Commemoration day to recall slave trade and make UK face up to past

· Call for subject to be put on school curriculum
· Prescott compares slavery to the Holocaust

An annual commemoration day is to be held to recall Britain's role in the slave trade, and the fight against it, John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, has told the Guardian.

He expected the day to be held in common with the rest of Europe in June so that modern day slavery - human trafficking - could also be recalled and combated.

Mr Prescott said the commemoration day would provide a chance for national and local government, as well as schools, to think how they could help modern day Africa. He likened slavery to the Holocaust and expressed his deep personal regret.

The government has refused to make a full apology for Britain's role. Mr Prescott argued that Africa didn't want this, but that it was time Britain faced up to the past. "Like the Holocaust, we are learning to talk about the slave trade openly and more honestly. Tragic and terrible as it was, the slave trade defied anyone to discuss it because it was so horrendous."

He said he believed Britain was about to go through the process of self-examination that the US experienced with the publication of Alex Haley's Roots in the 70s. He said: "The book had an effect on Americans who are now going back to Ghana and turning the slave dungeons in Elmina in Ghana into a shrine.

"I think this anniversary is beginning to make us think again in the same way as the US. There is a sense of shock and horror at what went on in our history, and the sheer brutality of it. It has not yet fed into the schools. Indeed it has been kept out of the curriculum.

"We need to get the proper history told, including the good, the bad and dreadful. For instance we need to recall that parliament for the best part of a century facilitated slavery. It did not just have an overnight intellectual conversion. Public opinion made the change and forced the change on parliament. We have fed it into our minds that a Christian from Hull, William Wilberforce, came along and changed the law in 1807. It was remarkable, but the real change came from working people.

"It is one of the reasons why I would like us to pick a date every year. The legacy of this 200th anniversary should be a permanent date when we ask whether there is more we could do, so that every year, like Holocaust, we remind people of the horrors. Each year we should think about it and commemorate and rededicate ourselves to helping people on which such horrors were inflicted."

Mr Prescott was speaking the day before Britain signs the European convention against human trafficking, publishes an action plan to fight modern day slavery and he hosts the visit of Owen Arthur, the prime minister of Barbados, to Hull, the birthplace of Wilberforce.

Tony Blair is to deliver a pre-recorded address to a ceremony in one of the slave ports in Accra at a ceremony on Sunday. A national memorial service will be held at Westminster Abbey on Tuesday and the former secretary general of the UN Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, will address both houses of parliament in May .

Critics have suggested the country needs to apologise for slavery, a phrase that has led to legal actions in the US for compensation. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has apologised and the prime minister has expressed his deep sorrow.

Mr Prescott said the country had to express "more than regret" for its role in the slave trade, but argued the issue of an apology was not being raised in Africa. He has been to Ghana and Sierra Leone in the past few months to visit the jails from which slaves were transported. He said he had met children in Ghana who had told him: "Not every white man was guilty and not every black man was innocent."

"That has started a debate about whether you really want the native chiefs really to apologise for selling their own people. The traders only had to go to the ports and the slaves were delivered from inside Africa. The Ghanaians said 'We don't want apologies. We want people to think what we can do to help us. What our ancestors did was horrific, but everyone feels we need to learn and move on from that experience'."

He said he would never forget how shocked he felt visiting the slave prisons of Elmina in Ghana. "Even 200 years after the slave trade you can still feel the pain the dark stench, the horror, the cold and the hole in the wall, the point of no return."

Mr Prescott said the climate of awareness in Britain was changing, pointing out that black youngsters in St Pauls, Bristol, had demanded that the name of the new shopping centre should not be called Traders or Merchants. "To those black people it meant the language of slavery. A more open debate about this is necessary. We have properly spent a lot of time talking about Muslims, but there are a lot of black people in Britain who feel their history has not been recognised."

He said it was vital that the government went ahead with changing the national education curriculum so that there was a proper presentation of slavery in its true abhorrent sense. He argued that abolition was closely associated with white people, but there were many black heroes.

Guardian

Cameron calls on churches to fight racism and exploitation

The leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, has commended churches for leading the commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade and called on Christians to fight its lasting legacy - racism.

The leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, has commended churches for leading the commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade and called on Christians to fight its lasting legacy - racism.

He joined leading African and Caribbean Christian leaders at the Conservative Christian Fellowship’s Wilberforce Address on Tuesday night, dedicated this year to the slave trade abolition.

Speakers at last night’s event spoke extensively on racism as the lasting legacy of the slave trade. In his Wilberforce Address, Mr Cameron praised key abolitionist William Wilberforce for his role in securing the abolition of the slave trade but pointed to the victims of modern day slavery – human trafficking.

