BNP supporter criticises council decision

A British National Party supporter has criticised Upper Beeding Parish Council for rejecting her as a member.

Donna Bailey, 41, stood to be co-opted on to the parish council on Tuesday September 4 but was turned down after a vote was taken. She claimed councillors were blinded by her membership of the BNP rather than basing their view on what she could do for the community.

Mrs Bailey stood as a BNP candidate for Roffey North in the May elections but came away empty handed.

Mrs Bailey said: "I stood up and gave a speech on what I could offer to the community. Then I sat down and the chairman asked if anybody had any questions and immediately I was asked about my political membership. I explained I have no politics to bring to the parish council – I am interested in the community."

She added: "It was so undemocratic you would have to see it to believe it."

A heavy fundraiser in the village and for Upper Beeding Primary School, Mrs Bailey has taken part in many village events and was one of the key organisers in the revived bath tub race this year. With three children herself, Mrs Bailey said she was keen to move forward the suggested youth council in the village.

She said: "I am really interested in young people and this village does not cater for the young people. That is one of the reasons I wanted to get on to the parish council. We have a lot of teenagers that have nothing to do."

Chairman David Coldwell said: "Donna Bailey came up for co-option and she said who she was and then it was put to a vote. When the vote was taken it went against her. In democracy and elections this is what happens. It was voted by a majority of one."

When asked if the decision had been made with party politics in mind, Mr Coldwell said: "Perhaps it did – only in that her political affiliations were mentioned and people did not like the affiliations she has."

He added: "As chairman of the meeting I did everything to make sure it was as
democratic as possible. The council voted according to what they thought was best for the parish. The council were trying to reflect the view of the parish."

According to Ian Davison, Horsham District Council's monitoring officer, party politics are not banned from parish councils.

He said: "There is no rule at all about parish councils being or not being party political. Often in rural areas they tend not to be."

A witness to the proceedings, Avril Gathern, 37, of Undermill Road, said: "I just went along to support Donna and as I have never been to one of the meetings before. I was absolutely appalled as to what went on. No-body asked her about the village and what she was going to do. They were just interested in her political background."

Mrs Bailey now says she is going to approach the standards board with her complaint.

West Sussex County Times

The BNP fields record number of candidates in long-term drive for Europe

The British National Party is putting forward a record 879 candidates in the forthcoming elections. This is more than double last year’s figure and higher than anything achieved by the National Front in its heyday in the 1970s.

However, it must be stressed that this is an organisational triumph for the BNP rather than a reflection that its membership or support has more than doubled in the past 12 months.

There are 744 BNP candidates in the borough and district council elections in England and seven in Scotland, another 76 standing for town and parish councils, 32 in the elections to the Scottish Parliament and 20 in the Welsh Assembly elections. This is a massive increase over the 363 candidates the BNP fielded in 2006, which itself was a big rise compared to the 221 in 2004. When Labour came to power in 1997 the BNP could only manage 53 council candidates.

The bulk of BNP candidates are in its traditional working-class heartlands of West Yorkshire, East Lancashire, the West Midlands and Essex. There are 207 candidates in total in the Yorkshire and Humber region, 118 in the North West and 127 in the West Midlands. There are complete BNP slates in Birmingham (40), Leeds (33), Sunderland (25) and Harrogate and Thurrock (both 16).

Other large concentrations of BNP candidates include Kirklees (22), Barnsley (18), Bradford (17) Coventry and Sedgefield (both 16), Sandwell (15) and Gateshead and Newcastle (both 13).

The North West has seen the biggest increase in the party’s traditional strongholds with a rise of 65 to 118 candidates (including one for a parish council). Burnley has 10 candidates, followed closely by Liverpool with nine, up from one in 2006, Wigan and Tameside, both with eight and Blackpool with seven.

The BNP is also standing in a number of areas that it has not previously contested, particularly in the East Midlands where there are 101 candidates in total. They include 14 for Charnwood Borough Council, 12 in Lincoln and 10 for Broxtowe Borough Council. However, despite the BNP euphoria over its candidate list, there are a number of key local authorities where the party’s failure to find enough candidates has reduced its chances of election. These include some of the most "at risk" areas where the BNP has achieved its highest votes in recent years. Despite boasting that it would field a full slate in Bradford there are only 17 candidates out of a possible 30, just one more than last year. There are only two more BNP candidates in Stoke-on-Trent this year compared to last, which is a great relief as there is hardly a ward where the party would not come close to winning. In Sandwell, the BNP only managed to find an extra six candidates over last year, again in an area where the party boasted it would achieve a full slate.

In 2006, the BNP averaged 33% in the wards it contested in Sandwell, 30% in Stoke-on-Trent and 26% in Bradford.

