Comments

Comment 1 | From: Dave | Date: 2 May 2010, 12:53

Thank you Nick and the Hope not Hate team for making our small Norfolk contingent so welcome. We had a fantastic day in sunny Dagenham, leafletting hundreds of homes in The Village. We walked miles and miles and had people opening their doors to thank us. One woman told us how angry she was at the BNP candidate who she said was "old enough to have lived through the war, and should know better!" We all knew exactly what she meant. Another woman tried to hand our leaflet back- mistaking it for something from the BNP. But as she opened it, and realised it was from us and was telling the truth about the BNP’s very own councillor expences scandal - she thanked us and took it inside. As the day went on, these and many other chance doorstep meetings put a spring in our step, and we went back out again and again. This was not a slog. We even enjoyed a “health warning” in BNP leaflets to residents which we had found untouched and unread on doorsteps. It said we were “posh students” “muslims” or “just freaks” – and then next to that description, the BNP had put a picture of what it considered a typical Hope not Hate campaigner – a bloke with a skinhead haircut and a beer belly! We all fell about laughing. The people we met in Dagenham are not "stupid" or “decadent” as Nick Griffin claims. They are intelligent, they love their community, and they care about each other. They do not share BNP London organiser Jeffrey Marshall’s views, when he said after David Cameron’s son’s death, that we all have an unhealthy “excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive”. He also said that there’s not a great deal of point keeping “these sort of people alive”. We were left speechless with shame. Nor are Dagenham residents impressed when their councillor pockets £30,000 of expenses just for turning up at council meetings but doesn’t refer a single housing case to the council in a year. We know what the British people think of politicians like that. All is not well for the BNP in Dagenham. And that’s partly because of the stunning campaign by Hope Not Hate. The lesson of our leafleting is that when you tell the truth about the BNP, the mask slips. People in Dagenham appreciate that, and came out onto their doorsteps to thank us for what we were doing. We'll never forget that. Here, I must apologise. I rrived thinking I was coming into “BNP territory”. I was wrong. I left having met people just like us, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. We shared our disgust and shame at the BNP. We know that tough times are here, and will get tougher. We know the politics of hate is not the answer. As the coach pulled away in the evening rain to take us home to our families and friends, I felt genuinely sorry to be going. But I left with renewed hope, and a real respect for the people of Dagenham. I promised myself that I would come back, this time with my family, to spend more days in this great place with these good people.

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