Addressing the scourge of racism, Mr Cameron appealed to young black people to “find role models in the history of the abolition movement”.

Rev Katei Kirby, General Manager of the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance, said, meanwhile, that problems in today’s society, including disrespect for human life, disregard for authority, and a “disdain” of belief and faith were modern legacies of the slave trade.

She said that moral and political leadership was needed to overcome the slave trade’s legacy of racism and to ensure that every ethnic group in Britain is embraced. She called for better understanding and government investment “in the present and the future of those disenfranchised by the negative legacies of the slave trade”.

But when asked if an apology for the slave trade was needed, Mr Cameron said, “I don’t actually think that one generation can meaningfully apologise for something that a previous generation did.”

Instead, he said that “true reparation” was actually “to make sure that Africa has a chance for peace, prosperity, stability and all the advantages we have in the West”.

“It is to Britain’s eternal shame that we supported the slave trade but it is to Britain’s eternal pride that we helped to stamp it out,” he said.

Pastor Agu Irukwu of Jesus House, a leading Pentecostal church in London, echoed Mr Cameron’s sentiments, saying that an apology would always be regarded as “hollow” unless African, Caribbean and Caucasian communities were to “come out of their comfort zones and engage with each other”.

Mr Cameron said the way forward lay in helping African nations to develop. “We should be doing all we can to promote indigenous economic development,” he said. “This means producing trade tariffs and helping African nations develop the institutions for economic growth.”

He also committed his party to bringing about the “proper” representation of black men and women in parliamentary life, acknowledging that the Conservative Party had failed to do this effectively in the past.

Mr Cameron called for members of the African and Caribbean community to use the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade to make a change by getting more involved in politics.

Other key speakers and panel members at the event included the Rt Rev Dr James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, and Bishop Wayne Malcolm of Christian Life City.

Christian Today

Soul diva Bev joins our anti-racism drive

People spat at my mum in the street because she was black...we have to teach Britain not to hate

She's Britain's Queen of Soul who wowed the crowds on a recent tour with comeback kings Take That. But life hasn't always been as good for singer Beverley Knight. The 34-year-old still bears the scars of racist abuse she suffered as a little girl growing up in Wolverhampton.

The star, who has a string of chart-topping hits and an MBE, is speaking out for the first time about how she and her family were targeted because of the colour of their skin. And she is urging everybody to support the Daily Mirror's Hope Not Hate anti-racism campaign, which was launched yesterday.

Our two-week bus tour across the country aims to celebrate all that is great about Britain. And spread the message - hope not hate...

'I'm the first generation of my family to be born in Britain - my parents were born and raised in Jamaica. Living in Wolverhampton was very diverse and mixed, and most people got along pretty well most of the time. But from a very early age I was aware of hostility towards people like me and my family. Of course, back then I didn't know it was racism, I was too young to understand. It was a dodgy time. The National Front had its headquarters just down the road in Walsall and they did their best to stir up trouble.

'School could be awful at times. I remember being in maths class when I was seven and I was the only black person in the top stream. Other kids would say things like: "Your skin's black because you haven't washed" and "your hair's like a Brillo pad". I did my best to ignore them, but it just got worse. Until one day the teacher went out of the class and this girl starting chanting: "Blackie, blackie." And soon the whole class caught on.

'I got very upset because I felt horribly isolated - I still remember that feeling now. I knew they picked on me because I was black. They were listening to their parents, that's the problem. When I told the teacher she just said: "Oh sit down, you're causing trouble." So I said: "But they're calling me names." And she replied: "Well just call them whities then." I went home and sobbed to my mum and she went straight down there and said this was unacceptable. The next day, in the middle of the lesson, I was removed from the class and sent to the lower stream where there were other black people. That was their way of dealing with it.

'But what happened to me as a child was so trivial in comparison to what my parents suffered. My dad came to Britain in 1959, Mum in 1962. She says it was November, it was freezing and she'd never seen snow before. Once, shortly after my dad arrived in the country, he had to defend himself against a gang of about 20 men. It was Dad and three of his brothers and they were only young.

'Wolverhampton was a different place back then. My mother was spat at, called names and shouted at in the street. People would make excuses not to serve you or let you on to public transport. Buses would drive past or kick you off. I think we have made astonishing progress but we still have a way to go.

'My parents went through hell. Those days may have gone but you still get comments from people. People still say to my mum: "Oh those black people, they're always fighting with knives, they're lazy and they don't want to work." When my mum makes a comment back, they say: "Oh not you! You're different!"

