liberal Democrats, but far greater numbers simply stayed at home. A declining turnout and general lack of interest in mainstream political parties was the key winner.
For the Labour leadership this long-term shift has not mattered. In the current political system general elections are not won or lost in the Labour heartlands but in the swing marginals, where a few votes can turn success into defeat. It is these voters towards whom all the main parties increasingly gravitate.
Labour has relied on the fact that its traditional support, although declining, has had nowhere else to go. Many of these voters, whose communities were decimated under Thatcher, would never countenance voting Conservative. A few switched to the Liberal Democrats, others stayed at home but the bulk of those who did vote continued to support Labour.
But this is now changing. The BNP is emerging as the voice of this forgotten working class. A survey of the wards that produced the 25 best BNP votes in May shows plainly the profile of BNP supporting areas. All but one rank well below average in the Indices of Deprivation and the one exception, Queensbury in Bradford, is roughly average. Nearly all are among the top 10% most deprived areas.
In every single one of these wards, including Queensbury, the proportion of the population with no qualifications at all is well below the national average. Likewise, the proportion of people with a level 4/5 qualification (degree or teaching/social work qualification) is a fraction of the national average.
The result is that the BNP is now challenging Labour in many of its heartlands and the effect is startling. As we show elsewhere in this magazine, the BNP received more votes than Labour in the redrawn Dagenham and Rainham constituency. And it was not the only one. As table 1 illustrates, the BNP received more votes than both Labour and the Conservatives in the new Morley and Outwood constit-uency, which will be contested by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.
The BNP also beat Labour in one of the two new Havering constituencies and would probably have polled more votes than Labour in Stoke-on-Trent South and Central if it had put forward more candidates.
It is also important not to view the BNP in isolation. Its rising support is just the most visible element of this changing political scene. Other areas, such as South and West Yorkshire and South Wales, have seen a rise in local independent groups.
Who would have thought that Labour could have lost the heartlands of Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent in South Wales to independents? In Stoke-on-Trent, a city where ten years ago Labour held all 60 seats, the party could only win four seats this year. In Barnsley, where the BNP polled 21%, the Barnsley Independent Group holds one third of the seats on the council.
Fundamental shift
The breaking with Labour reflects a far more fundamental shift than mid-term blues. For an increasing number of traditional Labour voters the party no longer reflects their interests. Lee and Stanley in The End of Politics blame New Labour’s triangulation policy under which it has moved into the centre ground of politics in order to win the key marginals.
This view is echoed by Labour MP Jon Cruddas. “The politics of middle England become even more dominant in the minds of our political leadership. The danger is that we ignore the reasons for the strength of the BNP, and in so doing reinforce the conditions that have created this situation.”
Many of the people now turning their back on the Labour Party have not shared the economic prosperity of recent years. Many in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham now find themselves in a worse economic position than a few years ago. Great swathes of these traditional Labour voters not only feel ignored but are increasingly seeing in the BNP a party that articulates their interests. This degree of alienation with the mainstream parties was clearly demonstrated in the BBC polling that accompanied its White Season.
A number of studies, such as those conducted by Vision 21 and more recently by Democratic Audit, show clearly that a reoccurring theme among BNP voters is the sense that no one listens to them any more. Labour is increasingly seen as a middle-class party that prioritises minority groups and the interests of more affluent voters over themselves.
This is an international phenomenon. In the United States the phenomenon of Middle American Nationalism has emerged over the past 30 years, which despises the corporate elites above and the “undeserving” poor below.
Across Western Europe we have seen working-class voters turn towards far-right and populist parties. In Denmark working-class voters have shifted from the Labour Party to the Danish People’s Party (DPP). In France the Front National remains dominant in many traditional working-class communities. In Norway, the Progress Party has become the country’s main opposition.
“Workers’ support for the socialist parties has fallen away,” say researchers from the Danish Valgprojektet (Election Project). “There is a class-defined demobilisation … an almost total loss of support for the worker parties among the younger part of the working class, especially among skilled workers.”
Writing in this month’s Red Pepper, the Norwegian writer Magnus Marsdal argues that class politics still exists but these far-right parties are “in effect the new Labour party”. He points to Denmark where in the 2001 elections 61% of the DPP’s support came from working-class voters, nearly three times as many worker voters as the Social Democrats.
In an interesting parallel with England, almost all of these voters were from poorer and less educated sections of society.
All this represents a fundamental shift in British politics and the real fear is that we are heading the way of so many other European countries where large segments of the working class have broken with their traditional centre-left parties and moved to the right.
The root of BNP support
The BNP is a racist party fuelled by a leadership that draws its political roots from fascism. That much is clear. However, its appeal goes far wider than the issue of race. The BNP is tapping into political alienation and economic deprivation. It is providing a voice for those who increasingly feel ignored and cast aside by Labour. The BNP is articulating their concerns, grievances and even prejudices.
Race is obviously a key factor but it is not the only issue. Race was a defining factor in the initial rise of the BNP in 2001. Riots, growing racial tensions and international terrorism conspired to build support for the BNP. But this is less so now.
A cursory look at where the BNP is gaining support shows that race is not necessarily the dominant issue that it was in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. There are very small non-white communities in Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley and Nuneaton and Bedworth. These are traditional working-class areas where people feel abandoned and ignored. It is into this alienation that the BNP moves. Yes, race is certainly a central key, but more because it provides a prism through which people can see and understand the world and, more importantly, an easy scapegoat to blame for their own situation.
But the BNP provides far more than a racist scapegoat. It gives some voters a sense of belonging, an articulation of their own frustration – even a new white identity.
This point was graphically illustrated in the BBC White Season, particularly the film set in a working men’s club in Wibsey, Bradford. “I wish I could be happy again,” said Graham Anderson. In an increasingly complicated and disorientated world it is easy to see how the BNP can point the finger of blame while simultaneously offering a new sense of white community.
Whatever the merits of the Season as a whole it did reflect the sense of loss, political abandonment and a search for identity and belonging of a minority of people in this country.
In an increasingly complex world, in which Britain’s place has changed, Britain itself is fragmenting and the old economic certainties provided by traditional employment are long gone. It is no coincidence that the BNP has emerged in those communities that have experienced most economic decline and change, principally in the former coalfields and car producing areas.
Why does all this matter for anti-fascists? Unless we can understand why the BNP is growing we have little chance of defeating it.
Anti-fascism has to continue to focus around elections. After all, this is how BNP support is measured and nothing helps the BNP grow more than substantial electoral victories.
However, it is clear that our message also has to develop. Yes, we still have to identify and turn out the anti-BNP vote, as we have successfully done in so many areas, but we must also have something to say to potential BNP voters.
A simple “Don’t vote nazi” is an irrelevant slogan that needs to be discarded immediately. That is not to say that we should not highlight the real politics of the BNP and its leadership but we must address people where they currently are. And in terms of that, very few people see the BNP as a nazi party.
It is also clear that a simple Hope not Hate message is insufficient. “You tell us to vote for Hope not hate but there is no hope round here,” one voter told me in Dagenham. Similar reports came in from Stoke-on-Trent and Nuneaton.
We need to replace empty slogans with substance, and that means involving ourselves in the community as never before. If the BNP support is driven by racial prejudice, often whipped up by the national media, economic deprivation and a loss of identity, then these are the three issues we need to contest.
Nationally, we must challenge and expose the racist lies and myths peddled in the media while also ending the muscular bidding war between the political parties over race and immigration. Not only is this politically damaging (Labour will never appease its opponents on immigration), it is also quite dishonest. The economic boom of recent years has been built on the influx of migrant workers, our public services would collapse without its non-white workforce and the pensions crisis would be even more severe without newcomers replacing those British people moving abroad in record numbers.
But it is locally that anti-fascists must focus their energies. Searchlight has long argued for a localised strategy to defeat the BNP and the need for this is even greater now. Each area is different and requires a slightly different solution.
Thinking nationally, acting locally
In the recent election we found that our general Hope not hate leaflets worked in some places but less well in others. The general trend was that they were more effective where the BNP was standing for the first time. In other places, such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham, where support for the BNP is deeply entrenched, we need a different approach and one that addresses local issues and concerns.
Where we produced more localised leaflets, in Burnley, West Yorkshire and Sandwell, our material appears to have gone down a lot better.
Of course there is a limit to how much localised material we can physically produce during a short election campaign. Over the past few years we have tried to prioritise the most high risk areas and those where we have the best local contacts. Two ways of overcoming this are to widen the pool of people who can produce leaflets, and to produce more localised material at other times of the year outside election periods.
To achieve this we need more local groups – and building groups with an ability to intervene locally must be our key priority over the next two years. A good functioning local group is likely to achieve far more success. It needs to be community-orientated, broad-based and non-dogmatic.
It needs to be able to address local issues and concerns while having roots within the community. It needs to be able to form partnerships with other local groups to address issues and improve the area, while also gaining credibility within the community to break down barriers and promote cohesion.
Two good examples of community campaigning are Keighley and Epping. In Keighley the local TUC and Bradford anti-fascists confronted BNP lies over grooming, where others had ignored what was going on, while simultaneously assisting local community groups through good old fashioned community development work.
