More lies

Sonia Gable | Sunday, 7 October 2007 Source: Searchlight

Over in Barking and Dagenham Richard Barnbrook, the BNP's ludicrous candidate for mayor of London, took time out from his campaign to produce and distribute a new edition of Barking & Dagenham Patriot.

The tatty sheet claims credit for everyone else's achievements, claiming: "All the progress that is happening is down to the efforts of the BNP". Barnbrook has clearly taken to heart the principles expounded by the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels who said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it".

In the same vein Barking & Dagenham Patriot goes on yet again about the BNP's "Africans for Essex" invention, though this time without the claim that black families were being paid £50,000 to move into the borough, which even the BNP has realised no one believes.

It also claims the BNP is "working with the police" to reduce race-related crimes. This is reminiscent of the claims by the BNP in Corsham, Wiltshire, that its vigilante patrols have been instrumental in reducing crime in the area. When Searchlight used the Freedom of Information Act to canvass the view of the police on the BNP's antics, the reply made a mockery of the BNP's claims.

Stories are circulating that Barnbrook has finally bought a house in Barking & Dagenham, 16 months after pretending to live there so that he could stand for election as a councillor. He has actually been living in Lewisham, a fact about which he is more honest on the new website the BNP has set up for its campaign for the London elections. In his profile, in which he boasts about his charitable work in "British communities", he states that he is "a Streetleader for my local Council, which involves removing graffiti, antisocial behaviour and other forms of vandalism from South East London" (our emphasis).