'Some people will ask daft questions and just not realise, like: "Where did you learn to speak English like that?" They're not racist, they're just not engaging their brain. They look at you and see that you're black and think you can't be from here, even though your accent is from Wolverhampton. Some people speak innocently out of ignorance and some people speak with racial intent. Most of the time you can completely see the difference. The race row on Celebrity Big Brother was shocking. I was so disappointed with Jo O'Meara. I had worked with her on Just The Two Of Us, and we had a laugh together.

'Jade Goody is not a clever girl. The reason she got the brunt of the criticism is probably because she was the mouthiest of the lot. She was daft enough to put her mouth into action far too many times. But the comments that cut to the core came from Danielle Lloyd. With Jade, to a certain extent, you have to ignore the ignorant rantings of someone who's not very clever. But Danielle said: "F**k off home." I remember those comments when I was a child, and they still hurt.

'Once in Italy, two of my band members, Carlos and Joe, went into the bank for some money. The woman took one look at these two black guys, one of them pretty big and powerful, and she pushed the panic button. I couldn't believe it.

'Carlos said the next thing he knew he was being hauled out and told to spread against the wall with a gun aimed at him. It was awful for them. Sadly it doesn't surprise me that people can still behave like this. Not everywhere is Britain. As we've seen in very recent cases, Britain isn't perfect, but we're doing a lot better than our European cousins.

'There are far-right parties in other countries that have much more of a foothold than the BNP has here. But we can't be complacent where racism is concerned and, in some parts of the UK, the BNP is on the rise. This has got to stop! I was lucky because my parents taught me to be proud of my heritage and of being British. They would say: "You are a child of Britain, you were born in Wolverhampton, raised in Wolverhampton, and we want you to be proud of that." And I was not the kind of person to cower, ever. I was proud of me and who I was, I always had an inner confidence. But stereotypes are so deeply entrenched and people hold on to them.

People must learn not to hate someone because of where they're from. The reality is that no matter what the colour of your skin, or where you're from, we're all going through the same struggle - just trying to get through life the best we can.'

CATCH OUR CAMPAIGN BUS

Tomorrow the Hope Not Hate bus leaves London for Glasgow on its mission to celebrate modern Britain. Over the next fortnight our red double-decker bus will be coming to you, bringing a message of hope to communities across the country. Our bus will be visiting Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus in London tomorrow afternoon.

And from 10am on Saturday we will be at Dagenham Civic Centre in Rainham Road North. Then at Kilverts Field in Grays, Thurrock, from 12.30am-2.30pm.

By Sunday lunchtime, we'll have reached the Golden Mile in Leicester.

Here's a list of our planned stops...

Fri 23 March: Trafalgar Square, London

Sat 24 March: Dagenham & Thurrock

Sun 25 March: Leicester

Mon 26 March: Nottingham & Lincoln

Tues 27 March: Sheffield

Weds 28 March: Oldham & Manchester

Thurs 29 March: Liverpool & Wrexham

Fri 30 March: Dudley & Birmingham

Sat 31 March: Stoke-on-Trent

Sun 1 April: Sandwell, West Bromwich

Mon 2 April: Blackburn & Burnley

Tues 3 April: Keighley, Bradford & Batley

Weds 4 April: Leeds

Thurs 5 April: Sunderland & Newcastle

Fri 6 April: Glasgow

Mirror

LMHR/UAF/AMICUS university tour goes off with a bang

The LMHR national university tour, supported by Amicus and UAF, has got off to a flying start.

Around 2,000 people have already attended events at Essex, East London, Swansea and Nottingham Uni’s. Each event - using speakers, debates and leaflets - has succeeded in creating or growing anti-fascist organisation both on campus and in the local areas, with UAF and LMHR societies being set up or strengthened - standing anti-BNP campaigns in good stead for the local council and Welsh Assembly elections on May 3rd.

Amicus have also been keenly promoting trade union values of unity and solidarity and the benefits of membership to students coming to the events.

A big thanks to all the musicians and student unions who’ve contributed so far. Watch the Gigs & Events pages for info on future dates.

LMHR

BNP told: hands off St George's Day

The Mayor of Swindon has hit out at attempts by the BNP to take credit for a St George's Day charity concert.

Mike Bawden said that the event on April 23, to be held in the council's chamber, was about celebrating the national day and raising money for the Prospect@Home appeal and should not be politicised in any way. Swindon British National Party falsely told supporters on its website the concert on April 23 was "BNP approved".

