A winning formula

Red Pepper magazine is currently running a debate on the future of anti-fascism, one we'd like to bring to the Lancaster Unity community. With Red Pepper's agreement we will be republishing three articles over the next few days, each with a different take on the way forward. Read on...

Paul Meszaros of Hope not Hate says that Keiron Farrow’s analysis of the BNP threat is complacent and self-indulgent

We recognise that there needs to be a debate concerning the efficacy of different approaches to undermining support for the far right if we are to refine our intervention. Unfortunately, Keiron Farrow offers little in terms of a positive way forward. His piece casually runs together the Hope not Hate (HNH) and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) campaigns, two organisations he says have ‘broadly similar approaches’, and in doing so blatantly confuses their methods and approaches.

The first important thing to say regarding HNH is that it is a constantly evolving campaign. Because we are not stuck with any old dogma we are able to gauge what works, refine those elements that are helpful and move away from tactics that do not work. For a long period, especially during the 1990s, anti-fascism was something of a minority interest, with a few committed groups and individuals either spying on or beating the far right. This approach might be described as proportional as the BNP offered no political threat in those days, although they posed a physical threat to those they targeted. This changed in the early years of this decade as the BNP for a number of reasons was able, under Nick Griffin’s leadership, to present itself increasingly as a political solution to the problems faced in certain communities.

Since that time we have seen a growth in the far-right vote that is without precedent. During this period the anti-fascist movement has had to learn how to deal with a party that knows how to win elections. We have also had to deal with an organisation that has moved out of its traditional strongholds and is able to gather a sizeable vote almost anywhere. The BNP vote can now longer be dismissed as a protest; rather, the BNP has become the first choice for a significant number of voters.

Certainly, 10 or 15 years ago, the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight would highlight the criminal convictions of far-right activists and candidates. However, this tactic is used far more sparingly these days as we know it has a limited appeal. Rather what we have seen is a growing realisation and understanding that anti-fascism has to address the political, social and economic issues that are giving rise to the far right.

At HNH we know that most people who vote BNP are not Nazis, and we also know that there is a whole host of issues on which they feel ignored. Even here, though, there is an ongoing debate about what these social issues are. We are told often that it revolves around job and housing insecurity. These clearly play a part, but it is also about other less tangible discontents. We are sometimes told that the question is about identity and in particular English and working-class identities ... but are we really being told, in a polite way, that the big issue is immigration? The BNP has managed to give racial ideology and, in particular, fear of immigration a growing political outlet. It is tapping into large reservoirs of racism that have for too long gone unchallenged.

For HNH, taking on the BNP is primarily about working with those communities under threat from the BNP. We have seen in some of our exemplary work, such as in Keighley, that grass-roots campaigning where local people take ownership of the fight against the BNP can be absolutely effective in defeating them. Keighley went from being a BNP ‘capital’ in 2004 to having no BNP organisation or even candidates by 2007. This was achieved by some old-fashioned proper community development work with residents on the threatened estate. Ironically, the leaders of that particular community came from the mums at the local Sure Start, which suggest to me that it is vital to defend what working-class communities have gained what has been gained over recent years, something Farrow neglects to mention. It is through this careful and patient work that the broad-based alliances necessary to defeat the BNP can be built.

There is also the point that third-party campaigning is limited in what it can achieve. For the BNP to lose an election, another party has to win. Hope not Hate is not an appendage of the Labour Party, but clearly it is often the case that Labour that needs to get more votes than the BNP for the BNP to lose! We disagree entirely with the claim that the BNP can never fulfil its programme and that its real crime is delaying the rise of independent working-class opposition. This seems both complacent and self-indulgent. It almost seems that Farrow believes that voting Labour is a worse crime than voting BNP. What is astonishing is that our hard-left critics have not managed to make any headway over the past few years; their derisory election scores are indicative of how irrelevant they are to the working class of which they speak so much and understand so little.

Farrow is right to suggest that the battle for hearts and minds continues on the estates devoid of the far left. But if at the end of this the working people reject the hate of the BNP and vote Labour it will be called a victory. The election of Griffin and Brons as MEPs is devastating, but we must bear in mind that there was no massive surge to the BNP. Rather, the Labour vote collapsed. It is worth remarking, however, that in Bradford, for example, where HNH is long established, the BNP vote went down while the Labour vote went up. Intelligent community-based campaigning exposes the BNP for what it is, as well as providing a defence of civil society.

Paul Meszaros, Hope Not Hate Yorkshirehq[at]hopeyorks.org.uk

With thanks to Red Pepper

Griffin throws in the towel

Nick Griffin - fighting a losing battle

Despite all the hysterical rhetoric that it was going to fight the Equality and Human Rights Commission all the way, when push came to shove the British National Party decided to play for time when the case against it came on at London County Court.

The EHCR alleges that the BNP’s “whites only” membership policy is in breach of the Race Relations Act.

At the last moment the BNP changed solicitors, and barrister Jonathan O’Mahony received instructions only the night before the case was due to be heard on September 2nd, forcing Judge Paul Collins to grant an adjournment until October 15th.

