Ban the BNP – but don’t say I said.

I was not going to post anything today. I was just going to take it easy and play some poker. Then I drifted onto the site of Eastwood Today – the local paper for Brinsley and just had to put pen to paper.

At a recent public meeting in Brinsley attended by around 40 people a decision was made to try and halt the “threat” of the British National Party in the forthcoming local elections.

O.K. I can live with that – but then it becomes surreal. The heroic leader of this fine band of activists, a Labour Party official who was chairing the meeting declined to provide his name. Earlier this hero of freedom of speech stated that the purpose of the meeting and campaign as "stopping the BNP getting elected anywhere.”

He then went on to say "what you see with the BNP is not what you get, they are profoundly undemocratic and violent.” So lets Ban them?

Then even more bizarrely, a borough councilor told the meeting that BNP activists had infiltrated electoral wards in Eastwood. Presumably they had parachuted in disguised as Nuns – cunning brutes these B.N.P. people.

Then the accusations started flying fast and furious and there was plenty of anecdotal evidence about the influence of the B.N.P. and another frightened person reported that “racist graffiti” had begun to appear. I was waiting for the “my cows stopped giving milk” and “Tom saw them talk to the Devil down by the mill pond”.

Well that done it for one intrepid county councillor who claimed that the Labour candidate for Brinsley was so frightened of the BNP she was not standing for election.

I could go on but you get the picture. At the last borough election, the BNP polled 43 per cent of the Brinsley vote. When the opposition will not even allow their names to be used in promoting something so undemocratic as preventing a legal political party from canvassing, then that percentage can only increase.

I leave the last word with BNP Councillor Sadie Graham who told the Advertiser that the meeting had been run by the Labour Party. "I am very concerned that an organisation has been set up to try and stop a legal and democratic political party," she said. "It treats the voters with utter contempt, telling people who they should vote for.

"I strongly believe in democracy and it would be nice to see all political parties in Brinsley and across Eastwood putting forward candidates so that people can vote for whom they want."

Well there you have it – Don’t vote for the BNP but don’t say I said. The residents of Brinsley deserve better - they deserve a council of BNP people who say what they mean and mean what they say.