Mr Bawden said: "This event has had nothing at all to do with the BNP. They have had no involvement in organising it and there is no way the borough council would enter into any arrangement with them as an organisation. The borough's position is very clear in that we don't agree with their objectives. We would in no way want any political party to feel it had a monopoly on the evening. I believe the general public will look on this event as an opportunity to have an evening of good music and also an evening to raise money for the local Prospect Hospice."

Swindon Advertiser editor Mark Waldron said: "St George's Day is a celebration of England and everything associated with it. That includes tolerance and multiculturalism, which are definitely not words you associate with an organisation such as the BNP."

The Adver-backed concert will be held at the Civic Offices in Euclid Street. It is thought to be the first time that music has been performed inside the chamber, where council decisions are normally made.

The BNP claimed it was the "vanguard of the campaign" to organise the event and used the occasion as an opportunity to spout far-right rhetoric. The extremist party said: "It is a reflection of the growing resentment over how our culture and national identity has been eroded over the years. People are rightly proud to be English and are getting increasingly assertive in reminding proponents of multiculturalism that this is England, we are the English and this is our country."

After reports that the Kentwood Show Choir will end the concert with performances of Jerusalem, I Vow to Thee My Country and Rule Britannia, the BNP gave its blessing to the running order. It said: "An excellent choice in our opinion - guaranteed to really upset the Labour party and liberal left."

BNP Wiltshire organiser Mike Howson said that he thought the party was justified in trying to give the public event a political motive. "We will support anything that supports our culture and priorities and if that makes it political, so be it," he said. "We will do everything we can to celebrate British culture, that's why we are backing it. Lately we have had more and more support in Swindon, and I think it is the fact that the BNP is around that is why the council has taken notice of English and British culture."

The Swindon Advertiser launched the Prospect appeal to raise money to help fund a scheme which will see nurses giving palliative care to people in their own homes 24 hours a day.

Swindon Advertiser

£370,000 to fight race hate

The biggest ever attempt to combat race hate in Lancashire will be spearheaded by equality chiefs who have secured a £370,000 grant.

Preston and West Lancashire Racial Equality Council (REC) is celebrating a major cash injection from the Lottery's Reaching Communities programme, which will allow it to expand its Race Hate Awareness campaign for the next five years. It comes two years after the city was shamed as England's worst trouble spot for racist incidents – and 10 months after the British National Party secured votes in city elections.

A year ago the LEP revealed incidents in Lancashire's schools were also at an all-time high – with nearly 472 reported to the county's education authority in 2004/2005 compared to 351 the previous period. But the project aims to stop trends like this by educating the public, especially schoolchildren, on the effects of racism and prejudices.

Chief executive Faruk Desai MBE said: "The grant will enable us to provide much needed assistance to victims of racism.

"The funding will allow us to support the public sector in developing and implementing policies spanning much of Lancashire in order to make it a safer and cohesive place for all, and targeted outreach services will be provided through this funding to those district areas most in need."

Lancashire Evening Post

MP Linda lobbies for change in law

Halifax MP Linda Riordan will lobby the Government for a change in the law after a BNP activist who sent racist hate-mail escaped punishment.

The Labour MP will write to Gerry Sutcliffe, Under-Secretary for Justice, to ask him to amend the time limit within which someone must be charged for sending malicious communication. Mrs Riordan decided on the action after she met the West Yorkshire Crown Prosecution Service to discuss the blunder that allowed Brian Wainwright's case to be dismissed.

In January Mr Wainwright, 38, of Lee Mount Road, Halifax, admitted sending threatening and offensive posters to Calderdale's first Asian councillor Mohammed Najib, anti-fascist campaigner Paul Sutcliffe and a Halifax mosque. But last month he walked free from Calderdale Magistrates' Court because he was not charged within the six-month time limit for summary offences.

Fingerprints and DNA did not link Mr Wainwright to the crime until seven months after he sent the last letter.

CPS head Neil Franklin admitted the mistake, which was not spotted until the eleventh hour when magistrates were considering sentence, but blamed "a gap in the law", which he said the Government should move to plug. Mrs Riordan will ask for the clock to start running after evidence linking a suspect to the crime comes to light, instead of from when the offence is reported. This is the case with some summary offences such as taking a vehicle without consent.

She said: "Justice has not been done. Mr Wainwright admitted sending the letters. It is scandalous he was not prosecuted," Mrs Riordan said.

Mr Wainwright, who stood for election for Calderdale Council and Parliament, sent the posters between February and April 2005. They featured skulls, crossbones, swastikas and threats to spill Muslim blood and incite a race war.

