BNP tries to exploit memory of Aberfan tragedy

| Thursday, 21 October 2004 Source: Searchlight

At 9.15am on 21 October 1966 144 people, mostly young children, died when a coal tip collapsed onto a primary school in Aberfan, South Wales. The pictures from the time were truly horrifying.

After the disaster the people of Coventry paid for a memorial playground to be built as a lasting memorial to the dead. The council has allowed the playground to become derelict and Merthyr Tydfil Housing Association is now considering selling it off for a housing development. Local people have started a petition to save the memorial.

The BNP is cynically exploiting this emotive issue in a bid to court popularity among voters and has included a link to the online petition on its website. As a result the petition received a number of signatures with racist comments attached, referring to the playground being sold for housing for Muslims or asylum seekers, and other thoughts in similar vein.

A member of the Searchlight team immediately contacted one of the promoters of the petition to warn him of what was going on. His reply showed just how sick the BNP is. "I have now started receiving abusive emails from them as well," he wrote. "Some people will try anything." He said he had contacted the host site for the petition and asked them to remove the racist signatures.

Anyone who genuinely wants to support the petition can do so at www.petitiononline.com/aberfan/petition.html