BNP talks a load of footballs

| Thursday, 8 June 2006 Source: Searchlight

Birmingham's wrongly elected BNP councillor has denied saying that she would not support England in the World Cup because the team has too many black players.

The Birmingham Mail discovered the racist comments on Ebanks's website, which she uses for an "advice column" relating to her disputed council seat in Kingstanding.

As well as being festooned with BNP slogans, the website hosts a busy chat forum in which Ebanks appears to discuss her reasons for not supporting England.

"The England team is not English, and shouldn't be called the England team," reads one comment. "I won't support them. The English are a race of people. If England is playing, it should be English people … They hope you won't complain about ethnics if there is one in your favourite team.

"What better way of introducing you to the acceptability of being swamped than via your favourite game?"

Ebanks told the Birmingham Mail that the comments were not hers. "Several Sharons sign onto that forum under that name. The advice bureau column is mine but several people have access to the site under that name.

"I am not aware of writing any football comments on that site. I am not interested in football so I do not see fit to comment. Those are not my views. I have no opinion on football."

The BNP's own website has also found it necessary to reassure readers that the party would be supporting the England team, albeit through gritted teeth. The BNP is clearly in a dilemma. It does not want to alienate its voters most of whom are keen supporters of the team and fly the England flag from their vehicles and homes, nor does it want to upset its members by moderating its racist principles.

"All BNP members, the length and breadth of the British Isles, will be cheering on our team – regardless of who actually ends up playing in it," the BNP news team explained. But after pointing out that the leader of the BNP's group on Epping Forest District Council is Jewish and that the BNP is itself diverse because it "has a huge number of members of wholly or part Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent", the article continues, "as for the squad members of African descent, we most certainly don't accept the PC fiction that they are 'English'. They never can be …".

In the 2002 World Cup the BNP actually urged people to support Denmark because they were an all-white team.

The controversy over the football comments on Ebanks's website is the second one in which she has been involved recently. Just after the May election, she denied writing a string of "white power" messages on another site, one of which described Adolf Hitler as a "personal Jesus".

Kingstanding should soon have a properly elected councillor after the High Court ordered an official scrutiny and recount of the votes in London on 3 July. The court heard that a substantial number of Ebanks's votes must have been double counted because the total number of votes declared was much higher than the votes that could have been cast on the ballot papers issued. The result was challenged by Catherine Grundy, the Labour candidate who should have won the seat. She was represented by Gavin Millar, QC.