Halifax Evening Courier

This nation of tolerance

This is a country of unparalleled tolerance, the envy of many other European countries.

A nation built on difference, where people of all colours and religions rub along together day by day. That’s why today, we are launching the Daily Mirror Hope Not Hate campaign – to celebrate modern Britain.

Over the next fortnight our red double decker bus will be coming to you – bringing a message of Hope to communities across the country.

Travelling from London to Glasgow via Dagenham, Thurrock, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, Sheffield, Oldham, Manchester, Liverpool, Wrexham, Dudley, Birmingham, West Bromwich, Blackburn, Burnley, Keighley, Bradford, Leeds, Sunderland and Newcastle – this is a celebration of the Britain we live in.

Just look at the restaurants on any high street – Indian, Chinese and Bengali, Turkish and Thai, fish and chip shops, bagel bakeries, pubs and pie shops, cafes and takeaways. Just look at our vibrant cities – great melting pots of cultures, where you can hear a dozen languages on any street corner.

Look at our schools, where children grow up together unaware of the colour of each other’s skins. Look at our army where black, Asian and white soldiers fight together on the frontlines.

What would London be without the Notting Hill Carnival, Brick Lane’s world class restaurants or Chinatown? Where would Leicester be without it’s Golden Mile or Birmingham without its Baltis?

Imagine Arsenal without Thierry Henry, cricket without Monty Panesar, rugby union without Jason Robinson and British boxing without Amir Khan, Frank Bruno and Errol Bomber Graham. Imagine British high streets without Marks and Spencers

Everything about Britain – our soap operas, our pop charts, our novelists and actors, the men and women who read the news – shows the diversity of our nation. This is the Britain admired by people overseas – a draw for tourists and a huge part of what won our country the Olympics.

We hear a lot about the ways in which multicultural Britain isn’t working – often from extremists who have a vested interest in replacing tolerance with prejudice and violence. At last year’s council elections the BNP doubled the number of council seats it holds by telling carefully placed lies, hiding their message of hate behind a ‘respectable’ veneer.

This May, let’s kick them back out again.

Because the everyday reality is that our multicultural society does actually work. We all know that, because whether we’re looking out of the window or talking to a colleague, eating our dinner or listening to the radio, supporting our favourite football team or watching Coronation Street, we can see it working every day of our lives.

This month sees the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, the moment when the MP for Hull William Wilberforce led parliament to end a deplorable chapter in our history. Two centuries on, our commemorations of that moment should also include a determination to kick racism out of Britain wherever it raises its ugly head. And at the same time, let’s celebrate just how far we have come.

Mirror

Hope not Hate

More items from Mirror's Hope not Hate supplement

Murders that still haunt Rio

Loyal to the flag

Cheering our great Britons

Future face of Britain

The stars speak out

Footie got kids on side

Way to go

COME along and climb aboard as our Hope Not Hate bus spreads its message of goodwill across the nation. Setting off from Dagenham on Saturday, March 23, it will criss-cross the country until it reaches Glasgow on Good Friday, April 6.

At each stop celebs will be out to show their support and we’ll be holding food festivals, staging concerts and giving out T-shirts, mugs, rosettes and postcards.

Check the newspaper and website every day for details of where we’ll be and bring your friends and family. Look in the paper tomorrow for details of day one in Dagenham and Thurrock and Leicester on Sunday. Thank you for your support.

Bus Tour dates

Saturday, March 24 - Dagenham & Thurrock
Sunday, March 25 - Northampton & Leicester
Monday, March 26 - Nottingham & Lincoln
Tuesday, March 27 - Sheffield
Wednesday, March 28 - Oldham & Manchester
Thursday, March 29 - Liverpool & North Wales
Friday, March 30 - Dudley & Birmingham
Saturday, March 31 - Stoke-on-Trent
Sunday, April 1 - Sandwell
Monday, April 2 - Blackburn & Burnley
Tuesday, April 3 - Keighley, Bradford and Batley
Wednesday, April 4 - Leeds & surrounding area
Thursday, April 5 - Sunderland & Newcastle
Friday, April 6 - Glasgow

The Daily Mirror backs HOPE not hate campaign

We are pleased to announce that the Daily Mirror is supporting the HOPE not Hate campaign. Today's edition carries an 8pp supplement celebrating modern diverse Britain and opposing the politics of hate.

On Saturday a HOPE not Hate bus, organised by Searchlight and the Daily Mirror, will begin a 14-day journey across the country. It will start in Dagenham on Saturday morning and end in Glasgow on Friday 6 April. Along the route we shall be joined by national celebrities and visit local community groups at the forefront of offering a positive alternative to the BNP. Click here to see the route map.

