BNP candidate is jailed animal rights extremist

Searchlight by David Williams | Saturday, 7 February 2009

A British National Party candidate in a Croydon, south London, by-election this month was an animal rights activist who served a prison sentence for a campaign of terror against an animal research laboratory.

Charlotte Lewis (pictured), who is contesting Waddon ward, Croydon, on 12 February, was jailed for six months in 2001 after being found guilty of four charges of harassment as part of a concerted campaign against the staff of Huntingdon Life Sciences, whom she called “animal abusing scum”.

Lewis, who was a member of Stop Animal Rights Cruelty, wrote a series of anonymous threatening letters to people working at the Cambridgeshire laboratory. One warned the recipient: “If you don’t quit HLS then your life will not be worth living. You will always have to be looking over your shoulder.” Another threatened: “This is a warning. Your life is in grave danger if you don’t stop working at HLS. You will find yourself having a gun aimed at your stupid ugly head.”

One family received over 50 such letters from animal rights activists before a brick was thrown through their window. Shortly afterwards Lewis wrote to them saying: “I was there when a brick was put through your window. If you don’t quit HLS you can expect more of the same.”

Peterborough Crown Court heard that Lewis, who today is the London BNP regional treasurer, had “a history of psychological problems and suffers depression”. She was arrested after forensic scientists matched her saliva with DNA found on the back of the stamps used to post the letters.

Judge Richard Pollard imposed four concurrent six-month prison sentences on Lewis, saying that her letters had had such an impact upon their recipients that a custodial sentence was necessary. He also imposing a restraining order to prevent Lewis from harassing HLS staff further.

Whatever one’s views on animal testing there can be little doubt that the campaign against HLS was long, violent and, for those on the receiving end, terrifying. Lewis was sentenced in 2001 amid a terrorist campaign in which deadly nail bombs were sent to organisations and individuals, some only marginally connected with animal research.

On 21 January 2009 seven “fanatical” leaders of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) were jailed for between four and eleven years on charges of conspiracy to blackmail during the course of a campaign described by the judge as “urban terrorism”.

Having joined the BNP in 2003, Lewis was in trouble with the law again in 2006 while standing as a BNP candidate in the May council elections in St Helier, Sutton. Lewis put a false Sutton address on her nomination form to make her eligible to stand and was questioned by the police over possible election fraud. However despite her clear breach of electoral law she was not charged.

Asked about the incident by the local paper during her current campaign, Lewis lied again, blaming a party organiser “who has since left the organisation”. If she is referring to the former Croydon and Sutton BNP organiser, this might be news to him. Far from leaving the BNP Bob Gertner was recently promoted to south London organiser. His replacement in the Croydon and Sutton role: Lewis herself.

Lewis’s Croydon campaign was slow to take off, with London activists prioritising the East Wickham by-election on 22 January, but BNP efforts on her behalf are set to intensify in the final three weeks before polling day.

Not content to wait for the cavalry, the long-term unemployed candidate decided to shoot her own campaign video. It was not a great success. Filming without permission outside a local school quickly landed her in hot water as teachers came out to remonstrate, causing her to skulk off with her tail between her legs.

At one point her speech to camera is interrupted by what sounds like an aeroplane flying overhead. Rather than re-shoot the scene, Lewis left it in. Could her decision have anything to do with her penchant for telling all and sundry that she is going to become an airline pilot? Good luck to her, but her ambition might prove a little hard to realise without a pilot’s licence or, as her recent internet posts make clear, any intention of returning to college to get the necessary qualifications to gain one.