The judge told the BNP that it must bear the costs of the delay, which may cost the cash-strapped party thousands of pounds.

The reason for the BNP’s costly delaying tactics at first seemed inexplicable, but suspicions deepened today that Nick Griffin intends to withdraw from a case the BNP has very little chance of winning – in fact there have been suspicions all along in some quarters of the BNP and even the anti-fascist movement that Griffin did not wish to fight the case but was forced to do so due to strength of feeling among his members.

This evening Griffin warned the BNP that the final cost of fighting the EHRC case could be more than a million pounds, and that in any case the forthcoming Equality Bill will “simply and unavoidably ban any political party from discriminating on grounds of ethnicity”.

Disingenuously, a post on the BNP’s website, clearly authored by Griffin, then says: “The entire court case is therefore pointless even from the CEHR’s position, and is clearly designed only to bleed the party of its funding.”

What he means is that the court case is pointless from the BNP’s position.

The post continued to back-pedal, Griffin acknowledging that the BNP constitution will have to be rewritten to comply with the law, which per se means that the party will have to accept non-whites into its membership, should any wish to apply.

Couching what amounts to surrender in a form designed to make the poison pill easier to swallow, Griffin said: “Adapt or die is the only decision left to make, for failure to adapt would lead either to our being bled white through the courts or crushed by new criminal laws. Party unity is priceless, because a party of brothers standing shoulder to shoulder can be persecuted, but it can never be beaten or broken.”

Clearly signalling an intent not to contest the EHRC case further, Griffin continues: “We will be going into legal battle against Trevor Phillips and the rest of the ‘curs’, but it will be fought on ground that we choose, at the time that we appoint, and with our maximum strength directed against their weakest point.”

Cynics have pointed out that Griffin tested the waters on changing the BNP constitution to admit non-whites several years ago, long before any threat of legal action was mooted. Accusations were levelled that Griffin, knowing that the BNP would never take power, and seeing the party, in his own words, as “a business”, was more concerned with preserving the lucrative “business” by opening up its membership to non-whites than he was with upholding the BNP’s core beliefs.

We can’t comment on that, but we do predict that Griffin’s surrender will lead to serious internal ructions within the BNP. In late August hardline racists centred around the Jackson4leader dissident group held a meeting in the Midlands to discuss a leadership challenge to unseat Griffin, and already BNP members are making comments on the internet that they will leave the party rather than accept ethnic minority members. Needless to say, the heavily moderated main party website is filled with comments of a grudging “so be it” variety, many of them seeming to have been posted by the site’s admin under different names to shore up the Griffinite position.

We at Norfolk Unity must admit that at first we believed the EHRC case to have been a hastily cobbled together panic measure, reacting to the election of two BNP MEP’s in June. We still believe that, and continue to have little faith in an organisation that has had years to tackle the BNP – but if the self-surrender of the BNP leads to the demise of organised racism in Great Britain, well, we can live with that.

Norfolk Unity

BNP member Peter Tierney denies assaulting anti-fascist demonstrator

Protestors outside Liverpool Magistrate's Court today

A well-known member of the British National Party has denied assaulting an anti-facist demonstrator on St George's Day.

Peter Tierney, 52, is charged with assaulting a protestor in St John's Lane near St George's Hall on April 23 this year. He pleaded not guilty to the attack which allegedly left a man with a cut on the back of his head. The protestors were said to have been handing out leaflets protesting against the BNP earlier that day.

Tierney, wearing a black suit, wore his long brown hair in a ponytail and his six-inch beard in a plait as he stood in the dock at Liverpool magistrates' court yesterday. He pleaded not guilty to one charge of committing assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Demonstrators protesting against his party gathered outside the court building in Dale Street before the hearing. Several police officers stood outside the court.

Tierney, of High Street, Hale Village, opted to have the matter dealt with at the crown court.The case will be committed to the crown court on October 29.

Liverpool Daily Post

BNP must adapt membership rules or be crushed, says Nick Griffin

Party reacts after legal challenge to its policy of barring non-whites

The British National party leader, Nick Griffin, said today that the far right organisation should change its membership rules or face being "utterly crushed" in the courts.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is taking the BNP to court over its constitution, which states that only "'Indigenous Caucasian' and defined 'ethnic groups' emanating from that race" are allowed to join. When proceedings were issued last month the party insisted it would fight the case. But Griffin, speaking after yesterday's hearing at the Central London county court was adjourned for seven weeks, appeared to back down, saying that the party should now change its membership rules.

"It is now crystal clear to all concerned that we simply do not have a choice but to change our membership policy," said Griffin. "Adapt or die is the only decision left to make, for failure to adapt would lead either to our being bled white through the courts or crushed by new criminal laws."

Griffin said the party would hold a series of debates over the coming weeks to discuss the matter and then stage a mass meeting for members where they would require a two-thirds majority to rewrite the constitution. The issue is likely to provoke a bitter debate in the party with leading members openly hostile to allowing non-white members.