The campaign is being backed by X-Factor winner Leona Lewis, boxer Amir Khan and The Apprentice's Alan Sugar.

You will be able to follow the tour via our Hope not Hate bus tour blog and picture gallery.

Jon Cruddas, MP for Dagenham and joint secretary of the Anti-Fascist Fortnight steering committee, told Searchlight: "This is really exciting news. The support of the Daily Mirror takes our campaign onto a new level. I would urge everyone to get involved."

HOPE not Hate literature

Searchlight has produced a range of HOPE not Hate literature which local groups and unions can distribute. These include newspapers, leaflets, postcards, posters, balloons and badges. View the merchandise here.

Anti-Fascist Fortnight

Over the next two weeks there will be anti-BNP activities across the country. It is really important that we translate opposition to the racist views of the BNP to positive action. If we are going to prevent the BNP from winning council seats then we need to get anti-BNP literature out through doors. Please do you best to spare some time to help out. You can view the activities here.

£8,000 to defeat the BNP: Please support Searchlight

Searchlight still needs to raise £8,000 to fund its campaign. Every penny raised will go straight to our campaign fund. The more money we raise, the more we can do. The more we can do, the more we can stop the BNP. The more we can stop the BNP, the better life will be. It's that simple.

We would like to thank those who have already given generously and we would urge others, especially those who are unable to attend our activities, to support the campaign through a donation.

To donate to the campaign click here

You can download a fundraising leaflet here

Get involved If you would like to get involved in the campaign or want to know what is happening in your area email me at nick@stoprthebnp.org.uk

TOGETHER WE CAN BEAT THE BNP

Hope not Hate

Belgians brave rainstorm for anti-racism weddings

Braving rain and hail, hundreds of Belgians took part in a symbolic ceremony yesterday in a town where three couples refused to be married by a black official.

In an impressive show of solidarity against those who have given the term "white wedding" a bad name, the couples exchanged or renewed their marriage vows in the Flemish town of St-Niklaas.

The demonstration was in support of Wouter Van Bellingen, who was born in Rwanda but adopted by a Flemish family at birth and was elected a councillor in the town last October. In February, when the three couples refused to be married by him, Mr Van Bellingen, the town's deputy mayor, described the incident as "the most primitive form of racism", because it was motivated by "nothing but the colour of my skin".

Yesterday he appeared to have made the most of his adversity, as the mass wedding he organised attracted the attention of the international media. At least 2,000 letters and emails have poured in since the incident.

By early evening, couples had gathered in the town's market square in their finery before an event held in a marquee. Chosen to coincide with the International Day against Racism the ceremony began with a group hug before the assembled couples exchanged or renewed vows in a ceremony overseen by Mr Van Bellingen. Couples then took part in a mass wedding photo, before tucking into a "multicultural dessert buffet" and taking part in a wedding dance.

The row has focused attention on attitudes towards race in a part of Belgium renowned for its sympathy with the far right. In last year's elections the anti-immigration, Flemish separatist party, the Vlaams Belang won 26 per cent of the vote.

The group has accused Mr Van Bellingen of using the mass wedding to further his own political ambitions.

Independent

Hatewatch: for the week of March 21st 2007

Navy officer under investigation for extremist activities
Navy Times
March 19, 2007
Lt. Cmdr. John Sharpe Jr. was relieved of duty after an Intelligence Project investigation uncovered evidence of his writing anti-Semitic dispatches and attending white supremacist gatherings.
Read more...

Klan group rallies in support of racist parties
The Toronto Star
March 18, 2007
Two dozen members of The Traditional Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated in support of Tarleton State students who held a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party where attendees ate fried chicken, drank malt liquor, and dressed as Aunt Jemima.
Read more...

Lawmakers: homeless need hate crime protection
Miami Herald
March 15, 2007
The Florida legislature is considering legislation to classify attacks on homeless people as hate crimes.
Read more...

Anti-Semitic acts up 86 percent in Illinois
Chicago Tribune
March 16, 2007
While anti-Semitic incidents declined nationwide, in Illinois they leaped from 30 in 2005 to 56 last year, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League.
Read more...

SPLC

Fascism in Britain: Interview with the BNP

As part of my university research into far right politics and fascism in Britain I conducted an interview with Nick Cass, a spokesperson for Britain’s largest far right party, the British National Party (BNP). Issues of asylum and immigration currently receive much attention in the UK, much of the right wing media are irresponsibly and falsely displaying immigrants and asylum seekers as a ‘problem’ that needs a ‘solution’. This media attention in turn tends to shape the view of the average person who, as with all issues, is susceptible to what they may see as popular opinion. This has led to an almost accidental racism, prompted by a profound misunderstanding of important issues. This interview was conducted to help me further understand those who have made it their mission to further sensationalise issues of asylum and immigration and capitalise on the bad press that some of the worlds most unfortunate people have received.

