Cambridge day school leads to action

HOPE not hate / Searchlight by Gerry Gable | Tuesday, 3 March 2009

Delegates from Colchester, King’s Lynn, Yarmouth, Luton, Barking and Dagenham, Thurrock, Epping Forest, Redbridge and Kent attended the third HOPE not hate day school, held in Cambridge on 21 February. Participants took the opportunity to share experiences of the work they were already doing and to commit themselves to specific activities during the European election campaign against the BNP.

The meeting was opened by Richard Howitt, an East of England MEP, who highlighted the danger of the BNP sneaking in if the UK Independence Party vote collapses and explained how the BNP would benefit politically and financially from a move into Europe, where it would work with racist and nazi organisations.
Nearly everyone signed up to Union Friday, 15 May and the mass day of action on Tuesday 2 June.

Activists from Epping Forest and Barking and Dagenham will run a bookstall at the Church Synod meeting at Chelmsford Cathedral on 7 March. In Redbridge, a Hainault Matters leaflet will be distributed in the ward of the borough’s sole BNP councillor to stimulate an anti-BNP vote in June. Redbridge activists will also help Havering trades council to carry out HOPE not hate work in Havering.

Thurrock activists will distribute leaflets, run a coffee morning in an older persons’ complex and work with 20 local students who visited Auschwitz in January as part of a follow-up programme.

The West Norfolk group will raise activity at the local Labour Party’s AGM in March and try to organise work with the local diverse community group, KLARS, and other local anti-racist groups. Colchester activists will leaflet every second Thursday and organise a meeting in Witham.

Barking and Dagenham activists intend to set up local HOPE not hate website and a “councillor watch” blog. They are looking for 250 people to knock on every door in Dagenham and deliver anti-BNP material. They will also organise HOPE not hate events in schools, further education colleges and universities.