In today's statement Griffin tried to appease potential opponents. "I have no doubt that it is possible to redraft our constitution so as to ensure we comply with the new law while at the same time holding true to our core principles and most important of all to our purpose – to secure a future for the true children of our islands."

Anti-racism campaigners warned today that even if the BNP changed its constitution it would make no difference to the party's core beliefs. "It is cosmetic window-dressing that does not alter fundamentally the BNP, which is a fascist and racist party," said Nick Lowles from the Hope not Hate campaign.

At yesterday's hearing, Judge Paul Collins ruled the party had 21 days to serve its evidence, with a further 14 days for the claimants to respond before the next one-day hearing, scheduled for 15 October.

The Guardian

Their lies, our strength

BNP leader Nick Griffin went on air last month to distance the BNP from the hooligan protests. As usual what he did not admit was that many of the leading figures in the Luton protest are BNP supporters. Just like Oldham in 2001, Griffin denied responsibility while his own followers were inciting hatred and violence.

When the English Defence League announced its intention to hold a protest in Luton we were faced with two options. We could have called a counter-protest and mobilised the local community and anti-fascists to occupy the streets or we could call on the authorities to ban the march.

In normal circumstances we would have preferred the first option. Mobilising communities can be an empowering process but these are not ordinary times and the stakes are too high. There was a very serious risk of major disorder in Luton if the march had gone ahead – be it from the hooligans and fascists or the local community, which quite understandably wanted to defend its neighbourhoods.

We decided that any disorder would have been a disaster. It would have driven a firm wedge between communities in Luton and also had national ramifications. With the strength of the BNP and Islamophobia it is trouble we could least afford.

Anti-fascists must accept that we too have a responsibility to the people we claim to represent. Yes the fascists must be challenged wherever they raise their heads but it is also important that we are sensitive to the consequences of our actions. Stopping the fascists holding a meeting is pointless if we then have to endure three days of adverse publicity which leaves local people – the very people we want to keep away from the BNP – feeling sympathy for them. Likewise, burning the Union Jack in a city centre is hardly likely to win over ordinary shoppers.

It was precisely because of our concerns over the consequences of a march that we called for the protest to be banned. However, the manner in which we did it mobilised and empowered people. The Home Office banned the march because of the actions of thousands of people who got involved in our campaign. Over the coming months the hooligans and BNP will again try to whip up hatred and division. They need to be opposed but in a responsible manner which gives thought to the consequences and empowers people along the way.

Hope not hate

Hope not hate is campaigning to get Saturday's equally-dangerous march in Birmingham cancelled. Despite an amazing 1427 letters objecting to it landing in the Council's inbox, it seems that they're still unwilling to budge.

We have received information that football hooligans from across the West and East Midlands, the South West, Wales and the Home Counties are preparing to descend on Birmingham on Saturday. They will be meeting outside the city centre and marching in as a mob. We cannot allow this to happen.

To ramp up the pressure on the Council, Nick Lowles of Searchlight/Hope not hate is planning to send a letter to each of the Councillors, and the local media, in the next 24 hours demanding they put a stop to it. But to make the impact we need, we need a headline number. We're aiming for 2000 letters to be sent to the Councillors before Nick sends his. we'd like your help in meeting this goal - can you invite your friends to contact the Council about the march as well?

We've set up an easy-to-use tool to help you reach out to your friends - with your help we can get over 2000 people involved. We've had great success stopping these types of marches before. But this didn't happen by chance. It happened because people like you and me were willing to stand up and make a difference. Please contact your friends and get them to put pressure on the council.

To send a message yourself, click here.
To enlist the support of your friends, click here.

BNP candidate banned from driving after refusing breath test

A senior British National Party member was disqualified from driving today after being found guilty of refusing to take a police breathalyser test.

Robert Bailey, 43, of Chadwell Heath, Essex, said he refused to cooperate with officers because he believed they were part of a politically inspired conspiracy acting upon "a higher order".

Havering Magistrates Court, in Romford, Essex, heard Bailey was arrested after being spotted by officers driving along London Road in the town without his lights on at around 11.15pm on May 28. He twice failed to give a proper breath sample at the roadside and then when taken back to Romford Police Station he refused to make another attempt, the court was told. Traffic officers reported smelling drink on his breath and CCTV footage from the station was shown to the court.

Bailey, who was a BNP candidate for London in this year's European elections, refused to speak when asked if he had had a drink. He was warned that refusing to take the breath test could lead to prosecution and was seen on the footage replying: "I'm not going to do that."

The former Royal Marine, originally from Scunthorpe, told the court he believed he was being set up because of his political beliefs. He said: "Well, I spent 14 years in the Marines and spent a good part of this working with the security forces and I know how the system operates."

He added that he believed he was under surveillance because of his political activities and that his phone and house had been bugged. He said: "It adds to my belief it is a conspiracy against me, my party and the indigenous people of this country."

Prosecutor Adebayor Kareem accused him of refusing to take a breath test because it would have shown up that he was drunk behind the wheel. Bailey told the court he had only had one drink earlier in the day but was tired from his election work and had been taking tablets to help him sleep. He said he normally drove a Volvo whose lights come on automatically and he had not realised he was driving without lights. He said: "I dispute strongly that my speech was slurred, that I was drunk and I was unsteady on my feet."