The interview is quite long, but it well worth a read to gain an insight into the real motives and aims of the British National Party. Please visit the sites below to read more about the scourge of far right politics. If you so happen to agree with the BNP and the far right then you are unfortunately ignorant, this can be remedied by either getting an education or reading a few decent and fair book or articles on these issues. Please feel free to contact me about anything you read here, I would love to hear your views.

Hope this opens your eyes. They are NOT just another political party.

N.B. The text below is a literal transcription of words spoken during the interview. Therefore, what appear to be grammatical errors are in fact Nick Cass' own words.

Read more...

Braindead in cyberspace

Anybody who has ever posted to an internet forum will be aware that these are prime targets for manipulation by the Braindead Neanderthal Party (BNP). In some cases this can be subtle, in most cases it's as subtle as a sledgehammer. BNP members routinely flood forums with threads on race and immigration, then support themselves with a multiplicity of sock puppets.

Sock puppets are operated in a variety of ways. There is usually an attempt to pretend that more BNP members exist on a forum than is really the case. Some sock puppets are deployed as "ordinary members of the public" who invariably support the BNP line. Some are deployed to hunt with the hounds and run with the foxes. Some will appear to mildly question the BNP and its policies - the questions posed in an easily rebutted manner, as was the intention.

Many BNP posters adopt a tone of sweet reason, and are capable of dressing up their vile propaganda in some handsome clothes. But most of them will simply post with a link to a news story - so long as the story is crime-related and has a picture of a black or Asian face, they're satisfied. Then the sock puppets come in to do their duty.

The majority of BNP posters being notably unintelligent, they frequently revert to gutter language and have few inhibitions about making personal attacks on other posters. This frequently leads to them being banned - but they always come back.

What is remarkable to many is that abusive BNP posters fail to understand that for every person posting on a forum there are many more "lurkers" - people who simply like to browse forums but who do not feel inclined to contribute. Members of other political parties might have a care for what these unseen lurkers make of them, but the braindead BNP rarely do.

Illustrative of this is the curious case of the Oxfordshire and Brighton Argus forums.

For some years the Brighton Argus forum has been targetted by various BNP supporters, who, true to form, began thread after thread on their favourite subject and got on with the business of abusing their gainsayers. This led to a pattern of bannings and reincarnations that has continued to this day.

Somewhere along the line, the Argus BNP contingent discovered the Oxfordshire forum, where they began their familiar pattern. Though moderation of the Argus forum is at best feeble, at the Oxfordshire forum it is virtually non-existent. Very quickly the language and the abuse reached new depths, and what was by all accounts once a very active and lively forum began a steady decline as regulars deserted, tired at the endless immigration threads and the certainty that questioning or opposing the BNP supporters would bring a shower of foul-mouthed abuse raining down upon them.

Today the Oxfordshire forum is a sterile, inert place, populated only by the braindead BNP, the odd die hard-regular, and an anti-BNP campaigner.

Back at the Argus, they have adopted a new tactic. This involves blocking threads started by people they detest, or where the balance of posting has gone against them (as it always does), or where they have been shown to be liars, or - uniquely, where they have started a thread so that they can block it themselves and blame "the lefties".

Thread blocking apparently works by posting huge amounts of data into a reply box. The effect is to cause something akin to server time-outs. The posts can only be viewed after several minutes of rendering (if at all), cannot be added to, and also have the effect of making the site run slowly.

For some time these idiots have run riot, blocking entire pages of threads. They schizophrenically admit to thread blocking one day (in the name of "free speech", as one of them claimed), and the next blame "the lefties". And they sit in their empty haven of the Oxfordshire forum to crow to one another about how well they have done.

Of course, it has never yet occurred to them that they are doing the party they support the biggest disservice possible - but I don't call them braindead for nothing!

