Billy Bragg helps anti-BNP campaign in Goresbrook

| Wednesday, 15 June 2005 Source: Searchlight

Meet locally born international recording artist Billy Bragg and his old neighbours and friends as they hand out anti-BNP leaflets in Goresbrook ward, Barking, on Saturday 18 June in conjunction with Searchlight Information Services.

Billy, just back from a tour in Scandinavia, will be at the Labour Hall, Green Lane, Dagenham (corner of Tenterden Road) at 10.30am this Saturday.

He will then go out leafleting before returning to the hall to meet the press at noon and sing a few songs to the anti-BNP campaigners, who are carrying out their second day of action in Goresbrook ward in the run-up to the by-election on 23 June.

The mini concert is free for all those anti-fascists there to tackle those who bring hate to the borough.

Billy Bragg

Although his career may have taken him away from his home town, Billy Bragg is a patriot and, most importantly, an Essex man. The opportunity to tell the BNP they are not welcome here was too good for Billy to refuse during the general election campaign and now when the BNP are trying again to seek election to the council. That's why Billy Bragg actively supports the campaign against the BNP.

When it comes to patriotism, West Ham United, the 1966 World Cup, the victorious 2003 England World Cup rugby team or even the name of some long forgotten trunk road, there is no better raconteur about England and in particular this part of it than Billy Bragg.

World travelled and with songs about picket lines and picket fences in his brief, Billy Bragg even has a little bit of Wembley turf to add to a hoard of memories of a career that stretches from his youth in Barking and Dagenham, through his time as a squaddie in the British Army, to Bolivia. Among his enormous repertoire of recorded memories are West Ham winning an FA Cup and a girl who sat with him in school for double history twice a week. They are all as equal and as telling as the Rock Against Racism concert he attended in his formative years, which helped shape Billy's life and commitment to justice and his community for good.

Woody Guthrie's guitar famously had "this machine kills fascists" painted on it. That was in the 1930s. Thankfully the heir to Guthrie's songs feels the same.