Chris Sweetman, defending Bailey, said his client had a possible personality disorder which made him suspicious of the police and refuse to cooperate with them. He added that Bailey had suffered from depression in the past as well, which may have made him paranoid.

District Judge John Wollard said: "I have heard nothing which establishes in my view that this defendant had a reasonable excuse on medical grounds."

He found him guilty of failing to provide a specimen and fined him £275, ordered him to pay costs of £200, a victim's surcharge of £15 and disqualified him from driving for 18 months.

The Independent

Note: According to those in the know it was the court-appointed doctor who stated that Bailey was suffering from paranoid delusions and possibly a personality disorder and not, as the Independent states, Bailey's defence team.

BNP member rules case adjourned

A legal case about ethnic restrictions on the British National Party's membership rules has been adjourned.

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission is seeking an injunction against BNP leader Nick Griffin and two other party officials. It claims they are breaking the Race Relations Act by restricting membership to "indigenous Caucasian" people. The BNP says it is a "vexatious and spiteful" action prompted by its recent successes in the European elections.

The case was adjourned to give the BNP more time to prepare a defence, after the court was told the party had only instructed its counsel, Jonathan O'Mahoney, at 5pm on Tuesday. Mr Griffin and fellow party officers Simon Darby and Tanya Lumby did not attend the hearing at Central London County Court.

Judge Paul Collins said: "The Commission take the view that the terms on which the BNP admit persons to membership is in breach of the Race Relations Act because it discriminates against persons on the grounds of race and they want an injunction to stop it."

But he pointed out that it had taken a "long time for someone to get round to the idea" that the BNP - which was founded 27 years ago - could be in breach of the Race Relations Act.

The evidence suggested that the case was prompted by complaints made to the Commission after the BNP won two seats in the European Parliament in June, he added. He also pointed out that the EHRC had not provided any evidence that there was "a long queue of black people wanting to join the BNP". But he said the BNP had known since June about the possibility of legal action and said it was "unfair" of the party to have instructed Mr O'Mahoney at the last minute. He therefore ordered the BNP to pay the costs of the hearing.

But the judge refused a request by Robin Allen QC, counsel for the EHRC, to impose an interim order on the BNP preventing it from recruiting new members through its website and forcing it "not to refuse membership to any non-white members, or would-be members, on the grounds of colour". The judge said it would be "inappropriate" given that the BNP had been in existence for 27 years and was due back in court over the matter next month.

He told defendants they had 21 days to serve their evidence, with a further 14 days for the claimants to respond before the next one-day hearing, scheduled for 15 October.

Mr O'Mahoney told the court that the BNP had appointed a new legal team in the past week after dispensing with the services of its original solicitors, who had advised it not to contest the case. But Mr Allen accused the party of being "reluctant to come to court to state their case" and appearing "to be doing everything to avoid the course of justice".

Outside court, a spokesman for the EHRC said its predecessor organisation, the Commission for Racial Equality, did not have the powers to take such legal action and that the EHRC was set up only in October 2007.

Stephen Tyler, the BNP Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bermondsey in south east London, who attended the hearing, said: "The BNP thrives on adversity. Whatever the outcome, it is going to emerge much stronger than it already is."

Mr Tyler, who teaches international relations at a private college, said it was "a vexatious, spiteful case". And he claimed the BNP had "a lot of supporters from ethnic minorities," adding: "They understand why the membership list is closed to them."

BBC News

BNP member pleads guilty to making Nazi salute in Codnor

A BNP member has been fined for giving a Nazi salute during clashes with protesters marching against the party's annual Red, White and Blue festival. John Jones was one of a small group who argued with anti-fascist campaigners as they moved along Codnor-Denby Lane, Denby. Police told Jones, 66, to leave the scene but as he did so he made the gesture.

The three-day Red, White and Blue festival was held on fields off Codnor-Denby Lane for the third consecutive year last month. About 1,000 left-wing activists were involved in the march on August 15, at the time when the argument broke out.

Yesterday Jones, of Curtis Road, Epsom, appeared at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour which was racially aggravated. Fernando Rodrigues, prosecuting, said the group including Jones had been walking along the road when police told them to move into a field, as the protesters approached. A police cordon was formed and, as the march went past, the two groups exchanged words.

Mr Rodrigues said: "The offender raised his arm in the air in what was described as a Nazi salute. During his police interview, he stated he had come to Derbyshire from London the previous day to attend the festival. He (Jones) openly stated he was a member of the BNP and showed his membership card."

Jones, who was not represented, told the court that he was threatened with words such as "Kill the BNP" and pelted with fruit. Speaking after the hearing, Jones said he had been a party member for about 20 years but had been unable to go to the festival because of his arrest. Jones was fined £71, with £60 costs and a £15 Government surcharge. Presiding magistrate Anthony Stanley said the salute was a "serious offence". However, Kirit Mistry, executive director of Derby Racial Equality Council, which was involved in organising the protest, said the fine was not enough.

