Another one bites the dust

Sonia Gable | Tuesday, 7 August 2007 Source: Searchlight

The British National Party now has fewer councillors than when it went into this year's local elections, following the resignation of one of its Epping Forest district councillors. Terry Farr threw in the towel on 10 July saying he did not have time to do the job properly.

Farr was one of the BNP's original three Epping Forest councillors elected in 2004, one in each of three wards in Loughton. All three of the two-seat wards returned a second BNP councillor in 2006. Farr's seat is up for election in May 2008.

In a statement sent to the Epping Forest Guardian Farr showed that, like many BNP members, he is living in a fantasy world. "I have now reached a point in time where I feel I can return to party work, which has become a necessity as we have now become a significant force in British politics, as only a total fool would believe that the British National Party will not have a parliamentary majority within the next decade."

Farr cited the expansion of his business as one of the reasons for his decision. Farr runs the Elms Caravan and Camping Park at High Beach in Epping Forest. It has just 50 pitches, with caravans, motorhomes, tents and a few cottages for hire, and is only open from March to October. For food, visitors have to go to the pub next door. It hardly seems to be a business that would take up much of his time.

Nevertheless Farr's atten-dance at council meetings has been patchy. Over the past six months he was expected to attend a mere seven meetings of the full council or committees of which he is a member, but only managed to turn up to four of them. In the six months from February to August last year, he attended just three of the expected ten meetings. He has consistently been the worst performer of the six BNP Epping councillors.

Farr first revealed his unsuitability as a councillor in 2005 when Epping Forest Standards Committee suspended him from the council for three months for breaching its code of conduct. Farr had sent vile racist letters to the deputy Prime Minister and the head of the Commission for Racial Equality. In one of the letters he described ethnic minority people as the "dregs of the world" who turn the areas where they live into "cesspits", "concrete toilets" and "sweat shops".

The committee said Farr "does not express any regret for the content of his letters and seems not to have been able to grasp that his derogatory references to ethnic minorities and his lack of awareness of the law and of Council policies were demeaning to his office and hurtful and discrim-inatory to ethnic minority citizens of the Council".

He refused an offer to reduce his period of suspension by undertaking training in the application of the code of conduct, the council's policies on equal opportunities and the race equality scheme, describing the training as "institutionally racist".

The by-election is expected to be held on 30 August, leaving little time to campaign. The BNP has not won a council by-election anywhere since September 2004. A defeat here would be a boost to local anti-fascists in the run-up to May 2008, when the seats that the BNP won in 2004 are up for election. It is common talk on the council that Tom Richardson is also rather fed up with being a councillor, despite sitting on as few committees as he can get away with, and is unlikely to stand again.

Farr in his resignation statement said, "I feel that the people who voted for me deserve total commitment." That is not something that anyone, anywhere, gets from the BNP.

Farr is the BNP's second council loss since the May elections. Days after polling day the BNP councillors' group in Stoke-on-Trent expelled Mark Leat. He now sits as an independent.