The Redbridge and Epping Forest Together group has adopted a slightly different approach but it too has been successful. It has sought to build a broad coalition of political parties and the non-aligned, and has involved residents’ and faith groups. While it has not done the community development work of Keighley, it has helped alter the political climate enough to defeat the BNP in two of the three seats it was defending.
Forming local Hope not hate groups would also be an excellent way of involving trade unionists, many of whom refuse to do any direct campaigning for the Labour Party any more. In addition to bringing extra people into activity it strengthens the relationship between unions and the local community.
There are other groups that need to be included from the start. Among them are faith groups, residents’ associations, community groups and the voluntary sector – people who care enough about their local community to be active while also having the respect of others.
It some places, such as Barking and Dagenham, one of the fundamental problems is the absence of any mainstream alternative to Labour, so the BNP is the sole beneficiary of the anti-Labour vote. For anti-fascists, this is a problem as it is hard to build a political coalition in an area where there is no one other than Labour to work with.
In these areas community work is even more important. In addition to the basic anti-BNP material to dispel the party’s lies and highlight the inadequacies of its councillors, we must collaborate with existing community and faith groups to help rebuild civic society and create an alternative pole of attraction to the BNP. It is often the lack of local positive institutions and community organisers that contributes to the feeling of despair and inability to change things for the better.
Empowering local communities to improve their local area in a positive fashion through working with and mobilising local people is essential. This includes developing a leadership programme that can provide basic organising skills and give confidence to local people.
Searchlight is not opposed to concerts and large city-centre activities but these cannot be the main focus. Large concerts, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds to stage, do not deliver leaflets in the key areas nor do they address the concerns and grievances of the people likely to vote BNP. They certainly have a place in mobilising and organising activists but the important work has got to be done at a more local level. It might not be glamorous and it might not be easy but it is vital.
Political solution
Of course on a wider level the BNP needs to be defeated politically. While much of this is outside the remit and capability of Searchlight we will strive to argue that the rise of the BNP is the consequence of the shift to the centre of all the mainstream parties. There can be no disguising this fact.
There will be some who argue for a solely class-based approach to anti-fascism but a refusal to work with the mainstream parties will only hand dozens of seats to the BNP and quicken its electoral advance.
The majority of people are still opposed to the racist message of the BNP and while it is important that we mobilise these voters we must also begin to address, at a local level, the grievances and insecurities that are giving rise to the BNP in the first place.
The clock is ticking and time is running out. The economic downturn, the credit crunch, the housing collapse and rising living costs are only going to increase insecurities over the next year or two. The political parties, and in particular Labour, are letting down a large section of the British population. Without radical and immediate change, Britain could experience the political earthquake that is engulfing much of Europe.
Searchlight
For the past few years we have successfully limited the advance of the BNP in local elections, even reversing its fortunes in some of its traditional heartlands such as Sandwell, Oldham and Bradford. Even Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has publicly admitted that we have developed an election operation that can beat the BNP almost everywhere.
But the truth is that as each year goes by our job is getting harder. There is an ever-growing list of wards at risk to the BNP, it’s becoming more difficult to turn out our voters and even when we do prevent the BNP from winning we do so by increasing turnout rather than necessarily reducing the BNP’s support. In today’s political climate we can sometimes feel a sense of relief just by keeping the BNP down to 30% support in key wards.
It is perfectly feasible to continue this approach over the next couple of years. We will defeat the BNP in many more wards than they win and perhaps we can hold them at bay long enough for wider external factors to fundamentally undercut the BNP’s support.
Or we can perhaps try a radically different approach.
This essay will look at possible approaches. It is the opening of a discussion about where we go now. There are no simple or easy solutions of course, no one anti-fascist strategy can defeat the BNP on its own. However, as I shall try to explain, unless we do something radically different the situation will get a lot worse before it gets better.
To do that we need to really understand what is going on.
We are currently witnessing a tangible change in British politics. The old traditional voting patterns are fragmenting as voters increasingly shop around for a party that best articulates their concerns and even prejudices.
The emergence of the BNP is just one consequence of the change under way, and it is a change far more fundamental than many political commentators and politicians appear to register. It is also primarily an issue affecting the Labour Party.
Labour’s support among its traditional working-class voters has been shrinking for many years and this goes well beyond the current decline in fortunes for the Brown Government. In many core Labour heartlands the party’s support among social groups C2 and DE was at a lower level in 2005, when it won a general election, than in 1983 at the height of its electoral unpopularity during the Thatcher years. It is a point graphically made in the excellent book by Alexander Lee and Timothy Stanley, The End of Politics: Triangulation, Realignment and the Battle for the Centre Ground.
In 1997, 50% of C2 voters and 59% of DE voters supported Labour. By 2005 this had dropped to 40% and 48% respectively.
This drop has been even more pronounced in many core Labour areas. In Sheffield Central Labour polled over 60% of the vote in every election between 1983 and 2001, yet in 2005 its vote fell to 49.9%. In Burnley, Labour’s share of the vote dropped 38.5% during the same period.
“In Yorkshire and Humberside, the North and the North West the swing may have not significantly affected the return of Labour MPs to Westminster but majorities have been seriously diminished and the party’s share of the vote dramatically reduced,” say the authors of The End of Politics.
Some of these disappearing voters switched to other parties and in local elections this was often the Liberal Democrats, but far greater numbers simply stayed at home. A declining turnout and general lack of interest in mainstream political parties was the key winner.
For the Labour leadership this long-term shift has not mattered. In the current political system general elections are not won or lost in the Labour heartlands but in the swing marginals, where a few votes can turn success into defeat. It is these voters towards whom all the main parties increasingly gravitate.
Labour has relied on the fact that its traditional support, although declining, has had nowhere else to go. Many of these voters, whose communities were decimated under Thatcher, would never countenance voting Conservative. A few switched to the Liberal Democrats, others stayed at home but the bulk of those who did vote continued to support Labour.
But this is now changing. The BNP is emerging as the voice of this forgotten working class. A survey of the wards that produced the 25 best BNP votes in May shows plainly the profile of BNP supporting areas. All but one rank well below average in the Indices of Deprivation and the one exception, Queensbury in Bradford, is roughly average. Nearly all are among the top 10% most deprived areas.
In every single one of these wards, including Queensbury, the proportion of the population with no qualifications at all is well below the national average. Likewise, the proportion of people with a level 4/5 qualification (degree or teaching/social work qualification) is a fraction of the national average.
The result is that the BNP is now challenging Labour in many of its heartlands and the effect is startling. As we show elsewhere in this magazine, the BNP received more votes than Labour in the redrawn Dagenham and Rainham constituency. And it was not the only one. As table 1 illustrates, the BNP received more votes than both Labour and the Conservatives in the new Morley and Outwood constit-uency, which will be contested by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.
The BNP also beat Labour in one of the two new Havering constituencies and would probably have polled more votes than Labour in Stoke-on-Trent South and Central if it had put forward more candidates.
It is also important not to view the BNP in isolation. Its rising support is just the most visible element of this changing political scene. Other areas, such as South and West Yorkshire and South Wales, have seen a rise in local independent groups.
Who would have thought that Labour could have lost the heartlands of Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent in South Wales to independents? In Stoke-on-Trent, a city where ten years ago Labour held all 60 seats, the party could only win four seats this year. In Barnsley, where the BNP polled 21%, the Barnsley Independent Group holds one third of the seats on the council.
Fundamental shift
The breaking with Labour reflects a far more fundamental shift than mid-term blues. For an increasing number of traditional Labour voters the party no longer reflects their interests. Lee and Stanley in The End of Politics blame New Labour’s triangulation policy under which it has moved into the centre ground of politics in order to win the key marginals.
This view is echoed by Labour MP Jon Cruddas. “The politics of middle England become even more dominant in the minds of our political leadership. The danger is that we ignore the reasons for the strength of the BNP, and in so doing reinforce the conditions that have created this situation.”
Many of the people now turning their back on the Labour Party have not shared the economic prosperity of recent years. Many in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham now find themselves in a worse economic position than a few years ago. Great swathes of these traditional Labour voters not only feel ignored but are increasingly seeing in the BNP a party that articulates their interests. This degree of alienation with the mainstream parties was clearly demonstrated in the BBC polling that accompanied its White Season.
A number of studies, such as those conducted by Vision 21 and more recently by Democratic Audit, show clearly that a reoccurring theme among BNP voters is the sense that no one listens to them any more. Labour is increasingly seen as a middle-class party that prioritises minority groups and the interests of more affluent voters over themselves.
This is an international phenomenon. In the United States the phenomenon of Middle American Nationalism has emerged over the past 30 years, which despises the corporate elites above and the “undeserving” poor below.
Across Western Europe we have seen working-class voters turn towards far-right and populist parties. In Denmark working-class voters have shifted from the Labour Party to the Danish People’s Party (DPP). In France the Front National remains dominant in many traditional working-class communities. In Norway, the Progress Party has become the country’s main opposition.
“Workers’ support for the socialist parties has fallen away,” say researchers from the Danish Valgprojektet (Election Project). “There is a class-defined demobilisation … an almost total loss of support for the worker parties among the younger part of the working class, especially among skilled workers.”
Writing in this month’s Red Pepper, the Norwegian writer Magnus Marsdal argues that class politics still exists but these far-right parties are “in effect the new Labour party”. He points to Denmark where in the 2001 elections 61% of the DPP’s support came from working-class voters, nearly three times as many worker voters as the Social Democrats.