He said: "He should also have been told to complete a cultural awareness programme as part of his punishment."

BNP spokesman Simon Darby said Jones would face a disciplinary hearing to decide his future with the party. Two other men, Saville Davies, 25, of Hollywell Avenue, Codnor, and a 17-year-old, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, pleaded not guilty to the same charge as Jones. They will appear for trial in December.

This is Derbyshire

BNP in court over membership rules

The BNP: up in court today for its whites-only membership rule

A legal action against the British National Party about ethnic restrictions on its membership is due in court.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) issued county court proceedings against the far-right party on August 24 after voicing concerns in June about its constitution and membership criteria. The party's membership criteria appeared to be restricted to those within certain ethnic groups and to white people, according to the EHRC.

The BNP responded by saying that it intended to clarify the word "white" on its website, but the Commission said it believed the party will continue to discriminate against potential or actual members on racial grounds.

"The BNP's membership criteria appear to restrict membership to those within what the BNP regards as particular "ethnic groups" and those whose skin colour is white. This exclusion is contrary to the Race Relations Act.

"The Commission believes the BNP's constitution and membership criteria are discriminatory and, further, that the continued publication of them on the BNP website is unlawful. It has therefore issued county court proceedings against party leader Nick Griffin and two other officials," said the Commission in a statement.

John Wadham, legal director at the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: "The BNP has said that it is not willing to amend its membership criteria which we believe are discriminatory and unlawful.

"The Commission has a statutory duty to use our regulatory powers to enforce compliance with the law, so we have today issued county court proceedings against the BNP. However, the party still has an opportunity to resolve this quickly by giving the undertaking on its membership criteria that the Commission requires."

Southport Visitor

Survivors gather to pay tribute to 'British Schindler'

Nicholas Winton rescued 669 children from the Nazis. Yesterday 22 of them returned to Prague to thank him

Watching a steam train full of waving passengers pull out of Prague station yesterday, the Meisl brothers recalled the wartime journey that had changed their lives forever. Peter Meisl was evacuated from Czechoslovakia by a British stockbroker, Nicholas Winton, on the eve of the Second World War along with 668 other children, 22 of whom were on board the commemorative train yesterday as it left Prague in a cloud of steam to begin its four-day trip to London.

Czechoslovakia's Nazi occupiers declared Peter's brother Jiri too old for evacuation and, as Peter lived out the war quietly in Wales, Jiri and their parents were forced on to a prison train and sent to Auschwitz. Their father, like the relatives of scores of "Winton's Children", perished there.

The Meisls' story is just one of dozens of extraordinary tales from the now elderly men and women who owe their lives to Winton. As the former evacuees gathered in Prague for their train journey, they hailed his compassion and determination, celebrated their survival and mourned for those children that were not able to escape.

In December 1938, 29-year-old Winton was packing for a skiing holiday in Switzerland when his would-be holiday companion told him to come urgently to Czechoslovakia instead. Adolf Hitler's forces had occupied the country's Sudetenland, and Winton was appalled to see the conditions in which the refugees were living. In other parts of central Europe, "kindertransporten" were already evacuating children, but Czechoslovakia had no such programme.

Winton immediately started raising money and organising trains to save the children, and on his return to Britain began finding homes and organising visas for them, all while holding down his day job in London. Word of Winton's audacious plan quickly spread throughout Prague. When he returned to the Czech capital and set up office in his hotel room on Wenceslas Square, long queues soon formed outside of parents who would plead with him to take their children to Britain.

"Those parents were desperate – it was heartbreaking to listen to their stories," Winton, now Sir Nicholas Winton, recalled in a 2007 interview. "They knew all too well what their fate was likely to be. Their first thought was for the little ones. Never themselves. Practically all those parents perished in the camps."

Between March and August 1939, eight Winton trains carried 669 children – most of them Jewish – to safety in Britain. Seventy years on, as the steam train whistled its impending departure, they recalled parents telling them that they were just going on a short holiday, the excitement of the older children and the bewilderment of the younger ones. They remembered their strange first impressions of Britain, spitting out a first sip of milky tea and their wonder at white sliced bread.

"Our parents put a brave face on things, and of course they didn't know that they wouldn't see their children again," said Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines, who was sent to a family in Lancashire and still lives in Preston. "It is very unreal and very emotional to be here today. It's like a film set," she said, as Czech government ministers prepared to unveil a statue to Sir Nicholas.

The former evacuees also remembered how a ninth train had been due to leave Prague on 1 September 1939 and how, after war broke out, the Nazis stopped it leaving the city. Most of the 250 children on board were never seen again. "My brother was supposed to be on that train. He and my parents were all killed," said Eve Leadbeater, who lives in Nottingham, where she was taken in by a teacher at the age of eight. "Being in Prague again brings a whole mix of emotions: sadness at what happened and joy at being alive. What Nicholas Winton did was a great example of what one man with compassion and determination can do."

The scale of Sir Nicholas's achievements is almost matched by his reticence to discuss them. "I was never really in danger," he has said. "I simply saw a need and I filled it. I wasn't anyone special. I just saw what was going on and did what I could to help."

