BNP hijack holocaust memorial day - Ceremony disrupted; antifascist trade unionist arrested

Oldham trades council | Friday, 28 January 2005

On Thursday 27th January, Holocaust Memorial Day 2005, Mr Martin Gleeson, secretary of Oldham Trades Council and a prominent anti-racist campaigner in the town, was arrested following a complaint by Oldham BNP activist Anita Corbett.

Having turned up uninvited[1], the BNP complained that Mr Gleeson, in laying the Trades Council's wreath, had damaged a wreath that the BNP had themselves laid.

Mr Gleeson's supporters say that the presence of the BNP[2] - and the police and the council's failure to exclude them - outraged those present, including several representatives of the Jewish community.

Displaying total contempt for the day's proceedings the BNP ignored the agreed protocol for the ceremony and interrupted a speech by black Christian minister the Rev Donnie Meyer to lay their wreath ahead of other organisations and individuals present.

Mr Gleeson was personally arrested by Chief Supt Keith Bentley, the most senior police officer in Oldham. He was held for 7 hours at Oldham police station and charged under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 s.1(1) and s.4 with criminal damage to the BNP wreath, valued at GBP 20.

He later said "I acted because I found the BNP wreath hypocritical and hurtful both to myself and to my friends present at the ceremony. I intended only to obscure it from public view."

Oldham is covered by Greater Manchester Police, the subject of the acclaimed investigative documentary "The Secret Policeman" which highlighted widespread racism within the force.

Mr Gleeson's case will be heard at Oldham Magistrates Court, St Domingo Place, West Street at 9:30 am on Tuesday 1 February 2005.

ENDS

For further details contact Oldham Trades Council press officer Marcus Keller on Tel.0161 633 7240 or by email on videoscapes@btconnect.com

[1] The Home Office guidance for councils organizing these events states (at p.11) that "you may wish to consider whether… attendance should be by invitation only" http://www.holocaustmemorialday.gov.uk/assets/docs/Local_Authority_Pack_2005.pdf

[2] The BNP is led by Mr Nick Griffin, who joined the far-right party in 1995. He began to edit The Rune, an anti-Semitic quarterly and announced that the BNP should prioritise denying the Holocaust to schoolchildren. Griffin then earned a two-year suspended prison sentence for his sick views on the Holocaust. In 1998 he was found guilty of inciting race hatred at Harrow Crown Court for denying that the Holocaust ever took place.