In an interesting parallel with England, almost all of these voters were from poorer and less educated sections of society.
All this represents a fundamental shift in British politics and the real fear is that we are heading the way of so many other European countries where large segments of the working class have broken with their traditional centre-left parties and moved to the right.
The root of BNP support
The BNP is a racist party fuelled by a leadership that draws its political roots from fascism. That much is clear. However, its appeal goes far wider than the issue of race. The BNP is tapping into political alienation and economic deprivation. It is providing a voice for those who increasingly feel ignored and cast aside by Labour. The BNP is articulating their concerns, grievances and even prejudices.
Race is obviously a key factor but it is not the only issue. Race was a defining factor in the initial rise of the BNP in 2001. Riots, growing racial tensions and international terrorism conspired to build support for the BNP. But this is less so now.
A cursory look at where the BNP is gaining support shows that race is not necessarily the dominant issue that it was in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. There are very small non-white communities in Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley and Nuneaton and Bedworth. These are traditional working-class areas where people feel abandoned and ignored. It is into this alienation that the BNP moves. Yes, race is certainly a central key, but more because it provides a prism through which people can see and understand the world and, more importantly, an easy scapegoat to blame for their own situation.
But the BNP provides far more than a racist scapegoat. It gives some voters a sense of belonging, an articulation of their own frustration – even a new white identity.
This point was graphically illustrated in the BBC White Season, particularly the film set in a working men’s club in Wibsey, Bradford. “I wish I could be happy again,” said Graham Anderson. In an increasingly complicated and disorientated world it is easy to see how the BNP can point the finger of blame while simultaneously offering a new sense of white community.
Whatever the merits of the Season as a whole it did reflect the sense of loss, political abandonment and a search for identity and belonging of a minority of people in this country.
In an increasingly complex world, in which Britain’s place has changed, Britain itself is fragmenting and the old economic certainties provided by traditional employment are long gone. It is no coincidence that the BNP has emerged in those communities that have experienced most economic decline and change, principally in the former coalfields and car producing areas.
Why does all this matter for anti-fascists? Unless we can understand why the BNP is growing we have little chance of defeating it.
Anti-fascism has to continue to focus around elections. After all, this is how BNP support is measured and nothing helps the BNP grow more than substantial electoral victories.
However, it is clear that our message also has to develop. Yes, we still have to identify and turn out the anti-BNP vote, as we have successfully done in so many areas, but we must also have something to say to potential BNP voters.
A simple “Don’t vote nazi” is an irrelevant slogan that needs to be discarded immediately. That is not to say that we should not highlight the real politics of the BNP and its leadership but we must address people where they currently are. And in terms of that, very few people see the BNP as a nazi party.
It is also clear that a simple Hope not Hate message is insufficient. “You tell us to vote for Hope not hate but there is no hope round here,” one voter told me in Dagenham. Similar reports came in from Stoke-on-Trent and Nuneaton.
We need to replace empty slogans with substance, and that means involving ourselves in the community as never before. If the BNP support is driven by racial prejudice, often whipped up by the national media, economic deprivation and a loss of identity, then these are the three issues we need to contest.
Nationally, we must challenge and expose the racist lies and myths peddled in the media while also ending the muscular bidding war between the political parties over race and immigration. Not only is this politically damaging (Labour will never appease its opponents on immigration), it is also quite dishonest. The economic boom of recent years has been built on the influx of migrant workers, our public services would collapse without its non-white workforce and the pensions crisis would be even more severe without newcomers replacing those British people moving abroad in record numbers.
But it is locally that anti-fascists must focus their energies. Searchlight has long argued for a localised strategy to defeat the BNP and the need for this is even greater now. Each area is different and requires a slightly different solution.
Thinking nationally, acting locally
In the recent election we found that our general Hope not hate leaflets worked in some places but less well in others. The general trend was that they were more effective where the BNP was standing for the first time. In other places, such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham, where support for the BNP is deeply entrenched, we need a different approach and one that addresses local issues and concerns.
Where we produced more localised leaflets, in Burnley, West Yorkshire and Sandwell, our material appears to have gone down a lot better.
Of course there is a limit to how much localised material we can physically produce during a short election campaign. Over the past few years we have tried to prioritise the most high risk areas and those where we have the best local contacts. Two ways of overcoming this are to widen the pool of people who can produce leaflets, and to produce more localised material at other times of the year outside election periods.
To achieve this we need more local groups – and building groups with an ability to intervene locally must be our key priority over the next two years. A good functioning local group is likely to achieve far more success. It needs to be community-orientated, broad-based and non-dogmatic.
It needs to be able to address local issues and concerns while having roots within the community. It needs to be able to form partnerships with other local groups to address issues and improve the area, while also gaining credibility within the community to break down barriers and promote cohesion.
Two good examples of community campaigning are Keighley and Epping. In Keighley the local TUC and Bradford anti-fascists confronted BNP lies over grooming, where others had ignored what was going on, while simultaneously assisting local community groups through good old fashioned community development work.
The Redbridge and Epping Forest Together group has adopted a slightly different approach but it too has been successful. It has sought to build a broad coalition of political parties and the non-aligned, and has involved residents’ and faith groups. While it has not done the community development work of Keighley, it has helped alter the political climate enough to defeat the BNP in two of the three seats it was defending.
Forming local Hope not hate groups would also be an excellent way of involving trade unionists, many of whom refuse to do any direct campaigning for the Labour Party any more. In addition to bringing extra people into activity it strengthens the relationship between unions and the local community.
There are other groups that need to be included from the start. Among them are faith groups, residents’ associations, community groups and the voluntary sector – people who care enough about their local community to be active while also having the respect of others.
It some places, such as Barking and Dagenham, one of the fundamental problems is the absence of any mainstream alternative to Labour, so the BNP is the sole beneficiary of the anti-Labour vote. For anti-fascists, this is a problem as it is hard to build a political coalition in an area where there is no one other than Labour to work with.
In these areas community work is even more important. In addition to the basic anti-BNP material to dispel the party’s lies and highlight the inadequacies of its councillors, we must collaborate with existing community and faith groups to help rebuild civic society and create an alternative pole of attraction to the BNP. It is often the lack of local positive institutions and community organisers that contributes to the feeling of despair and inability to change things for the better.
Empowering local communities to improve their local area in a positive fashion through working with and mobilising local people is essential. This includes developing a leadership programme that can provide basic organising skills and give confidence to local people.
Searchlight is not opposed to concerts and large city-centre activities but these cannot be the main focus. Large concerts, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds to stage, do not deliver leaflets in the key areas nor do they address the concerns and grievances of the people likely to vote BNP. They certainly have a place in mobilising and organising activists but the important work has got to be done at a more local level. It might not be glamorous and it might not be easy but it is vital.
Political solution
Of course on a wider level the BNP needs to be defeated politically. While much of this is outside the remit and capability of Searchlight we will strive to argue that the rise of the BNP is the consequence of the shift to the centre of all the mainstream parties. There can be no disguising this fact.
There will be some who argue for a solely class-based approach to anti-fascism but a refusal to work with the mainstream parties will only hand dozens of seats to the BNP and quicken its electoral advance.
The majority of people are still opposed to the racist message of the BNP and while it is important that we mobilise these voters we must also begin to address, at a local level, the grievances and insecurities that are giving rise to the BNP in the first place.
The clock is ticking and time is running out. The economic downturn, the credit crunch, the housing collapse and rising living costs are only going to increase insecurities over the next year or two. The political parties, and in particular Labour, are letting down a large section of the British population. Without radical and immediate change, Britain could experience the political earthquake that is engulfing much of Europe.
Searchlight
December 07, 2007
Sandwell disaster - BNP routed
Working on the principle that in the expectation of bad political news it sometimes pays to get one’s excuses in first, the editor of the BNP’s monthly “newspaper” Voice of Freedom, Martin Wingfield, admitted that yesterday’s self-inflicted by-election in Sandwell’s Prince’s End ward “will be a very difficult one for the British National Party to gain any satisfaction from”.
Wingfield added: “Our excellent candidate Karen Parkes, faces the almost impossible task of trying to defend the Prince’s End seat on Sandwell Borough Council.”
As pre-emptive damage limitation goes this was rather excessive, since even the lowliest political activist is not going to tell the world that an election his party is contesting has been lost even before a vote has been cast.
We would have thought that the editor of the BNP’s most important interface with the general public should have known better, but Wingfield’s lack of propagandist skills and gaffe-prone nature were in evidence again when he told visitors to his blog: “When they [new BNP recruits] come from the Tories, I tend to think ‘I wonder what they are after?’ I’m afraid I can find little in common with people who belonged to a Party that sold off this country’s ‘family silver’ and essential services to private and in many cases foreign concerns.”
Still, in a party where the leadership can and has referred to dues-paying members as “vermin” we suppose Wingfield’s insulting of a large swathe of the BNP’s membership counts as small beer.
Not that Wingfield hasn’t been on the end of an insult or two himself. From Searchlight we pinch this delicious quote: “Wingfield also spent a brief spell ‘inside’ for non-payment of a Race Act fine. While this was the correct thing to do, his main motivation was to make himself a martyr and boost his popularity in preparation for the factional struggle which he was already planning.”