He did not even tell his wife about his exploits until the late 1980s, when she found a scrapbook of clippings in the attic of their home in Maidenhead. The scrapbook was passed to a Jewish historian and, before long, he was being introduced to some of the people he had saved, on Esther Rantzen's That's Life.

Having previously been awarded only the Freedom of Maidenhead, Winton was now described as "Britain's Oscar Schindler" and the "Pied Piper of Prague" and he was knighted in 2003. Four years later, the Czech Republic gave him its highest honour and nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

After unveiling a statue of Winton with two children at Prague station, Barbara Winton said that her father was still an uncompromising man of action – even at 100 years old. "What he did 70 years ago is totally in keeping with how he is now. He believes that, if something needs to be done, you must do it. Looking back doesn't get people anywhere. But if this event makes people more aware of what we should be doing now, then he will see it as a good thing."

Sir Nicholas intends to be at Liverpool Street Station in London on Saturday, when the train arrives from Prague. "What will I say when I see Nicholas?" said Eve Leadbeater as she boarded the train. "I will say 'thank you'. What else is there to say?"

Independent

Ex-BNP man fined over names leak

A former member of the British National Party has been fined £200 after admitting publishing the details of some 10,000 party members online.

Matthew Single, 37, formerly of Church Lane, Brinsley, Notts, was fined by Nottingham magistrates after admitting disclosing data without consent. The names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of some party supporters were leaked in November.

Judge John Stobart said the fine was "low" because Single was on benefits. District Judge John Stobart also ordered Single to pay £100 towards the cost of the prosecution.

The judge told Single: "Anything that is posted on the internet has the effect of opening a Pandora's box. What you put on the internet can never be taken from it and while there may be some members in this organisation who do not deserve to be protected by the law, they should be able to expect that officers within the organisation will not abuse the information provided to them. The law exists to save people from such revenge attacks."

Judge Stobart added: "It came as a surprise to me, as it will to many members of the party, that to do something as foolish and as criminally dangerous as you did will only incur a financial penalty. It comes as no surprise to me that somebody to do with an organisation that prides itself on Britishness is in fact living off the British people on Job Seeker's Allowance and that is why the fine is so low as to be ridiculous."

The charges were dropped against Single's wife, Sadie Graham-Single. The 30-year-old was not at the court.

BBC

Which way for anti-fascism?

Red Pepper magazine is currently running a debate on the future of anti-fascism, one we'd like to bring to the Lancaster Unity community. With Red Pepper's agreement we will be republishing three articles over the next few days, each with a different take on the way forward. Read on...


Anti-fascism isn’t working

The British National Party’s continuing electoral advances have propelled the party onto the national stage and initiated a debate about why it is achieving historically unprecedented results for the far right in Britain. What is driving its recent successes, how might it be stopped and what is the role of the left in this effort? This debate is essentially over strategy: about our relation to anti-fascism and what it ought to be in today’s conditions. There is one question that is not being asked, though: is ‘anti-fascism’ the answer to the BNP? Keiron Farrow says it isn’t

The statistics are telling. The BNP now has 60 local councillors and a similar number of parish councillors. By comparison, previous fascist groups had managed three councillors in total in the previous 80 years (this is without counting the seats won and subsequently lost by the BNP). The party has one member on the London Assembly, and now two MEPs in Europe.

Its overall vote has risen in successive local, general and European elections. At locals it has risen to an average of around 15 per cent, while in the European elections the party polled 943,598 votes nationally, 6.2 per cent of the total (up 1.3 per cent on 2004). At Westminster level there are three constituencies where the aggregate ward votes at the 2008 local elections put it in first place.

The BNP had 10,000 members at the end of 2007 – a figure that is likely to have risen since – providing it with a large and expanding activist base. It is not, by national standards, a huge organisation; it is a ‘large small party’ – at best the sixth biggest in the country. Nor, despite its advances, does it pose any immediate threat of gaining serious power. The real danger lies elsewhere, as will be outlined later.

Nonetheless, if the BNP’s absolute vote is giving pause for concern, it is its trajectory that is truly worrying. The European elections saw its national vote rise by almost a fifth against a background of falling turnout. The small falls in its absolute vote in some areas, including the North West and Yorkshire and Humber, where it won its seats, are misleading as they ignore the lower turnout and factors such as the impact of moving from an all-postal ballot to a traditional election. To exaggerate the significance of these absolute figures risks obscuring the party’s continued increase in its vote nationwide and breakthrough successes in county council level.

Failed approaches

Contemporary anti-fascism is represented by two main groups, with broadly similar approaches. First, there is Hope not Hate, an umbrella group for unions and individuals within the broad labour movement but open to all. This group was formed by the Searchlight Network. Second, Unite Against Fascism (UAF), an organisation set up by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and National Assembly Against Racism, which also has some union and other backing. For the SWP, UAF is clearly designed to continue in a similar vein to the Anti-Nazi League, and is not shy of drawing on the ANL’s reputation and experience.

