Loughton parents reject BNP

HOPE not hate / Searchlight by Sonia Gable | Wednesday, 1 April 2009

Parents at a Loughton primary school are unhappy at the prospect of a British National Party councillor becoming a school governor. Pat Richardson, the BNP group leader on Epping Forest District Council, put herself forward for the Hereward Primary School position after no candidates came forward from the local community.

The school’s governing body will have to decide whether to accept Richardson’s nomination as a community governor. Loughton Town Council, on which Richardson also sits, together with four other BNP town councillors, was asked to nominate two candidates for the governing body, but Richardson was the only person to volunteer.

Hannah Martin, whose three-year-old son goes to Hereward, told the Epping Forest Guardian that she was disgusted at the prospect of Richardson becoming governor. "My son is mixed race and I know there are lots of black children at the school. Teachers and staff here have always been brilliant in making everyone feel welcome, and I think there is a danger that this would ruin all that."

Sam Kelly, who has a ten-year-old son at the school, which the school inspection service Ofsted praised for its multicultural environment, said: "My son has been here for seven years and I have never known any problems over race. I think the school needs to think what kind of message this would send out."

School governing bodies have a duty to promote equality, diversity and community cohesion, concepts to which the BNP is diametrically opposed. Epping Forest BNP has a poor track record in such matters. Last October Richardson and a fellow BNP councillor Rod Law talked up a bit of gang rivalry between two Loughton secondary schools into a "major racial incident". According to the BNP "up to 30 ethnic youths" from Debden Davenant school launched a racial attack on white schoolchildren from nearby Roding Valley School.

In fact neither group of children was ethnically homogeneous. The BNP was just using schoolchildren to try and increase ethnic tensions to serve its own racist agenda.

The BNP has long done the same over Epping Forest College, which the party describes as a hotbed of crime and a haven for armed ethnic minority drug dealers. Now, the BNP’s propaganda risks depriving residents of a brand new state-of-the-art library offering free internet access alongside children’s books, DVDs and newspaper archives.

The problem is that the library is within the newly developed Epping Forest College and residents have been frightened off by the BNP’s propaganda, fearing they will be mugged or knifed if they so much as set foot in the place. If the library is not used, Essex County Council may close it. That would deprive residents of a public facility as a direct result of BNP racist fear-mongering.

In the run-up to the 2006 local elections the police condemned BNP lies about armed gangs of ethnic minority students from the college invading Debden and being responsible for most of the violent crime. Inspector Denise Morrisey said at the time: "We don’t have black and Asian kids coming into the area running riot. It’s just not happening … In fact a lot of the crime is carried out by local youths. Many residents would agree with me on that they know the people doing it. People at the college have been victims of crime like anyone else. There’s no suggestion they’re responsible."

Of course any regular reader of Searchlight will know that lying comes naturally to the BNP. The latest issue of the BNP’s Loughton newsletter, Debden Patriot, is no exception. The BNP cannot forgive the Loughton Residents’ Association for taking two district council seats from the BNP in last year’s elections.

The BNP’s particular target is Rose Brookes, a Methodist churchgoer, voluntary worker for children’s charities and councillor for Loughton Alderton ward. Her crime in the eyes of the BNP is her vocal opposition to racism and her support for the anti-racist community group Redbridge and Epping Forest Together. The BNP has dubbed her "Red Rose" and an "extremist" because of "her long history of far-left activism with Marxist front-groups like Searchlight".

The BNP may think such attacks will help to save the seats of its three councillors who come up for election next year, but Loughton residents are not so easily fooled. When they compare the BNP’s lies with the concrete action the Loughton Residents Association is taking to save Debden’s green spaces, the BNP is likely to come off second best.