Author: Nicholas Griffin, recalling one of the many destructive spats on the far-Right in which he always contrived to play a pivotal role.
All highly entertaining, but not entirely relevant to Sandwell’s Prince’s End ward by-election, brought to us courtesy of a more humble but no less colourful cast of BNP characters.
Sandwell exists only in a political sense. Cobbled together from bits of Staffordshire and Worcestershire, it came into being with the local government reforms of 1974 and formed part of the unpopular and now defunct West Midlands County.
A unitary authority, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council encompasses Tipton, Smethwick, Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Wednesbury and West Bromwich. Sandwell sits squarely in what is still known as the Black Country, a name gained due to the disfiguring effects of smoke and pollution in the district’s industrial heyday. The intense concentration of heavy industry which once characterised the area is long gone, and Sandwell in particular suffers from higher than average unemployment levels.
The most recent available figures give the population of Sandwell as almost 80% white, 14% Asian, with the remainder made up of Afro-Caribbeans, people of mixed-race race, and “others”.
Large-scale immigration began in the early 1960s, which, together with steady industrial decline and increased competition for jobs and decent housing, led to some notoriously racist west Midlands election campaigns, most notably that of Conservative Peter Griffiths, contesting nearby Smethwick in the 1964 general election campaign with the infamous slogan “If you want a ni**er for a neighbour, vote Labour”.
Griffiths won.
Despite that legacy, and the attempts of far-Right groups such as the original version of the British National Party and Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement to cash in, racist politics did not take off in the west Midlands. In the 1970s the National Front had an organisation in the area, but it was never electorally successful, splitting badly in the 1975/6 National Front/National Party division, and suffering further losses as individual members drifted towards Mrs Thatcher’s revitalised Tories.
It would be many years before the racist politics of the extreme-Right would enjoy success in that part of the world.
The BNP won its first seat on Sandwell MBC in May 2004, the candidate being the interesting James Lloyd, of whom more anon, and the ward he fought being Prince’s End.
In May 2006 Lloyd was joined by three more newly-elected BNP councillors, two of which might be described as “interesting” - Simon Smith and Russell Green.
Smith became known for Holocaust denial, UFO belief, and telling the Nazi Stormfront website that “The reason why Blacks disproportionately don’t vote is that the frontal part of the brain associated with postponing immediate gratification is not so well developed as in other races”, as we reported here.
Smith also achieved notoriety when he was suspended for publishing “hateful and abusive” material on his council-owned webpage, and for staging a walkout during a council vote to elect a Sikh as mayor of Sandwell .
Unfortunately for Smith, he backed the losing candidate in the BNP’s rigged leadership contest and was one of the first casualties in Nick Griffin’s purge of the vermin.
So far, so unlovely.
Of Russell Green, this month’s Searchlight has this to say:
One of the BNP’s two remaining Sandwell councillors has done little to distinguish himself since his election in May 2006 but does have some interesting links on his official council website. Under the heading “My Politics”, alongside the websites of the BNP and its front groups, Civil Liberty and Solidarity, Russell Green lists the aptly named “Conspiracy Planet”. This site espouses pretty much every lunatic nazi and antisemitic conspiracy going, including that the 9/11 terror attacks were an “inside job”. Also there is “The Truth Seeker”, which carries articles that suggest HIV is a harmless virus and does not cause Aids, claims to reveal the secret powers behind the Vatican and argues that Jewish bankers brought Hitler to power.
Which brings us back to James Lloyd.
Lloyd ran one of the most disorderly public houses in the West Midlands, Sandwell Council stripping the then Councillor Lloyd of his licence after a series of violent incidents. Lloyd’s woes didn’t end there. He found himself embroiled in a council voting scandal, and his son Ricky, a local ne’er-do-well, was returned to prison after committing offences while out on licence.
But all’s well that ends well. In October Lloyd was ejected from his Prince’s End seat for non-attendance at council meetings, necessitating a by-election.
The BNP last fought Prince’s End ward in May, their candidate being Karen Parkes, who stood again for the BNP last night. The result then was (percentages in brackets):
Lab 898 (35.71)
Con 498 (19.80)
Ind 241 (9.58)
BNP 878 (34.91)
Total 2515
Parkes came within twenty votes of taking the seat, but fortunately signs of electoral reverse had set in for the BNP, notably in the West Midlands, where it fell back by thousands of votes. This had just enough effect to deny Parkes a seat.
Voters are certain to punish the BNP for the actions (and lack of them) of the errant James Lloyd, the question being - how badly? For us this complicates the task of separating out the anti-Lloyd backlash from the general downturn in the BNP’s electoral fortunes.
Sandwell Prince’s End ward by-election result:
Lab 796 (48.07)
Con 517 (31.22)
LibDem 29 (1.75)
BNP 314 (18.96)
Total 1656
A comprehensive and well-earned defeat for the BNP, with Labour and the Conservatives gaining in roughly equal measure from the BNP’s dramatic loss of votes. It is also crystal clear that Liberal Democrat voters, knowing their candidate had little hope of success, swung behind Labour and the Tories to keep the BNP out.
Our feeling is that 10-12% of the BNP’s lost votes can be attributed to the bad publicity generated by Lloyd (not helped by Smith and Green), but that the remainder can be ascribed to the general downswing in their electoral fortunes over the past months.
Under normal conditions, and without the antics of Lloyd, it is difficult to believe that the BNP could have come anywhere near winning this seat.
There is a lesson to be gleaned from all this. Looking at the sharp increase in the Conservative vote, don’t all those ex-Tory BNP members insulted by Martin Wingfield have a sneaking sense that they’d have been better off staying where they were?
Wingfield added: “Our excellent candidate Karen Parkes, faces the almost impossible task of trying to defend the Prince’s End seat on Sandwell Borough Council.”
As pre-emptive damage limitation goes this was rather excessive, since even the lowliest political activist is not going to tell the world that an election his party is contesting has been lost even before a vote has been cast.
We would have thought that the editor of the BNP’s most important interface with the general public should have known better, but Wingfield’s lack of propagandist skills and gaffe-prone nature were in evidence again when he told visitors to his blog: “When they [new BNP recruits] come from the Tories, I tend to think ‘I wonder what they are after?’ I’m afraid I can find little in common with people who belonged to a Party that sold off this country’s ‘family silver’ and essential services to private and in many cases foreign concerns.”
Still, in a party where the leadership can and has referred to dues-paying members as “vermin” we suppose Wingfield’s insulting of a large swathe of the BNP’s membership counts as small beer.
Not that Wingfield hasn’t been on the end of an insult or two himself. From Searchlight we pinch this delicious quote: “Wingfield also spent a brief spell ‘inside’ for non-payment of a Race Act fine. While this was the correct thing to do, his main motivation was to make himself a martyr and boost his popularity in preparation for the factional struggle which he was already planning.”
Author: Nicholas Griffin, recalling one of the many destructive spats on the far-Right in which he always contrived to play a pivotal role.
All highly entertaining, but not entirely relevant to Sandwell’s Prince’s End ward by-election, brought to us courtesy of a more humble but no less colourful cast of BNP characters.
Sandwell exists only in a political sense. Cobbled together from bits of Staffordshire and Worcestershire, it came into being with the local government reforms of 1974 and formed part of the unpopular and now defunct West Midlands County.
A unitary authority, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council encompasses Tipton, Smethwick, Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Wednesbury and West Bromwich. Sandwell sits squarely in what is still known as the Black Country, a name gained due to the disfiguring effects of smoke and pollution in the district’s industrial heyday. The intense concentration of heavy industry which once characterised the area is long gone, and Sandwell in particular suffers from higher than average unemployment levels.
The most recent available figures give the population of Sandwell as almost 80% white, 14% Asian, with the remainder made up of Afro-Caribbeans, people of mixed-race race, and “others”.
Large-scale immigration began in the early 1960s, which, together with steady industrial decline and increased competition for jobs and decent housing, led to some notoriously racist west Midlands election campaigns, most notably that of Conservative Peter Griffiths, contesting nearby Smethwick in the 1964 general election campaign with the infamous slogan “If you want a ni**er for a neighbour, vote Labour”.
Griffiths won.
Despite that legacy, and the attempts of far-Right groups such as the original version of the British National Party and Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement to cash in, racist politics did not take off in the west Midlands. In the 1970s the National Front had an organisation in the area, but it was never electorally successful, splitting badly in the 1975/6 National Front/National Party division, and suffering further losses as individual members drifted towards Mrs Thatcher’s revitalised Tories.
It would be many years before the racist politics of the extreme-Right would enjoy success in that part of the world.
The BNP won its first seat on Sandwell MBC in May 2004, the candidate being the interesting James Lloyd, of whom more anon, and the ward he fought being Prince’s End.
In May 2006 Lloyd was joined by three more newly-elected BNP councillors, two of which might be described as “interesting” - Simon Smith and Russell Green.
Smith became known for Holocaust denial, UFO belief, and telling the Nazi Stormfront website that “The reason why Blacks disproportionately don’t vote is that the frontal part of the brain associated with postponing immediate gratification is not so well developed as in other races”, as we reported here.
Smith also achieved notoriety when he was suspended for publishing “hateful and abusive” material on his council-owned webpage, and for staging a walkout during a council vote to elect a Sikh as mayor of Sandwell .