Both groups concentrate their activities on two main approaches: first, exposing the criminal records, past activities and political beliefs of leading BNP members, candidates and activists; and second, calling on people not to ‘vote Nazi’. Instead electors are urged to vote anyone but BNP (with slight differences in how this is interpreted by each group), in an attempt to raise turnout and block the BNP electorally. This approach formed the basis of both groups’ failed interventions into the London mayoral and European elections.

What is wrong with these two approaches? The most obvious objection is that they don’t work. They don’t work today and they haven’t worked for some time. This isn’t to say that they haven’t worked in the past, just that they cannot form the central core of an anti-BNP strategy in today’s conditions.

Exposing the BNP’s various criminal and political records has had no discernible impact. In a country in which more than 40 per cent of all men can expect to have some form of criminal conviction during their lifetime, pointing out to voters in the sort of areas the BNP targets that a candidate has a conviction for assault or theft is likely to have a limited impact. If this were not the case we would today be seeing declining BNP votes and councillors not being returned post-exposure. But we’re not. We’re seeing a steadily rising vote and increasing re-elections.

This tactic has been pursued over the past decade on a scale never seen before. Every section of the media has got in on the game, every candidate has been hammering home their BNP opponents’ convictions. If this strategy was ever to make an impact it would have done so in these almost ideal conditions; instead the far right vote continues to rise. We have to conclude that this approach is ineffective.

Exposing past political views – for instance, BNP leader Nick Griffin’s association with Holocaust denial in the 1990s and earlier – has suffered a similar fate. Griffin has proved adept at moderating his most extreme opinions for the benefit of the media. He will now acknowledge the Holocaust as a historical ‘fact’ and, as he put it to the Observer in 2002, he claims that the only reason ‘people like me’ are not always ‘polite and reasonable’ on the subject is ‘frustration with how it is used to prevent any genuine debate on questions to do with immigration, ethnicity and the cultural survival of the western nations’.

In doing so, he can effectively neutralise the issue. If, despite his denial of Holocaust denial, an interviewer presses on regardless, it permits Griffin to turn the tables and ask if he or she wants to talk about politics. The same thing happens on a larger scale electorally

As with the exposure of BNP candidates’ criminal convictions, if this approach of bringing up the death camps and Nazi Germany was going to have any impact it would have done so in the especially favourable conditions of recent fevered mass media scrutiny of the BNP. This approach did find success in the three or four decades after the second world war, when a real folk memory of the sacrifices made by millions was still alive. Today, in different conditions, it cannot, has not and will not make the same inroads on BNP support.

Appealing to the status quo

These, though, are merely tactical problems, bred by past success and turned into conservative substitutes for effective intervention. Far more damaging on a strategic level is the second approach, calling on the electorate to ‘vote anyone but BNP’.

This position is a de facto appeal to support the status quo. It effectively calls on people to support the social conditions that have given rise to their radical discontent – to support the very same parties that have introduced and are pledged to maintain those conditions. In the bluntest terms, people will simply not vote for the parties they now blame for their situation and no amount of cajoling or mentions of the Holocaust will change that. The collapse in the Labour vote over the past few years makes this patently clear. The ‘anyone but BNP’ approach helps ensure that the conditions that are producing the BNP are going to remain in place. So we’re back at square one. And it allows the BNP to make all the running as the anti-establishment party during a once-in-a-lifetime time opportunity for anti-establishment parties to make a real breakthrough.

The way to undercut this is to work towards dealing with the root causes of the BNP support: in particular, the political abandonment of much of the working class in pursuit of the narrow section of the electorate classified as ‘swing voters’. Parties have privileged the interests of a section of the electorate that rarely shares the same interests as ‘core’ Labour voters in working-class areas. And this has led to the setting of parts of the same communities at each other’s throats in the fight for resources under the name of multiculturalism; the closing down of schools and hospitals; wages being driven down; debt; sub-standard housing; rising rents; under-funded services – all the conditions of our social life being attacked and commercialised by a class that has shown itself incapable, in the most basic terms, of being able to run the system for the benefit of all. This is what needs to be challenged as a priority, not people’s reactions to those planned and deliberate failures known as neoliberalism.

And this is where pro-status quo anti-fascism is falling down and demonstrating both a misunderstanding of where we are today and a real lack of political courage. A call to ‘vote to stop the BNP’ is, in most areas where it is raised, a barely-disguised call to vote Labour. That is why the unions are funding the millions of leaflets delivered by Hope Not Hate. (We can dismiss the suggestion that this slogan is also a call to vote Green. The BNP and Greens are not competing for the same vote. Nor need we dwell on those areas where the slogan translates into voting Tory or Lib Dem beyond imagining how an implied call to ‘Vote Thatcher to stop the National Front!’ would have been met.) An anti-fascism tied to support for the parties that have imposed the conditions people are protesting against is a failing anti-fascism. It is sacrificing all credibility by joining hands with the very establishment that people are so fed up with.

