No surprise to see “offensive” and “BNP”so close together, but I am refering to the fact that we had a BNP leaflet through our door this evening. Actually it was two leaflets – an A5 sheet inside a folded A4 sheet.
The A5 sheet is all about Islam. It says “We are not against individual Muslims, who should not be blamed for the attitudes taught by their religion. We don’t want to force the Islamic world to ‘Westernise'” At the bottom is a cut-out reply form which starts with “I want to help the BNP Crusade against the Islamification of Britain.” Using the word ‘crusade’ is really going to help isn’t it?
The A4 leaflet contains the BNP’s “12-point commonsense plan for Sussex” 7 of these 12 points mention or allude to immigration, or political correctness. The only surprise is that 5 don’t. Possibly the most ludicrous is the one about protecting the green belt – “Developers MUST use brownfield sites – NOT destroy what remains of our countryside just to house immigrants.”
The sad thing is that the leaflet actually contains more policies than the Cameron Tory party, even if most of them are immoral, unfeasible, misguided, or just plain wrong. Prize for the most ironic policy must be the one about bringing our troops home. You would have thought that a party which wanted a ‘crusade’ would be in favour of sending troops to the Middle East.
What I can’t understand is what they are doing putting leaflets out in Broadfield now. There is no election here next year, and in any case the BNP have never stood a candidate in Broadfield. Is it a worrying sign of their increasing confidence? Although they never put candidates here in local elections, the Broadfield votes still go towards parliamentary elections. In a constituency with a majority of only 37 the thousand or so votes the BNP can pick up from the two main parties can make all the difference – even if the jury is still out on which direction it tilts the balance.
Certainly, the more confident the BNP are the more we should stop being complacent about our how everyone gets on in Crawley. Time to get the Crawley UAF up and running properly perhaps instead of waiting until an election is imminent? Time to get a Love Music Hate Racism event organised even?
It’s a trawl, Skuds. They are testing the water to see how many, if any, replies they can get to see if may be worth standing a candidate. It is also about recruitment… and seeing if there may be someone who wants to stand as a candidate, and sufficient numbers to sign a nomination form.
It could also be specifically targetted at you. Sometimes they appear to leaflet known anti-BNP people out of the blue – maybe they think it scares us. As an ex-councillor they have your address.
Like I keep saying, I’m willing to get involved if the UAF starts up again, especially if we can keep the headbanging far left from hijacking it.
That would imply some sort of intelligence though.
I don’t think the UAF would take off without the far left. The Tories won’t get involved (with perhaps one or two exceptions), there are only a handful of Lib-Dems in town, and if it was all Labour it would put off anyone else anyway.
RWS would probably be up for it though 🙂
Skuds… do it with the trots, but on the strict understanding that it is a broad-based anti-fascist movement and non-sectarian. That’s what we do around here. They agreed to take out crap like “The Labour Government encourage the racists” sort of garbage and we work together around the single objective.
I think Danivon is being a bit harsh on them really. I get on OK with them I hope, and in 2005 they did spent a Saturday morning handing out Unison anti-Nazi “Vote Labour” leaflets in the Town Centre.
I suspect they are savvy enough not to confuse the Crawley Labour Party with New Labour, and will already be seeing how a Tory council is so much worse for the workers than the Labour one was from their plans to get rid of 10% of the workforce.
I didn’t suggest not working with them, just not letting the most annoying among them (and we know who they are) from dominating. I have no problem with Paul Smith or Simon Burgess, or the main guys in the DCH campaign.
Simon Burgess .. far left, Crawley Workers Revolutionary Party ? thanks for the tip-off