Unfortunately for Smith, he backed the losing candidate in the BNP’s rigged leadership contest and was one of the first casualties in Nick Griffin’s purge of the vermin.
So far, so unlovely.
Of Russell Green, this month’s Searchlight has this to say:
One of the BNP’s two remaining Sandwell councillors has done little to distinguish himself since his election in May 2006 but does have some interesting links on his official council website. Under the heading “My Politics”, alongside the websites of the BNP and its front groups, Civil Liberty and Solidarity, Russell Green lists the aptly named “Conspiracy Planet”. This site espouses pretty much every lunatic nazi and antisemitic conspiracy going, including that the 9/11 terror attacks were an “inside job”. Also there is “The Truth Seeker”, which carries articles that suggest HIV is a harmless virus and does not cause Aids, claims to reveal the secret powers behind the Vatican and argues that Jewish bankers brought Hitler to power.
Which brings us back to James Lloyd.
Lloyd ran one of the most disorderly public houses in the West Midlands, Sandwell Council stripping the then Councillor Lloyd of his licence after a series of violent incidents. Lloyd’s woes didn’t end there. He found himself embroiled in a council voting scandal, and his son Ricky, a local ne’er-do-well, was returned to prison after committing offences while out on licence.
But all’s well that ends well. In October Lloyd was ejected from his Prince’s End seat for non-attendance at council meetings, necessitating a by-election.
The BNP last fought Prince’s End ward in May, their candidate being Karen Parkes, who stood again for the BNP last night. The result then was (percentages in brackets):
Lab 898 (35.71)
Con 498 (19.80)
Ind 241 (9.58)
BNP 878 (34.91)
Total 2515
Parkes came within twenty votes of taking the seat, but fortunately signs of electoral reverse had set in for the BNP, notably in the West Midlands, where it fell back by thousands of votes. This had just enough effect to deny Parkes a seat.
Voters are certain to punish the BNP for the actions (and lack of them) of the errant James Lloyd, the question being - how badly? For us this complicates the task of separating out the anti-Lloyd backlash from the general downturn in the BNP’s electoral fortunes.
Sandwell Prince’s End ward by-election result:
Lab 796 (48.07)
Con 517 (31.22)
LibDem 29 (1.75)
BNP 314 (18.96)
Total 1656
A comprehensive and well-earned defeat for the BNP, with Labour and the Conservatives gaining in roughly equal measure from the BNP’s dramatic loss of votes. It is also crystal clear that Liberal Democrat voters, knowing their candidate had little hope of success, swung behind Labour and the Tories to keep the BNP out.
Our feeling is that 10-12% of the BNP’s lost votes can be attributed to the bad publicity generated by Lloyd (not helped by Smith and Green), but that the remainder can be ascribed to the general downswing in their electoral fortunes over the past months.
Under normal conditions, and without the antics of Lloyd, it is difficult to believe that the BNP could have come anywhere near winning this seat.
There is a lesson to be gleaned from all this. Looking at the sharp increase in the Conservative vote, don’t all those ex-Tory BNP members insulted by Martin Wingfield have a sneaking sense that they’d have been better off staying where they were?
November 15, 2007
BNP by-election fear means Green candidate withdraws
A Green Party candidate has withdrawn from a by-election in an attempt to prevent the BNP from gaining a Sandwell Council seat.
Vicky Dunn, aged 30, made the decision not to stand in the Princes End, Tipton, by-election called in response to the sacking of BNP councillor James Lloyd. Elected in 2004, Mr Lloyd had not attended council meetings for six months and had failed to give an explanation for his absence. He was told he would face crippling legal costs to win back his seat by going to the High Court and decided not to contest the decision.
Ms Dunn said her move was an attempt to prevent a split vote at the election on December 6. She said: "The BNP have put up a candidate, but it's best for the people of Princes End if any other party wins.
"The Greens don't want to split the vote and let the BNP in, so I have withdrawn."
Birmingham Post
Vicky Dunn, aged 30, made the decision not to stand in the Princes End, Tipton, by-election called in response to the sacking of BNP councillor James Lloyd. Elected in 2004, Mr Lloyd had not attended council meetings for six months and had failed to give an explanation for his absence. He was told he would face crippling legal costs to win back his seat by going to the High Court and decided not to contest the decision.
Ms Dunn said her move was an attempt to prevent a split vote at the election on December 6. She said: "The BNP have put up a candidate, but it's best for the people of Princes End if any other party wins.
"The Greens don't want to split the vote and let the BNP in, so I have withdrawn."
Birmingham Post
Labels:
BNP,
Green Party,
James Lloyd,
Sandwell
October 18, 2007
Former BNP councillor admits defeat
A British National Party councillor kicked off Sandwell Council for missing meetings today admitted defeat after learning he faces crippling legal costs to win back his seat.
Coun James Lloyd, BNP member for Princes End in Tipton, has been disqualified from office after missing meetings for six months and failing to give an explanation. Today it was revealed that Coun Lloyd's only hope of winning the legal fight could be going to the High Court, which he said was out of the question.
Neeraj Sharma, Sandwell Council's monitoring officer, said today: "We have told Coun Lloyd the legislation under which he ceases to be a member of the local authority and suggested to him that he might consider taking independent legal advice. We are not aware of any direct right of appeal under the current legislative provisions. However, the High Court of course has inherent jurisdiction over such matters."
Coun Lloyd, who was the former leader of the BNP in Sandwell and was elected to the local authority in 2004, told the Black Country Mail today there was no way he could afford a costly legal battle.
"I am afraid that's it as far as I am concerned," he said. "I am very disappointed with the members services department on the council. I would have thought they might have given me a quick phone call to warn me about falling foul of this six-month rule. All this has come completely out of the blue and I have been stitched up like a kipper. It looks like I am going to have to accept what has happened and bite the bullet. I certainly cannot afford to pay thousands of pounds a day for a High Court hearing. I am off the council for now but if the BNP selects me I shall certainly be fighting again at the local elections next May."
Coun Lloyd's disqualification from the council was part of a double setback for the BNP in Sandwell, coming hot on the heels of the resignation of Coun Simon Smith who revealed he has become an Independent.
Birmingham Mail
Coun James Lloyd, BNP member for Princes End in Tipton, has been disqualified from office after missing meetings for six months and failing to give an explanation. Today it was revealed that Coun Lloyd's only hope of winning the legal fight could be going to the High Court, which he said was out of the question.
Neeraj Sharma, Sandwell Council's monitoring officer, said today: "We have told Coun Lloyd the legislation under which he ceases to be a member of the local authority and suggested to him that he might consider taking independent legal advice. We are not aware of any direct right of appeal under the current legislative provisions. However, the High Court of course has inherent jurisdiction over such matters."
Coun Lloyd, who was the former leader of the BNP in Sandwell and was elected to the local authority in 2004, told the Black Country Mail today there was no way he could afford a costly legal battle.
"I am afraid that's it as far as I am concerned," he said. "I am very disappointed with the members services department on the council. I would have thought they might have given me a quick phone call to warn me about falling foul of this six-month rule. All this has come completely out of the blue and I have been stitched up like a kipper. It looks like I am going to have to accept what has happened and bite the bullet. I certainly cannot afford to pay thousands of pounds a day for a High Court hearing. I am off the council for now but if the BNP selects me I shall certainly be fighting again at the local elections next May."
Coun Lloyd's disqualification from the council was part of a double setback for the BNP in Sandwell, coming hot on the heels of the resignation of Coun Simon Smith who revealed he has become an Independent.
Birmingham Mail
Labels:
BNP,
High Court,
James Lloyd,
Sandwell,
Simon Smith,
Tipton
October 13, 2007
BNP councillor to be removed for non-attendance
The British National Party is about to lose yet another councillor, Searchlight can exclusively reveal.
James Lloyd, BNP councillor for Princes End ward on Sandwell council, has not attended a meeting in six months, which means that he will be removed from office. We hope the council will not delay in writing to Lloyd to inform him of the situation. The usual procedure would be to give him seven days to prove that he has in fact attended a meeting. If he cannot, and Searchlight, which monitors BNP attendance and performance, believes that is the case, then he will lose his seat.
Lloyd has been a major embarrassment to the BNP in the Black Country. He stood on a platform of insisting that parents be held responsible for the bad behaviour of their children. However, his two sons have regularly been in trouble with the law. One was named and shamed by the police as one of the worst young offenders in the area.
Earlier this year Searchlight revealed that police had objected to the renewal of Lloyd's pub licence after a series of violent incidents at his premises. They including a shooting incident in which Lloyd himself was the target. The BNP councillor had repeatedly refused to cooperate with the police.
And then there were two ...
Last week Simon Smith, a councillor in neighbouring Great Bridge ward, formally acknowledged that he is no longer part of the BNP group on the council. Smith, who was the BNP group leader until he resigned from the party two months ago, had been elected in 2006 with the highest BNP vote in the country.
This leaves the BNP with only two councillors in the borough and 47 in the country, down from 50 immediately after the May elections.
