Village idiots

| Friday, 8 October 2004 Source: Searchlight

BNP activists looked increasingly forlorn on the night of 7 October as they saw the opportunity to take a second council seat in Dagenham slip out of their grasp.

Despite all the BNP's hype over its victory in Goresbrook ward in September, the fascist party has lost four out of the five by-elections it has contested in East London and Essex since June.

In Village ward, Dagenham, the trade unions and Searchlight worked alongside the Labour Party to expose the BNP lies, such as huge sums of council money being given to asylum seekers, concocted to deceive voters into supporting its candidate, Lawrence Rustem. Unfortunately Labour's London Region appears incapable of assisting local branches faced with a BNP threat.

Searchlight produced two leaflets exposing the criminality of the BNP and highlighting the dissension among its own activists over the choice of a man of Turkish origin to be their candidate. Rustem stood for the simple reason that the BNP has no one else in the area.

The BNP's new councillor in Goresbrook is rarely seen without the BNP's London organiser Richard Barnbrook, alias Brook, alias Robert, at his side. Stories persist that he went on holiday during the last week of the Village ward campaign.

A two-page exposé of the BNP campaign, and the thugs running it, in the Evening Standard the day before polling confirmed every claim that Searchlight had made during the recent by-election campaigns. The young white South African reporter who went on the campaign trail with the BNP in Dagenham has earned a vote of thanks from us all for his brave and incisive reporting.

Whereas in Gorebrook the nazis imported up to 45 canvassers and their minders every day, in Village there were only single figures on many days. So on the last Saturday before polling, in an effort to regain lost ground, the BNP brought in 55 activists not only from London and Essex, but from as far away as Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The BNP's national security officer, the convicted hooligan Warren Bennett from Scotland, took charge and insisted on searching everyone to find the "Searchlight mole". He had no luck and found even less luck back home on Monday when the Scottish Daily Record published a three-page exposé of the criminality of the BNP in Scotland from a dossier put together by a mole in the top echelons of the BNP there. Bennett was mentioned more than once. (BNP in turmoil )

Only a handful of BNP supporters showed up at the Village ward. Watched closely by police and press, they did not beat up any pensioners or spray tear gas, as they have done on other recent occasions.

The BNP still hopes to hold a rally in the East London, Essex area late in the afternoon on Saturday 9 October, but the police are ready to quell any disorder the BNP may cause. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, may end up feeling that his journey from Wales with his four minders was not really worth making.

Lessons have been learned from the experiences of the recent by-elections in east London and Essex. Searchlight, non-sectarian anti-fascists, the unions and democratic political parties are developing a more sophisticated campaign machine to clear the nazis from this part of Britain.

Results – Village ward, 7 October 2004

Turnout 35%