New faces, old supporters

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Friday, 29 January 2010, 19:32

Just back in from a day of meetings. It’s been a really productive day and certainly, in regards to Barking & Dagenham, our campaign plans are taking shape. This morning I had a meeting with Richard Wallace, the editor of the Daily Mirror. Together with Ros Wynne-Jones, who joined our campaign team this week, we laid out our plans for the coming campaign. Richard not only listened but made several suggestions which we will be implementing. The Mirror has been an integral part of the HOPE not hate campaign in recent years and it remains so this year.

After that, Ros and I met Jo, another journalist who has also joined us this week. We discussed the local editions of the HOPE not hate newspaper and divided up the work between us. We are producing something like 20 different versions of our newspaper, each customised to a key area of the country. It’s going to be a lot of hard work but with three of us writing I’m hoping that it will be all doable. We’ll see ….

Jo and I then made our way over to Dagenham where we linked up with Sam, our local HnH co-ordinator, who had himself just returned from interviewing the latest two people to apply to join us as interns. Both seemed great and I hope they will be joining our team in the next few days.

Local council leader Liam Smith popped in to have a chat about the forthcoming campaign. He had a lot to say about the behaviour of Bob Bailey, the leader of the local BNP group, who turned up at a recent council event in quite a drunken state. Having been sidelined in the forthcoming local election campaign in favour of Richard Barnbrook, who is leading the BNP assault on the council, and now ignored for the Dagenham & Rainham seat in the general election, perhaps Bailey is beginning to crack?