Things have lately become so serious on the Argus forum that one of their own, posting on the Nazi Stormfront site, took them to task:

'Well you and your buddies have screwed up big time. Now nobody can post to either forum and there are likely to be legal consequences and bad publicity that are going to reflect badly on all Nationalists. Thank you. Thank you very much.... You swamped the forum with race-based posts that had nothing to say but just contained links to news stories. It was all you did, and not surprisingly other posters got fed up with it. You wouldn't leave threads that had nothing to do with race alone and other posters got fed up with that too. When they complained to you, you and your cronies immediately stooped to personal abuse. You even abused people who had a BNP mindset... You also did the same thing on the Oxford forums. You made that forum a joke and even when one of our own people came on to fire a warning shot across your bows you ignored him. You caused disruption every day on the Argus forum and used the Oxford forum to boast about it. Very clever... You went there and behaved like trolls so you got treated like trolls.'

Those are excerpts from the first of a series of Stormfront posts. The response of the Braindeads was predictable - they ignored what any rational person would have seen to be sound advice. Unable to believe that one of their own could seriously question their disruption of the two forums they concluded that the Stormfront poster must be an imposter!

BNP antics on two obscure internet forums might not seem to carry much importance (and on these two forums at least, the BNPs are their own worst enemies), but multiply that by several hundred active forums and you have thousands and thousands of people daily exposed to their message - no matter how badly or unintelligently it is posed.

Several things have become very clear to me, after browsing several dozen BNP-infested forums. That is their ability to brazenly lie, to avoid difficult questions (usually by coming back with a question), to query their opponents' bona fides, to attribute to their opponents things they have never said or done, to take statistics and quotes and to mangle them until they fit in with the BNP purpose, and to deflect almost any topic, no matter how innocent, into anti-immigrant propaganda.

There is also a strange propensity for dredging up posts by opponents that were made years before - as if these creepy creatures were keeping databases of who said what and when. Now why would they want to do that?

The BNP encourage and pursue cyber-activism with a vengeance. They realise, even if their opponents do not, that the Internet is an increasingly vital tool in the war of ideas and propaganda, and that the internet forum is one of the strategic fronts in that war. They have taken the initiative, meeting little real opposition away from the larger forums - and though, thanks to their own incompetence and stupidity, they frequently do themselves more harm than good, we should remember that often a post containing nothing more than a link to a crime story with ethnic minority involvement is all that is needed for them to get their racist message across.

Though it isn't my wish to either deny or denigrate the anti-racist stalwarts who do oppose the BNP on many forums, I think we can do so much more. They have many small local newspaper forums to themselves - forums which do have quite a wide local readership. We should be on these forums, not only challenging their views, but exposing their organisation for what it really is.

And the BNP make it so easy!

A thread on crime? Respond by posting of criminality among the BNP membership themselves - there are more than enough links to such stories. Or remind them of the missing money promised to Sharon Ebanks, collected from among their own ranks. Why do none of them ever question what happened to it?

Fastest growing party? Remind them that in 2005 (a great year for racism) the BNP had a net gain of less than 150 members, according to their own accounts as submitted to the Electoral Commission.

Corrupt local government? BNP supporter "EN Ronn" composed an article named 'Unsettling Accounts', reposted on Stormfront several times. Make good use of it! In fact, take a good look at Stormfront, including the back threads - there is so much to use concerning the corrupt internal workings of the BNP that you can counter them on almost anything and throw them completely off balance. And, of course, keep checking the regular anti-racist websites that contain tasty little tit-bits you can store away for future use.

Nick Griffin the best thing since sliced bread? Apart from anti-Griffin posting on Stormfront and similar sites, the best demolition of his reputation to date was penned by the man he deposed, the late John Tyndall. His magazine Spearhead may thankfully be defunct, but its website still exists, and contains many articles full of useful information and quotes. If it's there, you may as well use it.

We're Nationalists? Are they? Ask the majority of them to explain their "nationalist philosophy" and watch them squirm. On two forums they were asked this, and on both avoided giving any answer - in fact their response was to demand that we explain it (they always come back with a question when they have no answers, remember?). Eventually there was some desultory quoting from Wikipedia, and even the OED definition, but nothing in their own words. Which allowed us to show them up as the bone-headed bigots they really are, obsessed with one issue alone, and utterly clueless about the ideology they profess to follow.

We're patriots? So much to choose from to shoot that one down in flames - Mark Collett's "Churchill was a ****ing ***t" tirade is always good.

Undermining the BNP with facts about their own party's doings seems to me the best course of action in the current climate. They cannot dispute provable facts, and their general response when presented with them is a sort of embarrassed prevarication, and sometimes an abusive retort. It doesn't matter which - you have succeeded in undermining their credibility, and can be seen to have done so.

You may not win many converts to the cause of anti-racism but you will cause people to think more deeply about the organisation they may have been tempted to support or vote for. And mostly you can do it simply by posting the facts, the unavoidable, incontrovertible facts!

Article supplied by DG