BNP London campaign flounders

| Wednesday, 5 May 2004 Source: Searchlight

A disastrous May Day political rally for the British National Party in west London was the highlight of ten days of failures for the party of no-hopers and losers.

A week earlier the party's much publicised St George's Day family festival near Wickford in Essex flopped after attracting only 80 to 90 members with around 40 children.

A broad-based coalition protested against the BNP activity, including John Baron the local Conservative MP, Richard Howitt, a Labour MEP for Eastern Region, Labour and Liberal Democrat council leaders and many local trade unionists and community activists.

While the nazis occupied themselves in a field at Crowsheath Angling Club, 150 anti-fascists held a meeting and had a laugh at the expense of six BNP members who spent two hours besieged at Wickford station. The protesters kept away from the festival itself because of the presence of children, taking the view that having BNP parents was trauma enough.

Anti-fascists then distributed hundreds of copies of Searchlight's election special newspaper and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) leaflets to shoppers in Wickford before moving on to deliver 20,000 copies of the anti-BNP newspaper throughout Essex that afternoon, continuing over the following two weeks.

Later that Saturday night, events at the Rifleman pub in Hounslow, west London, showed that the BNP's claimed respectable image is a very thin veneer indeed. Blood and Honour, the nazi music set-up, held a gig with the support of the BNP, the latest in a line of similar nazi events there. The pub was a regular watering hole for the nazi terror group Combat 18 and the BNP in the 1990s.

On this occasion, as British and Polish nazi bands bashed out their messages of hate, some of the audience split into the streets. At least one Asian man, who was just passing by, was seriously assaulted and hundreds of white power leaflets were left strewn around the neighbourhood.

The publican claims he sent for the police but his concern is questionable seeing that he has played host to nazi gigs and Hounslow BNP branch meetings for so long.

After Saturday's entertainments it was all hands to the pumps for the BNP in support of its candidate in a by-election in Hillingdon's South Ruislip ward. In private the local organisers were hopeful of victory as the BNP has cultivated this ward extensively in recent years. But they were to be disappointed. Searchlight intervened with the help of community activists and delivered a copy of our election newspaper to every household in the ward, despite foul weather and a half-hearted attempt by the BNP to intimidate us.

The BNP ended up in fourth place with 14.66% of the vote. The turnout of 36% was impressive for a council by-election and did them no favours. Bullying and attempts at intimidation of Labour party members at the count got the BNP nowhere.

But it was May Day to which London BNP members had all been looking forward. Since the beginning of the year Ian Edward, the party's Hillingdon organiser, and Warren Glass, until recently the Hounslow organiser, had been planning a major event in Hillingdon on the eve of the launch of the party's manifesto for the London elections. They were promising a full political briefing and guest and London speakers, followed by a buffet supper, music and for good measure a comedienne.

Searchlight posted a notice on www.stopthebnp.com calling on anti-fascists to come to Uxbridge for a mass distribution of our newspaper. By now the failures of that week were sapping the morale of the BNP organisers and activists. The final straw was when the Searchlight website published the menu for the BNP's buffet.

On the day fate intervened and the car carrying the Searchlight papers broke down on the other side of London, so they and local UAF members gave out a large quantity of the latest UAF leaflet instead. We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all those who went to Uxbridge and were let down by the non-show of our paper.

BNP spotters thought there was some kind of anti-fascist strike force waiting to pounce on them closer to their venue. This totally unfounded belief coupled with our accurate information about the event seems to have frightened many BNP activists away. The hall at St Andrew's United Reform Church in Eastcote was expected to be filled to its capacity of 200. But the rally flopped when just 30 people turned up.

Much to the outrage of the BNP leader Nick Griffin and his key henchman in London, the convicted bomber Tony Lecomber, neither of whom were there, the two keynote speakers were Griffin's rival, the BNP's former nazi leader John Tyndall, and Bob James one of Tyndall's strongest supporters in the capital.

One thing Tyndall has always been good for is rallying the troops, but as he gazed across the nearly empty hall, his delivery was the most tired it has been in many years. Thoroughly disheartened the BNP called off a day of action in Hounslow planned for Bank Holiday Monday.

But the run of disasters for the BNP was not over. The following day the BNP website claimed it had launched the party's London manifesto in central London the previous day. In fact the party had intended to launch it at the west London rally but it failed to materialise. Perhaps the organisers did not want to taint the manifesto with failure at its birth.

Or perhaps the problem was the absence of prominent London activists. Chris Roberts, the party's number one candidate for the European election, had swanned off to the States for a family holiday, missing the rally. And Richard Barnbrook, aka Brook, the BNP's London coordinator and temporary press officer, seems to have fled for cover in the wake of the difficulties faced by Simon Smith, the BNP's number two European election candidate in the West Midlands. Smith, a maths teacher, has been suspended from the Solihull Catholic secondary school where he works. Our disclosure that Barnbrook might also be in a profession in which exposure as a BNP organiser would do him no good appears to have sent him heading for his local off licence.