Stop the BNP
James Lloyd, BNP councillor for Princes End ward on Sandwell council, has not attended a meeting in six months, which means that he will be removed from office. We hope the council will not delay in writing to Lloyd to inform him of the situation. The usual procedure would be to give him seven days to prove that he has in fact attended a meeting. If he cannot, and Searchlight, which monitors BNP attendance and performance, believes that is the case, then he will lose his seat.Lloyd has been a major embarrassment to the BNP in the Black Country. He stood on a platform of insisting that parents be held responsible for the bad behaviour of their children. However, his two sons have regularly been in trouble with the law. One was named and shamed by the police as one of the worst young offenders in the area.
Earlier this year Searchlight revealed that police had objected to the renewal of Lloyd's pub licence after a series of violent incidents at his premises. They including a shooting incident in which Lloyd himself was the target. The BNP councillor had repeatedly refused to cooperate with the police.
And then there were two ...
Last week Simon Smith, a councillor in neighbouring Great Bridge ward, formally acknowledged that he is no longer part of the BNP group on the council. Smith, who was the BNP group leader until he resigned from the party two months ago, had been elected in 2006 with the highest BNP vote in the country.
This leaves the BNP with only two councillors in the borough and 47 in the country, down from 50 immediately after the May elections.
Stop the BNP
Labels:
BNP,
James Lloyd,
Sandwell,
Simon Smith
August 20, 2007
One of Griffin's 'vermin' begins the fightback against BNP corruption
According to a comment over at the North-West Nationalist blog, this was sent in to the Sandwell Express Star. Our thanks to Kirklees Unity for the heads-up.
Dear Sir
In response to Simon Darby's comments about me resigning from British National Party. I would like to thank him for acknowledging the hard work done myself in the party. With the exception of a particular Judas, most of the Black Country BNP are first class folk.
There has been a rumour I resigned because of the party's failure to allow me to promote the idea that 911 was an inside job. This isn't actually the case.
My resignation followed the disclosure of a private email to a supposed friend and colleague Ken Griffiths. The substance of the email was that based on events surrounding an article about Nick Griffin's wheeler dealing in Croatia, his meddling in the affairs of the independent trade union Solidarity and such items as £63,000 being spent on "travel and entertainment" (see 2005 BNP accounts at the electoral commission), it was about time we started educating the membership about what I believed we mutually recognised as serious financial mismanagement of the party. In fact it was Ken Griffiths along with a few others two years ago that encouraged me to examine Nick Griffin's history and therefore his leadership of the party.
I've worked for the party as a volunteer for over five years. Three years as the Black Country organiser. This work was unpaid. I may have claimed £60 at most in petrol in that time and of course have suffered in my employment. Famously being sacked as a teacher in 2004. The party's support was pathetic. The so called party legal eagle failed to advise me that I had three months to appeal to an industrial tribunal. I am currently investigating a sickening allegation that a substantial donation from a member of the public was made to myself following my sacking but didn't quite find its way to me.
At national level huge amounts are raised. The "Trafalgar Club " rakes in £72,000 a year according to other ex BNP figures that were close to Griffin [we've been told at least £90,000 but there you go]. Financial transparency , other than what has to be provided for the electoral commission is non existent. There are other large donations that are rumoured to have been made but not declared. This is the tip of the iceberg in my opinion.
So how is the British National Party being run ? There is a genuine need for a Nationalist Party in Britain. In my opinion Nick Griffin who is a fantastic (self) publicist and orator, runs the party as a private family business - in doing so it is also necessary to appoint dubiously moral lieutenants to keep it like that . It is a money based not ideologically based operation . As such it is necessary to periodically purge the party of thinkers and those who are capable of critical thought to keep it like that.
Cllr Simon Smith
For more information, see Purged! British National Party councillor Simon Smith forced out and Nick Griffin's most recent Chairman's Blog post deconstructed...
Dear Sir
In response to Simon Darby's comments about me resigning from British National Party. I would like to thank him for acknowledging the hard work done myself in the party. With the exception of a particular Judas, most of the Black Country BNP are first class folk.
There has been a rumour I resigned because of the party's failure to allow me to promote the idea that 911 was an inside job. This isn't actually the case.
My resignation followed the disclosure of a private email to a supposed friend and colleague Ken Griffiths. The substance of the email was that based on events surrounding an article about Nick Griffin's wheeler dealing in Croatia, his meddling in the affairs of the independent trade union Solidarity and such items as £63,000 being spent on "travel and entertainment" (see 2005 BNP accounts at the electoral commission), it was about time we started educating the membership about what I believed we mutually recognised as serious financial mismanagement of the party. In fact it was Ken Griffiths along with a few others two years ago that encouraged me to examine Nick Griffin's history and therefore his leadership of the party.
I've worked for the party as a volunteer for over five years. Three years as the Black Country organiser. This work was unpaid. I may have claimed £60 at most in petrol in that time and of course have suffered in my employment. Famously being sacked as a teacher in 2004. The party's support was pathetic. The so called party legal eagle failed to advise me that I had three months to appeal to an industrial tribunal. I am currently investigating a sickening allegation that a substantial donation from a member of the public was made to myself following my sacking but didn't quite find its way to me.
At national level huge amounts are raised. The "Trafalgar Club " rakes in £72,000 a year according to other ex BNP figures that were close to Griffin [we've been told at least £90,000 but there you go]. Financial transparency , other than what has to be provided for the electoral commission is non existent. There are other large donations that are rumoured to have been made but not declared. This is the tip of the iceberg in my opinion.
So how is the British National Party being run ? There is a genuine need for a Nationalist Party in Britain. In my opinion Nick Griffin who is a fantastic (self) publicist and orator, runs the party as a private family business - in doing so it is also necessary to appoint dubiously moral lieutenants to keep it like that . It is a money based not ideologically based operation . As such it is necessary to periodically purge the party of thinkers and those who are capable of critical thought to keep it like that.
Cllr Simon Smith
For more information, see Purged! British National Party councillor Simon Smith forced out and Nick Griffin's most recent Chairman's Blog post deconstructed...
Labels:
BNP,
Croatia,
email,
Nick Griffin,
Sandwell,
Simon Darby,
Simon Smith,
Trafalgar Club
August 16, 2007
Purged! British National Party councillor Simon Smith forced out
.jpg)
One of the BNP’s better known West Midlands councillors has been forced out of the party as Nick Griffin and his acolytes continue their long predicted purge of the “vermin” who supported Chris Jackson against Griffin in the BNP’s rigged leadership contest.Ostensibly resigning his membership, a statement issued by Griffin’s deputy Simon Darby leaves little doubt that Smith’s resignation was anything but voluntary.
In a communication that should affront the intelligence of even the dimmest BNP member, Darby says:
It was well known that former Black Country organiser Simon Smith was a supporter of Chris Jackson in the recent leadership challenge. This was of course his democratic right and further to this two senior representatives of the challenger’s campaign spoke openly at a Black Country meeting freely promoting their candidate.
Unfortunately, at this meeting despite being asked to refrain from expressing his personal beliefs, during his own speech Simon Smith once again referred to 9/11 as being “an inside job”. In fact, despite having being told how politically damaging this form of pro-Muslim crankery could be, he emphasised his belief twice stating that “he would stake his life on it”.
Shortly after the Leadership election Simon Smith was made aware that an investigation was to take place concerning how a membership list had made its way to a former Birmingham organiser. This list, although sent to several people, was in fact never actually used. Further to this Simon Smith was told that the list dated back to the time when he was heavily involved in processing Party memberships and at one point during that time scale Simon Smith had actually left his computer at the home of that former Birmingham organiser. At no point however, was it inferred at that time that Simon Smith was actually to blame for the severe breach of security.
On the 27th July, after the leadership election results had been announced, Simon Smith sent an email to several BNP members as well as other people. Unforgiveably, one of the two attachments also contained in this email was an article complete with reader comments copied directly from a UAF site.
Simon Smith was shown a copy of the original email he had sent out early yesterday (August 14) afternoon and asked to explain the very serious implications as to what he had done. Three hours later Simon Smith admitted to having sent the email and announced that he was resigning from the BNP.
There we have the truth of the matter.
The “truth of the matter”?
Today Simon Darby told the Birmingham Post something slightly different:
“We had a leadership election which Nick Griffin won with 91 per cent of the vote. Simon could not accept that.”
Darby’s first statement is, of course, for internal BNP consumption. He brings in Smith’s frequently stated contention that the attack on the Twin Towers was “an inside job” (not exactly an uncommon opinion on the far-Right), and says that Smith was asked to refrain from making such statements having been told “how politically damaging this form of pro-Muslim crankery could be”. How this could be damaging in a meeting open only to BNP members isn’t clear - but that Jackson supporters like Smith were being told by Griffinites what they could and could not say in an internal election meeting speaks volumes for the paranoia at the top of the party.
The deputy chairman’s next trick is to effectively blame Smith for a BNP membership list falling into the hands of Sharon Ebanks, while claiming not to blame him at all. If “At no point… was it inferred at that time that Simon Smith was actually to blame for the severe breach of security” then why does Darby mention it at all? Why does Darby include the strange qualification “at that time”? Is it being inferred now?
Finally there is Simon Smith’s email. Darby does not disclose the contents, which presumably contain the real meat of the subject, but again pandering to his largely gullible BNP audience he lays stress on an attachment that apparently included an article complete with reader comments copied directly from a UAF site. How that could be seen as a crime, even by the standards of the BNP, is anybody’s guess - though we’d hazard a guess as to which site the post and comments came from ;-).