The combined party membership of mainstream parties has dropped from more than three million in the 1960s to barely half a million today and it is still falling. In conditions where large sections of the electorate are abandoning all the mainstream parties, for anti-fascists not to be supporting or initiating local projects that are prepared to confront rather than support the Labour Party is to politically abandon those communities to the BNP.

No platform?

Other aspects of current anti-fascist activism should also be questioned. This includes the widespread policy of ‘no platform for fascists’. Following the egging of Nick Griffin on College Green, at Westminster, the day after his election as an MEP, it has become evident that – beyond the confines of those who are already politically opposed to the BNP – ‘no platform’ has very little popular support.

In a country where the myths of democracy and freedom have a great hold over the public political imagination, a ‘no platform’ approach to the BNP is dangerous in a number of ways. First, via the functioning of that democratic myth, it associates the left with authoritarianism, violence and telling people what they can and cannot hear or read – exactly the sort of high-handed arrogance that is leading many people to reject the mainstream parties. Second, it acts as cover and support for top-down or state-led manoeuvres such as the closure of the BNP’s bank accounts by Barclays, which led to a Palestinian solidarity account being closed as well, or the plans by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to investigate the party’s constitution and membership rules.

How easy would it be to turn these initiatives against us? Already there are calls for a Berufsverbot for public sector workers, banning BNP members from those professions. This plays directly into the hands of the establishment. Of course, a community-led and supported refusal to allow the BNP to operate in their area is a very different matter, but we’re currently seeing a top-down version of ‘no platform’ substituted for this effective grass-roots one.

On a related note, Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) is an attempt to continue the cultural fight of the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism by holding music festivals and similar events. Again, questions need to be asked. The problem is that today they simply attract those who are already against the BNP. In the past they were real arenas of conflict, battlegrounds for the hearts of young people. Today that context no longer exists and the far right has no hold over the young – it lost that battle years ago. Energy and resources channelled into LMHR would be better off directed at helping to deal with the problems working-class communities face as part and parcel of squeezing the BNP.

Missing the real danger

What all the current anti-fascist approaches have in common is that they miss the real danger. This doesn’t lie in the BNP taking power, in the possibility of concentration camps or any of the other scare stories we’ve been hearing recently. It lies more immediately in the far right colonising the anti-mainstream vote and developing party loyalty, thereby blocking the development of an independent working-class politics capable of defending our conditions and challenging neoliberalism.

The BNP’s politics is being normalised, with the consequent racialisation of social issues and a massive shift to the right. Each step they take forwards knocks the ‘left’ backwards. This represents an immense defeat for the left – one that could take us decades to recover from and leave us as outsiders (even more so than today) in working-class communities, the very places that we all recognise as being key to real social change. That is what will happen unless the job of defending the needs of those communities is seriously taken on and our counter-productive, outdated ‘anti-fascism’ is discarded.

I offer a few positive suggestions towards a new approach.

1 Community unions

We could form ‘community unions’, unconnected to Labour, possibly funded by trade unions but with organisational independence assured, that would work directly on helping to meet the needs of those politically abandoned working-class communities where conditions are deteriorating by the day. These would be based around the self-identified needs and plans of those communities – which can only pit them head-to-head against the BNP and the political mainstream.

The types of small victories that can be won on this terrain should be viewed not only as being worthwhile in themselves, but also as contributing to the re-emergence of community confidence in political self-assertion, the necessary first steps towards achieving further-reaching change. There are already existing groups engaged in this sort of practical activity, such as the London Coalition Against Poverty, Haringey Solidarity and the Oxford and Islington Working Class Associations (see Red Pepper Oct/Nov 2007).

The need for these to be open membership union-type organisations rather than party membership-type groups is a simple practical one. People will join unions at work as they recognise collective needs that exist over and above the heads of political disagreements, and the same is true of community needs. And once there is widespread identification (even passive) of the needs of an area/workplace with the existence of a union it becomes very hard to shift; that identification becomes a power in itself. Parties are too narrow to play this role under today’s conditions – they exist on a different level – but there is no reason why they cannot play a role within these broader open groups.

2 Focus on policy

We should develop the ‘expose them’ model into one that, instead of revealing ineffective details about individuals, concentrates on why their polices will not deal with the social problems driving people into their arms. If we cannot make this clear to those already intensely concerned with these issues then our propaganda is failing and is at best talking to those who would never vote BNP anyway. This will require a direct challenge to Searchlight/UAF and other mainstream anti-fascists as they continue to empty their publications of all but the most inane type of content criticised above. This, of course, needs to be linked to the activity of the ‘community union’ type groups mentioned above.

3 Abandon Labour

Searchlight need to abandon their default pro-Labour position and use their existing networks and resources to get behind local campaigns, actively challenging the conditions that are breeding support for the far right. (This seems unlikely to happen.)

4 End the marches

Stop the marches, labelling, shouting, and so on. Marching into an area that you do not know and have no continuing interest in and shouting what’s right for that area is alienating and counter-productive. People do not like being told what’s best for them and will kick back against or simply ignore this sort of activity.

All of this can be performed without capitulating to racism and without writing off vast swathes of the population. It has to be.

With thanks to Red Pepper