Despite an overall increase in candidates in the North West, the party has declined in two of its four strongest areas. In Oldham, where the BNP first emerged as a major force after the 2001 riots, it has only four candidates, one of whom is also standing for a parish council seat. The BNP has two candidates fewer in Blackburn (five compared to seven last year), which given the potential in the town will be a major disappointment for the party.

BNP strategy

This election marks a significant change of electoral strategy for the BNP. In previous years it has focussed on maximising its average vote so it could portray itself as a rising force in British politics. This has resulted in fighting wards where the party believed it would achieve its highest results.

This year, it has concentrated on putting forward as many candidates as possible. Given the wider political picture, most will be guaranteed a decent vote. In its key local authority areas the BNP will once again be looking for average votes of between 25% and 35%, with private predictions of 50-60 new councillors.

However, the real purpose of fielding so many council candidates has more to do with the next European elections in 2009, which are fought under proportional representation. Given the continuing decline of the UK Independence Party, the BNP will believe it can win European representation in most regions of England. With several MEPs the BNP would be transformed overnight, both financially and politically. Fielding 879 candidates now gives a large number of voters, including everyone in Wales and Scotland, a chance to support the BNP and over the next few years become firm BNP voters.

So what are the BNP’s chances of success this year? At the start of the year Searchlight identified 93 wards which we believed were at risk to some extent. Just over a third of them were deemed high risk. While some are now no longer considered to present such a threat, new concerns have emerged in other wards. The BNP itself has predicted that it will double its councillor base in May, which if one includes parish and town councillors is certainly achievable.

Although most people will judge the success or failure of the election campaign by the number of council victories the BNP achieves, the share of its vote over all the wards it contests is a far more significant marker in the long run. Last year the BNP won 33 council seats, 12 of which were in Barking & Dagenham. While most commentators saw this as a political breakthrough, the BNP still held only a tiny fraction of council seats in the country.

Much more important was the party’s 19.2% average vote.

There are still people in the political parties who try to dismiss the BNP as a fringe force with only isolated pockets of support. With over 14 million people being given the chance to vote for the BNP in these elections, this “fringe force” concept will be severely tested.

Searchlight is confident that the BNP will not make huge council breakthroughs but this will only be achieved if every anti-fascist and anti-racist activist puts that extra bit of activity in before 3 May. It is no good moaning about BNP success after the event if we have not done all in our power to prevent it happening.

Town hall politics

In another change in strategy, the BNP has put forward 76 candidates in town and parish council elections across the country, the bulk in the East Midlands and West Yorkshire.

Getting candidates elected to these councils is not too difficult as the mainstream political parties do not contest most of them and many are hardly contested at all. Indeed, the BNP has ten new town and parish councillors already after standing unopposed.

While town and parish councils have little real power, gaining seats on them is advantageous for the BNP. It increases the party’s number of councillors (as the BNP con-veniently fails to distinguish these from its councillors at borough/district/city level) and gives the BNP a credible base to challenge for borough/district/city elections in the future. It is this striving for greater respectability and normal-isation that is the real drive behind the BNP’s tactics.

In the West Yorkshire towns of Morley (part of Leeds) and Mirfield (part of Kirklees), the BNP is looking to take control of the town councils. The party has 12 and nine candidates respectively and can be assured of some success. Many of their opponents are unorganised “independents” who do not have the base to run coordinated campaigns. However, there may be a backlash from voters who are not used to having political parties so involved in a generally non-party environment.

Searchlight had feared strong BNP contests for control of Padiham Town Council (Burnley) and Keighley Town Council (Bradford) but these failed to materialise.

The BNP is likely to see many of its town and parish candidates elected in May but it is time the media began to view them separately from district and borough councillors. Several months ago Searchlight warned that the BNP was switching its focus to town and parish councils. Political parties and anti-fascists generally have neglected to get involved in these councils. Let us just hope that we are not punished for our oversight in towns such as Morley and Mirfield.

Searchlight

When is an elected councillor not an elected councillor? When he's not elected.

The National Front and its supporters are currently making much of the fact that they have just acquired their very first councillor. To much praise, no doubt for all his hard work during the bitterly-fought campaign, Simon Deacon is currently being overwhelmed with congratulations from all sections of the far-right. Over on the increasingly stupid Stormfront nazi forum, cries of 'Well done' and 'Congratulations' are being shouted from the cyber equivalent of the rooftops. A tickertape parade would seem to be in order.

Just a couple of snags. Deacon was not elected to his St Alban's seat, there was no bitterly-fought campaign and there was certainly no hard work. Quite simply, Deacon walked into his parish councillor role by default because no-one stood against him.

Without a single vote being cast - which is the only way the National Front would get anywhere politically - Simon Deacon has walked into a position (from May 4th) as parish councillor for St Alban's Markyate ward.

The NF has obviously learned its electoral lessons from the British National Party. Only a couple of weeks ago the BNP was crowing over the fact that it had managed to get another six (parish) councillors, including Carol Collett, mother of the despicable Hitler-worshipper Mark Collett, 'without a single ballot paper being marked'. Democracy, huh?