That Smith included such matter with his email gives us a very good idea of how that email must have read - unpleasantly, for Nick Griffin, we must suppose. And whatever it said was clearly used as a pretext to force Smith into jumping before the threat of being pushed was carried out. Reading Darby’s disingenuous words, you can almost see the gun being held to Smith’s head.
The simple fact is that Smith’s resignation has nothing to do with “pro-Muslim crankery”, missing membership lists and email attachments lifted from UAF websites.
It’s about retribution against those who have finally worked out that something is very wrong at the top of the BNP and dared to say so, and it’s about exterminating the last vestiges of internal opposition to Nick Griffin.
With the departure of Simon Smith the BNP has lost yet another councillor. The character of that councillor may leave much to be desired but in BNP terms he was just the ticket - he ungraciously walked out of a council meeting that elected a Sikh as mayor of Sandwell, and has compared Hitler with Christ, among other matters.
That Griffin - and it can only have been Griffin - was prepared to force one of his tiny band of councillors out of the party, risking attendant negative publicity for the BNP and yet another blow to the morale of its members heavily underlines the lesson for so long taught here and at our allied websites: whatever the average BNP member may think the BNP is, Griffin has different ideas. First and foremost it is, as the veteran fascist Martin Webster puts it, the Griffin Family Business.
It’s Griffin’s cash-cow and he’s not going to surrender it lightly, as his insane blog rantings against the “cranks” “Hollywood Nazis” “congenital losers” “thieves” and “vermin” who had the temerity to ask awkward questions and mount a challenge against him have discovered.
It’s only a matter of time before the next victim of Griffin’s paranoia is selected for the chop. Keep watching this space.
Labels:
BNP,
corruption,
fascism,
institutional racism,
Nick Griffin,
purge,
racism,
Sandwell,
Simon Darby,
Simon Smith
June 29, 2007
By-election results for June 28th 2007
Craven ward by-election, Pendle BC
Lib Dem 632
Con 260
Ind 241
BNP 237 (16.4%)
Lab 76
Previous BNP electoral history in this ward:
2004: 447 votes (21.9%)
2006: 459 votes (25.0%)
Slough ward(Nuneaton & Bedworth)
Turnout 40.57%
Labour Gain from Tories
Labour 862
BNP Alwyn Deacon 582 (27.3%)
Tories 499
Eng Dems 102
Lib Dems 83
Charlemont/Grove Vale by-election(Sandwell)
Con 870
Lab 801
BNP 544 (21.6%)
Lib/Dem 238
Greens 71
Whaddon Ward (Milton Keynes) by-election result from last night was
LAB 1108 - 43.8%
CON 914 - 36.1%
EFP 221 - 8.7% England First Party
LIB 129 - 5.1%
UKIP 109 - 4.3%
IND 49 - 1.9%
Lib Dem 632
Con 260
Ind 241
BNP 237 (16.4%)
Lab 76
Previous BNP electoral history in this ward:
2004: 447 votes (21.9%)
2006: 459 votes (25.0%)
Slough ward(Nuneaton & Bedworth)
Turnout 40.57%
Labour Gain from Tories
Labour 862
BNP Alwyn Deacon 582 (27.3%)
Tories 499
Eng Dems 102
Lib Dems 83
Charlemont/Grove Vale by-election(Sandwell)
Con 870
Lab 801
BNP 544 (21.6%)
Lib/Dem 238
Greens 71
Whaddon Ward (Milton Keynes) by-election result from last night was
LAB 1108 - 43.8%
CON 914 - 36.1%
EFP 221 - 8.7% England First Party
LIB 129 - 5.1%
UKIP 109 - 4.3%
IND 49 - 1.9%
Labels:
by-election,
Craven,
Milton Keynes,
Nuneaton and Bedford,
Pendle,
Sandwell
June 27, 2007
New jail term for BNP leader's son
A prolific criminal and son of the leader of the BNP in Sandwell is back behind bars after a high-speed car chase.
Ricky Lloyd, 20-year-old son of Tipton councillor Jim Lloyd, took his mother's car just 18 days after being released on licence after previously being given three years' detention for attempted robbery. Coun Lloyd, who represents Princes End, admitted today he was "tearing his hair out" over his son but hoped that this latest sentence would help him finally see the light.
Wolverhampton Crown Court was told that Lloyd drove the car at more than 60 miles an hour in a 40mph limit. The court heard that Lloyd, who has been in trouble with the police since the age of 14 and has been branded one of the most prolific offenders in Sandwell, ignored red lights and swerved into the middle of the road while being pursued by police.
Recorder Peter Cooke told Lloyd he had shown a "cavalier disregard" for the safety of other people.
The court was told that Lloyd took his mother Sandra's car from outside the family home in High Street, Princes End, Tipton, at 1am on March 16. Lloyd admitted dangerous driving and driving while disqualified. He was given six months detention and banned from driving for two years.
Coun Lloyd, opening his heart [oh please] to the Black Country Mail today, said that Ricky, who will be 21 in October and will then be moved to an adult prison, did not have a driving licence and had driven to Brierley Hill to pick up a friend when he was spotted by CCTV cameras.
"Ricky committed the latest sentence while on an 18-month licence for the previous offence of attempted robbery. He will probably now have to serve the rest of the earlier sentence as well as this latest term and it will be at least November next year before he is allowed out. I can only hope this is the last time he is 'banged up'."
Coun Lloyd said he'd offered Ricky a job with his firm but Ricky had got into trouble before he had chance to take up the position.
Birmingham Mail
[A bit too much sympathy in that article for our liking. Read this and this to get a better perspective on the Lloyds]
Ricky Lloyd, 20-year-old son of Tipton councillor Jim Lloyd, took his mother's car just 18 days after being released on licence after previously being given three years' detention for attempted robbery. Coun Lloyd, who represents Princes End, admitted today he was "tearing his hair out" over his son but hoped that this latest sentence would help him finally see the light.
Wolverhampton Crown Court was told that Lloyd drove the car at more than 60 miles an hour in a 40mph limit. The court heard that Lloyd, who has been in trouble with the police since the age of 14 and has been branded one of the most prolific offenders in Sandwell, ignored red lights and swerved into the middle of the road while being pursued by police.
Recorder Peter Cooke told Lloyd he had shown a "cavalier disregard" for the safety of other people.
The court was told that Lloyd took his mother Sandra's car from outside the family home in High Street, Princes End, Tipton, at 1am on March 16. Lloyd admitted dangerous driving and driving while disqualified. He was given six months detention and banned from driving for two years.
Coun Lloyd, opening his heart [oh please] to the Black Country Mail today, said that Ricky, who will be 21 in October and will then be moved to an adult prison, did not have a driving licence and had driven to Brierley Hill to pick up a friend when he was spotted by CCTV cameras.
"Ricky committed the latest sentence while on an 18-month licence for the previous offence of attempted robbery. He will probably now have to serve the rest of the earlier sentence as well as this latest term and it will be at least November next year before he is allowed out. I can only hope this is the last time he is 'banged up'."
Coun Lloyd said he'd offered Ricky a job with his firm but Ricky had got into trouble before he had chance to take up the position.
Birmingham Mail
[A bit too much sympathy in that article for our liking. Read this and this to get a better perspective on the Lloyds]
Labels:
bloody criminals,
BNP,
detention,
Jim Lloyd,
prolofic criminal,
Ricky Lloyd,
Sandwell
April 29, 2007
LMHR guerilla gigs and mass UAF leafletting on May Day
LMHR guerilla gigs and mass UAF leafletting on May Day - in link-up with PCS civil servant's union - to say 'Make your vote count - stop the fascist BNP'.
On Tuesday 1st May Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) are joining forces with the PCS (civil servants) union, who are taking national strike action that day, in their “Make Your Vote Campaign” to encourage people to get out and vote on Thursday 3rd May, to stop the fascist BNP gaining any further ground.
MayDay will be a carnival of anti-fascist and trade union resistance. The BNP already have 49 council seats - 49 too many! We will be putting on a “gig on a truck” at key places around Leeds & West Yorkshire, and Dudley, Birmingham and Sandwell, stopping off to distribute Unite Against Fascism leaflets which expose the thuggish racist reality behind the BNP’s suits and weasel words. It’s a fun way to tackle a serious issue and it works!
UAF & LMHR speakers will also address PCS strike rallies in other parts of the UK - trade unions unite people of all colours, religions and nationalities, while the BNP are seeking to divide us.
PCS members and other trade unionists, bands/DJs/MCs, and anyone who wants to join the opposition to the BNP is urged to come along and take part.
Tuesday May 1st
Dudley: 9am-10am, PCS picket lines, The Waterfront, Merry Hill, Dudley.
Birmingham: 11am Chamberlain Square, PCS strike rally
Birmingham/Sandwell/Dudley, 12noon-4pm
West Midlands events contact: Lee Billingham 07838 156052 westmids@lovemusichateracism.com
Leeds: 9am PCS picket lines HMRC Castle House / DWP
Leeds: 11am PCS rally, Queens Hotel
Morley: afternoon, venue tbc
West Yorkshire events contact: Alison 07828 150735 alison@lovemusichateracism.com
LMHR
On Tuesday 1st May Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) are joining forces with the PCS (civil servants) union, who are taking national strike action that day, in their “Make Your Vote Campaign” to encourage people to get out and vote on Thursday 3rd May, to stop the fascist BNP gaining any further ground.
