An apology

posted by: Nick | on: Tuesday, 22 January 2008, 15:12

It is always embarrassing to have to admit you were wrong and even more so when one has to apologise in public, but yes, today I have to accept a mistake. Yesterday I derided the BNP claims that they had 250 activists out in London over the weekend and delivered 100,000 leaflets.

I stuck my neck on the line and suggested half this number of activists and only 35,000 leaflets.

It now appears that I was too generous. The latest figures doing the rounds is just 90-100 and that comes from BNP election chief Eddie Butler.

As I mentioned yesterday the campaigning weekend was as much for internal party consumption as it was to kick-start the London campaign. It would appear that Griffin and friends deliberately sought to exaggerate their numbers so as to give the impression that the party was fully behind his leadership. You only have to read Richard Barnbrook’s account of the weekend to see how he was trying to ‘big’ up Collett, Darby et al to see the real agenda at play.

As reports were coming in of BNP activity it did indeed seem impressive. Small groups of BNP activists were out in a number of wards across East London. However, on closer inspection not all was what it seemed. It appears that BNP team were out but just doing the main routes through areas rather than the entire ward so as to give the impression that more was actually being done.

So, yes, I admit I was wrong, but my embarrassment isn’t anywhere near that of the party leadership. Given that this was a national turnout then a figure of only 100 is not too impressive. I was in Sandwell earlier this year when we had 221 people (yes, that is the number who signed in), virtually all from the Black Country and Birmingham area. On that particular day we managed to deliver 45,000 newspapers. Now that was impressive.