As we pointed out in our article about the BNP's very quiet parish council infestation, there are a number of rules to which parish councillors are expected to adhere. One is to 'promote equality by not discriminating unlawfully against any person' while another is to 'treat others with respect'. We confidently expect the National Front's Simon Beacon to fail miserably on both fronts.

Curiously, considering the sneaky way Deacon managed to get a seat on his parish council, the National Front has a lot to say about democracy on one of its introductory pages. It even makes a veiled sideswipe at the BNP's highly undemocratic structure;

'...The policies of the party are determined by the members at Annual Conferences and unlike some other parties, such decisions are binding upon the party.'

Unfortunately it goes on;

'The National Front is a party of genuine democracy...The NF seeks to promote in Britain a genuinely democratic political system...'

One wonders then, why the NF has allowed Deacon to bypass the democratic process completely despite never having been voted in. Could it be that all this waffle about democracy is worth about as much as that espoused by the BNP - a party that has blatantly and on numerous occasions attempted to subvert the democratic process?

The BNP's very quiet revolution

The far-right BNP's incursion into the roots of British politics - parish councils

Following the successes of the British National Party in the local elections last May, new instructions were sent out from the BNP bunker in preparation for the next round - the local government elections that will be upon us in three weeks time.

These instructions were simple and to the point - to conquer the media by overwhelming it with constant letters, emails and pro-BNP reports and to fight the council elections that very few people would bother to oppose and most don't even seem to know exist, the parish council elections.

Commentators (including us) have written about the former offensive on a number of occasions - pointing out how nazi forums are used to spread the word when there is an anti-Islam petition to be signed online and when email responses to anti-BNP articles are required, these being two of the simpler ways the BNP's increasingly sophisticated propaganda machine makes use of new technology.

We've pondered on the BNP's grasp of using the likes of Altermedia (a right-wing alternative to Indymedia) and other news sources to spread the far-right word. But everyone seems to have managed to miss or ignore the way the far-right party has sneaked in through the back door and begun very quietly to undermine us from within. Thus the BNP was able to report on April 5th that SIX new BNP councillors have been added to its list 'without a single ballot paper being marked'. So much for the party that purports to stand for democracy then. One of those new parish councillors, by the way, is Carol Collett, mother of the Hitler-admirer Mark Collett.

So, what precisely are parish councils? The National Association of Local Councils has this to say:

Parish councils are statutory bodies. Members are elected for a term of four years and councils are funded principally by an annual precept. Income and expenditure for the next financial year are calculated in the form of estimates. The net amount (the precept) is added to council tax, collected by the county, borough or district council (principal authorities) and paid to parishes in two six-monthly instalments. Parish and town councils can apply for other funding such as grant and funding awards, but they do not receive funds direct from central government, as principal authorities do.'

Nevertheless, they do receive funds and they do have a certain amount of power. One of their powers, for example, is to create or initiate local by-laws. And here we have six BNP parish councillors walking into office completely unopposed...

Another considerable power given to parish councillors is to be the first (though not final) arbiters in locally-based planning applications. One wonders how far an application for the conversion of, for example, a dairy to a mosque, would get when a parish councillor representing the rabidly anti-Islam BNP was thrown into the equation. Although parish councillors are intended to be apolitical, any councillor who has attended a parish council meeting will tell you that politics is just as much a part of parish life as it is in the city.

There is however, a Code of Conduct to which parish councillors supposedly have to adhere. According to The Parish Councils (Model Code of Conduct) Order 2001: Section 2, a member must:

(a) promote equality by not discriminating unlawfully against any person;
(b) treat others with respect; and
(c) not do anything which compromises or which is likely to compromise the impartiality of those who work for, or on behalf of, the authority.

We'd be willing to bet the new influx of BNP parish councillors ground their teeth at those.

Anyone who works at ground-level in any form of politics will tell you that there is where the real work is done. Certainly it's where previously unknown faces can make their mark and spread their names around, and parish councils are frequently the springboard on to district or city authorities. The fact that opposition to the BNP becomes apparent the moment a candidate stands in a district council election and that any opposition has an inevitable effect on the results of elections has obviously not been lost on the BNP. Nor can the party have avoided noticing that a huge percentage of its councillors are a complete washout in the job. Perhaps it sees the lower-stress parish council, with its general lack of opposition and more informal approach to business, as a training ground for its district councillors of the future - they certainly need some training in being useful and worthwhile.

Whether that's the case or not, the BNP is sneaking in by the back door, and will use any method it can find to worm its way into mainstream political life in the UK. It's up to us to stop it, whether it's at parliamentary level, district or parish. For the safety and security of all of us, we have to keep an eye on the back door as well as the front. If we don't, we might find Nick Griffin's mother (a former National Front parliamentary candidate) our next parish councillor. Wouldn't that be fun.