MayDay will be a carnival of anti-fascist and trade union resistance. The BNP already have 49 council seats - 49 too many! We will be putting on a “gig on a truck” at key places around Leeds & West Yorkshire, and Dudley, Birmingham and Sandwell, stopping off to distribute Unite Against Fascism leaflets which expose the thuggish racist reality behind the BNP’s suits and weasel words. It’s a fun way to tackle a serious issue and it works!
UAF & LMHR speakers will also address PCS strike rallies in other parts of the UK - trade unions unite people of all colours, religions and nationalities, while the BNP are seeking to divide us.
PCS members and other trade unionists, bands/DJs/MCs, and anyone who wants to join the opposition to the BNP is urged to come along and take part.
Tuesday May 1st
Dudley: 9am-10am, PCS picket lines, The Waterfront, Merry Hill, Dudley.
Birmingham: 11am Chamberlain Square, PCS strike rally
Birmingham/Sandwell/Dudley, 12noon-4pm
West Midlands events contact: Lee Billingham 07838 156052 westmids@lovemusichateracism.com
Leeds: 9am PCS picket lines HMRC Castle House / DWP
Leeds: 11am PCS rally, Queens Hotel
Morley: afternoon, venue tbc
West Yorkshire events contact: Alison 07828 150735 alison@lovemusichateracism.com
LMHR
Labels:
Barrow and South Cumbria UAF,
BNP,
fascist,
gigs,
Leeds,
LMHR,
Make your vote,
Midlands,
PCS,
Sandwell
April 03, 2007
Hope not Hate update: Day nine
This was the big one. A staggering 221 people delivered over 45,000 newspapers in the BNP's strongest area outside Barking & Dagenham. It was a truly inspiring day and an excellent start to the election campaign.
The Sandwell anti-BNP day of action might have been scheduled for Sunday 1 April but the work for this event had begun much earlier in the week. Over the last few days teams of activists had been bagging up the 50,000 newspapers into street walks, preparing food and information sheets. When we arrived at the African-Caribbean Resource Centre in West Bromwich we were greeted by the fruits of this work. Ten tables had been laid out, each containing newspapers for a specific ward. Everyone was signed in and a minibus ferried people across the borough.
It was a model of organisation.
The Mirror's Hope not Hate bus arrived at the centre at 10.15, a quarter of an hour before the day was advertised to start. However, by now, 61 people had already arrived and were off out leafleting. The All Nations Steel band, from the Albion estate in West Bromwich, set up in the hall and created a great atmosphere as more people poured in.
The bus moved off to the Great Bridge market where the steel band and Billy Bragg performed to shoppers while other people distributed newspapers. Several shoppers remarked that they had already received the newspaper through the door that morning. It was good to know that people were at least registering our material.
We knew the BNP would not be happy with our newspaper. While all our other editions carried a positive front page the people in Sandwell decided to have a more aggressive approach. 'Gangland Sandwell – what is the BNP councillor hiding' was the frontpage headline. The story went on to explain how the leader of the BNP council group, Jamie Lloyd, had his pub closed after a series of violent incidents, including a shooting and a machete attack, yet he refused to cooperate with the police, even withholding vital CCTV footage. What was more strange was that Lloyd had been the target of these attacks.
As the band played in the market the BNP began to arrive. First two women, then a 4x4 full of blokes. They sneered and stared, paraded their dogs and glared, but there was simply nothing they could do.
Back at the centre food was being served. Unfortunately the vegetarian chilli had been forgotten, which caused a bit of consternation amongst the vegetarians who were offered a plate of salad. However, Gurinder, a long-time friend of Searchlight, came to the rescue, ringing around the local Sikh temples and restaurants and soon pan loads of vegetable curry appeared.
Over 100 people went out for a second leafleting session and soon we were able to dismantle the tables. It was a great feeling seeing the huge piles of stuffed plastic bags disappear. To round off the day the Steel Band performed again and then Billy Bragg, who had been out leafleting twice, did a turn. The audience was fired up and dozens of people offered their help for the forthcoming campaign.
It is days like these that make all the hard work worthwhile.
Hope not Hate
The Sandwell anti-BNP day of action might have been scheduled for Sunday 1 April but the work for this event had begun much earlier in the week. Over the last few days teams of activists had been bagging up the 50,000 newspapers into street walks, preparing food and information sheets. When we arrived at the African-Caribbean Resource Centre in West Bromwich we were greeted by the fruits of this work. Ten tables had been laid out, each containing newspapers for a specific ward. Everyone was signed in and a minibus ferried people across the borough.
It was a model of organisation.
The Mirror's Hope not Hate bus arrived at the centre at 10.15, a quarter of an hour before the day was advertised to start. However, by now, 61 people had already arrived and were off out leafleting. The All Nations Steel band, from the Albion estate in West Bromwich, set up in the hall and created a great atmosphere as more people poured in.
The bus moved off to the Great Bridge market where the steel band and Billy Bragg performed to shoppers while other people distributed newspapers. Several shoppers remarked that they had already received the newspaper through the door that morning. It was good to know that people were at least registering our material.
We knew the BNP would not be happy with our newspaper. While all our other editions carried a positive front page the people in Sandwell decided to have a more aggressive approach. 'Gangland Sandwell – what is the BNP councillor hiding' was the frontpage headline. The story went on to explain how the leader of the BNP council group, Jamie Lloyd, had his pub closed after a series of violent incidents, including a shooting and a machete attack, yet he refused to cooperate with the police, even withholding vital CCTV footage. What was more strange was that Lloyd had been the target of these attacks.
As the band played in the market the BNP began to arrive. First two women, then a 4x4 full of blokes. They sneered and stared, paraded their dogs and glared, but there was simply nothing they could do.
Back at the centre food was being served. Unfortunately the vegetarian chilli had been forgotten, which caused a bit of consternation amongst the vegetarians who were offered a plate of salad. However, Gurinder, a long-time friend of Searchlight, came to the rescue, ringing around the local Sikh temples and restaurants and soon pan loads of vegetable curry appeared.
Over 100 people went out for a second leafleting session and soon we were able to dismantle the tables. It was a great feeling seeing the huge piles of stuffed plastic bags disappear. To round off the day the Steel Band performed again and then Billy Bragg, who had been out leafleting twice, did a turn. The audience was fired up and dozens of people offered their help for the forthcoming campaign.
It is days like these that make all the hard work worthwhile.
Hope not Hate
Labels:
BNP,
Daily Mirror,
Hope not Hate,
Jamie Lloyd,
Sandwell,
Searchlight,
West Bromwich
March 12, 2007
Probe into alleged illegal BNP vote
An investigation has been launched into claims that BNP councillors in Sandwell allegedly voted illegally at an annual budget meeting.
Sandwell Council lawyers are to pass on information to police after allegations that one or more of the borough's four BNP councillors took part in the meeting despite being in arrears with their council tax. It is illegal for local authority members to vote on budgetary matters if they are more than two months behind with payments.
A Sandwell Council spokesman confirmed an investigation was under way into the allegations against BNP councillors James Lloyd, Simon Smith, Carl Butler and Russell Green.
"The council has a duty to take action if someone participates and votes in a budget debate when they are in council tax arrears of more than two months. Council lawyers will shortly be passing information to police about a member who took part in last Tuesday's council tax vote."
Any councillor found guilty of voting illegally in this way can be forced to resign, face a hefty fine or could even go to prison for up to two years.
Coun Darren Cooper, secretary of the Labour group on Sandwell Council, which has an overwhelming majority, said: "It is totally outrageous that things have reached this stage."
Coun Lloyd, leader of the BNP on Sandwell Council, admitted he could be the focus of the investigation. He admitted he had still to pay his latest council tax bill. But he claimed he knew nothing about not being able to vote until he received a letter from the local authority after he got back from the budget meeting.
icWolverhampton
Sandwell Council lawyers are to pass on information to police after allegations that one or more of the borough's four BNP councillors took part in the meeting despite being in arrears with their council tax. It is illegal for local authority members to vote on budgetary matters if they are more than two months behind with payments.A Sandwell Council spokesman confirmed an investigation was under way into the allegations against BNP councillors James Lloyd, Simon Smith, Carl Butler and Russell Green.
"The council has a duty to take action if someone participates and votes in a budget debate when they are in council tax arrears of more than two months. Council lawyers will shortly be passing information to police about a member who took part in last Tuesday's council tax vote."
Any councillor found guilty of voting illegally in this way can be forced to resign, face a hefty fine or could even go to prison for up to two years.
Coun Darren Cooper, secretary of the Labour group on Sandwell Council, which has an overwhelming majority, said: "It is totally outrageous that things have reached this stage."
Coun Lloyd, leader of the BNP on Sandwell Council, admitted he could be the focus of the investigation. He admitted he had still to pay his latest council tax bill. But he claimed he knew nothing about not being able to vote until he received a letter from the local authority after he got back from the budget meeting.
icWolverhampton
Labels:
arrears,
BNP,
budget,
Carl Butler,
council tax,
James Lloyd,
Russel Green,
Sandwell
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