Another record smashed

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Wednesday, 3 June 2009, 22:52

As the election enters its final day the HOPE not hate campaign broke another record – this time with the largest single political email in UK domestic history. This afternoon we sent out almost 500,000 emails to people across the UK.

In addition to the 40,000 Hope not hate email subscribers, the National Union of Students, the Daily Mirror, Unison and the CWU were just some of the organisations that sent out our eve of poll email.

And it could well be far more. Eddie Izzard has added a link to our campaign on his website (

http://www.eddieizzard.com/news/view.php?Id=32) and dozens of people have voiced their support via Twitter.

Of course, we are not in this for records but simply to defeat the BNP. The latest poll gives them 5% which if true is the same as they polled in 2004. I’m taking nothing for granted and we’ll be working right up until the polls close.

We actually find ourselves in the situation where we have no leaflets left anywhere in the country. We have printed just over 3,300,000 newspapers and leaflets but still this morning I quickly knocked together a simple polling day card which we’ll be putting out in Manchester tomorrow.

Talking of Manchester, the Manchester Evening News continued its fine anti-BNP stance. The first edition carried a front page comment from David Ottewell which included the following passage:

“And then there's the BNP. Rejected in other parts of the country, they are now pouring resources into our region – trying to capitalise on anger over 'Expensesgate'. But a vote for the BNP is not a protest vote.

“There is only one fact you need to know about the BNP; they want black and Asian Britons to leave their home country. And why? Because of the colour of their skin. It is not an economic argument; it is not a political argument. It is discrimination which has chilling echoes of the eugenicists of Nazi Germany.

“For that reason, a vote for the BNP is not a vote against Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. It is a vote against Amir Khan, Kelly Holmes and Shaun Wright- Phillips. It is not a vote against 'mainstream' politics. It is a vote against human decency.”

If only some other newspapers, including those who boast to be on the liberal left, had the guts and moral compass to make such a principled stance.