I read Stuart Russell’s letter (Postbag, April 23) on the police and the BNP. Mr Russell contends that investigating police officers who possess BNP paraphernalia is ‘draconian’ and that the officers involved may hold ‘perfectly rational views’ in supporting the BNP. Mr Russell also states that he doesn’t know what ‘racism’ means. Perhaps he ought to speak to people who have suffered race hate crimes at the hands of BNP members, several of whom have been convicted. Anyone who thinks the BNP have rational or reasonable policies should be made aware of what they really stand for. This organisation has policies such as banning mixed marriages, creating apartheid in the UK and ordering immigrants and those from minorities to leave the country – even those who were born here. Racist and misogynist views are completely at odds with the standards we expect from our police officers, who are responsible for protecting ALL public citizens. I applaud GMP for taking this action and would hope that the same standards are applied across all public services.
Wendy Allison, Equalities Officer, Unison, Manchester Local Government
Manchester Evening News
5 comments:
The author of the letter contradicts herself by claiming that the BNP would create apartheid in the UK and order all immigrants and minorities to leave the country. If the BNP policy is to repatriate all immigrants and minorities then why would they want to introduce apartheid?
She is a member of SWP - 'nuff said'. Check her out on a search engine.
The Far-Right is on course to make its biggest-ever electoral breakthrough in Britain this week, anti-fascist campaigners have admitted.
The British National Party has focused its efforts on winning a seat on the 25-member London Assembly, which would give it a national profile and a say in the running of the capital. Anti-fascist group Searchlight admits it will "require a Herculean feat" to stop the BNP from winning.
If the BNP succeeds, Richard Barnbrook will be catapulted to fame as the party’s first assembly member. He claims that "asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are engulfing London", and his policies include banning the Islamic veil on public transport.
Up to now, the BNP’s electoral successes have been confined to a handful of town halls. But at the last London elections in 2004 it secured 4.7 per cent of the vote for the Assembly top-up list, only 6,000 votes short of the five per cent threshold for winning a seat. This time it could benefit from a slump in support for the UK Independence Party, which secured eight per cent of the vote in 2004 but has since been torn apart by infighting. If the BNP captured eight per cent of the vote it would win two seats.
At Betfair, the online bookmaker, the BNP are odds-on to win, with the price as short as 1/2. Tony Travers, a local goverment expert at the London School of Economics, says a BNP victory in the assembly election would be "the biggest prize the extremist Right has ever won in British politics".
Mr Barnbrook, 47, who trained as an artist at the Royal Academy and is engaged to Simone Clarke, a former ballerina at the English National Ballet. Across England the BNP currently holds 46 council seats, 12 of which are in the east London borough of Barking and Dagenham.
It could capture 74 more seats nationwide next week on swings of 10 per cent or less, according to Searchlight. Last year the party stood in a record 742 wards, its candidates receiving an average 14.7 per cent share of the vote. The London Assembly is made up of 14 constituency members plus 11 "top-up" members elected London-wide from party lists.
Parties need to secure five per cent support to win a seat, a threshold which was intended by the Government to allow representation for minor parties such as the Greens while keeping out the far Right.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2008/04/27/nelect527.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7367370.stm
The author of the letter is a member of the Socialist Workers' Party. The former leader was Tony Cliff (real name - Ygael Gluckstein ).
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