A day of surprises

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Friday, 9 April 2010, 19:02

I've done for the day, at least in terms of leafleting. We've had a fantastic day with 21 HOPE not hate volunteers travelling in from different parts of the country to help our Sarah, our intrepid Stoke organiser. A minibus of activists came up from London, three people travelled over from Birmingham and Paul and Lorraine made the trip from Bradford.

And of course there is Jason from Burnley. I haven't actually seen him yet as he got here before I did and has been out in one part of the city since 10am - 8 hours ago - and he still hasn't finished.

So I went out with Paul and Lorraine, which gave me a chance to catch up with events in Yorkshire. I think we were all a bit surprised with the 10 candidates in Bradford and particularly with Paul Cromie's decision to stick with the BNP. Clearly his private chats with the Conservatives over several months had come to nothing.

My running total of BNP candidates is now 595, from 73 local authority areas. Now I'm sure I've missed some of the emails and voice messages that have been sent to me during the day. I've literally had a notebook in my back pocket as I've been leafleting.

While there are still many councils yet to announce, I guess that we are now looking at 700-800 BNP candidates.

The total has been seriously undermined by some real surprises. Not least here in Stoke-on-Trent, where a deeply divided BNP could only find six candidates to stand, and two of these are existing councillors up for re-election. I bet they really wish they had adopted the approach of Barking and Dagenham BNP of simply moving people in to stand.

Other surprises include Epping Forest where all three BNP councillors up for re-election have decided to throw in the towel and are not standing again. There also appear to be no BNP candidates in Three Rivers, where the BNP has one councillor and came within a whisker of getting a second in another ward.

And I couldn't end this blog without mentioning Oldham. I spent the best part of a year fighting the BNP here in 2001/02, in the aftermath of the riots. Working closely with Oldham United Against Racism we destroyed the BNP and they never recovered. This year there is a humiliating one BNP candidate.

Tonight we are all meeting up for a well-earned curry and social before getting back on the streets tomorrow.