Legal threat over BNP lies

| Thursday, 28 April 2005 Source: Searchlight

A councillor in Barking and Dagenham has challenged the British National Party to print a full page advert in the local papers retracting their slanderous lies about him in one of their election leaflets. If they fail to do so before election day, he will start a libel case against the party's local candidate.

In their leaflet, under the headline "Africans for Essex" the BNP claimed that Liam Smith, the borough's lead councillor for housing, was giving money to Africans to move into Barking & Dagenham as part of a bid to buy votes for the Labour Party.

Smith told Searchlight, "There is no secret plot to bring in voters to win elections … There is no scheme called Africans for Essex. They made it up to scare people. Like Hitler these thugs thrive on fear.

"The BNP are telling lies to whip up racism and scare voters. Their hate-filled propaganda is leading to an increase in racist attacks in the area and that spells bad news for us all. With police resources strained, demand for housing and house values will drop because people don't want to live with fear as a neighbour. There is only one way to stop our community being divided by the BNP and that is to stand up and be counted."

This was not the only outrageous lie in the election leaflet. It also accused the council of taking away the playing fields of Trinity school and selling them to property developers "to build housing for more immigrants" while "the children have to travel five miles away to a field in the middle of an industrial estate".

In fact the school in question has modern on-site sports facilities and none of the children are bussed anywhere. The BNP's claims are a complete travesty of the truth.

This is not the first time that the BNP in Barking, one of the party's top four national target constituencies, has had a problem with reality. Earlier in the election campaign the BNP accused a local head teacher of having taught at three schools in the borough which had all failed.

In fact Andy Buck, head of the borough's new flagship Jo Richardson school, had only taught at one other local school and Ofsted school inspectors praised his work there.

The BNP candidate should know better as he never misses an opportunity to tell everyone that he is a trained teacher. But lying seems to come naturally to the BNP. His canvassers have been telling local voters that he lives and lectures in the borough. This is just another bit of fantasy.