Manchester throws down the gauntlet

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Sunday, 15 March 2009, 16:15

Yesterday we brought together many of the organisers of local anti-BNP groups from across the North West to finalise our campaign for the final 12-weeks. Twenty-five people, representing 18 local groups met up in Manchester to hear me and others explain what we were going to do and also swap their own experiences and good practice.

If you believe the media the election, Nick Griffin has already won, but this certainly wasn’t the feeling of those present. In a strange way I think we might be helped precisely because our opponent is Nick Griffin. As I’ve said many times before, there is no ambiguity about Griffin and his politics. As a result his candidature is a real motivator and is certainly the cause of the increase in awareness of the BNP threat in the North West.

I explained what the HOPE not hate campaign would be doing and how our online supporters would be turned into off-line activists in the coming weeks. Local groups were asked to estimate how many HOPE not hate newspapers they thought they could distribute and then, after we went through ways to increase involvement, they were asked to increase it.

A couple of young activists from Rochdale initially said that they would take several thousand but then increased this to 25,000 after we showed that this could be done by just 125 people giving just one hour to the campaign. Not to be outdone, Wigan and Leigh United Against Racism, boosted by the hundreds of people from their area who have joined the campaign over the last few days as a result of the aborted BNP fundraiser in Leigh, agreed to take at least 40,000 newspapers, a figure matched by Preston and Oldham. However, it was Manchester who stole the show by promising to deliver an anti-BNP newspaper to at least 160,000 households in the city.

In the process they said that they would mobilise more people than the 221 who handed out 45,000 newspapers in Sandwell in 2007 and even the 715 who came out on U-Day in London last April. The gauntlet has been thrown down it is now up to Manchester HOPE not hate to make it happen!