Back from an Easter visit to home in North Wales to find out that the BNP held the seat in the Havering Council by-election on Thursday in Gooshays. A disappointing result of course. Despite Labour coming 2nd and increasing its share of the vote at the expense of the Tories (and the turnout only being a miserly 22%).

However, there is no way that this overwhelmingly white working class ward should be represented by one BNP and two Tories! We all need to try harder! I think there is more to it than just racism and Labour unpopularity.

Gooshays is not a “sink estate” but to all appearances, a well run and looked after, traditional outer London Council estate. Most of the properties I guess, have now been sold under “The Right to Buy”. I don’t think (this was on a Sunday I visited) that I have ever seen so many “white vans” parked outside homes with adverts on their sides for their self employed owners. This made me think.

Yesterday morning there was a TULO day of action across London in support of Labour Party candidates in the forthcoming Assembly and the Mayor elections. In our London Assembly constituency, City & East, trade unionists were asked to go and help out with canvassing and leafleting in the Gooshays council by-election in Havering, East London.

Out of the 7 of us in our canvass team, 4 were called “John” (including John Biggs the City & East GLA assembly member)– is this some sort of record? Also, in our team was Gloria Hanson, UNISON London convenor and the candiate herself, Eve Cornell.

This is an intriguing by-election. There was a BNP and two Tory Councillors in the ward. The useless BNP Councillor has just given up and resigned after only 2 years. No doubt there is some sort of court appearance pending. At the last election there was a “dead heat” between Eve (who is standing again) and a Tory. The returning officer had to toss a coin to decide the result. Unfortunately (for the residents of Goodshays) Eve lost the toss.

On Sunday 9 March 2008 there will be a London wide day of action organised by TULO in support of Labour Mayor, Ken Livingstone and all our London Assembly candidates.

In the City & East GLA constituency on 9 March we are planning to support our neighbours in Havering by campaigning in the Goodshays by-Election. The ward BNP councillor has resigned. At the 2006 council election, Gooshays Ward was highly marginal between Labour, the Tories and the BNP candidate. Yve Cornell, the Labour candidate, was beaten by the narrowest possible margin, on the flip of a coin. The by-election on 20 March gives us an opportunity to win back a seat on the council and kick the BNP out of Havering. Not only that but we can firm up the GLA Labour vote for Ken and the other Labour wide candidates.

On Wednesday Ken Livingstone ended a powerful speech to Labour trade unionists by speculating whether the “Standard” (aka the “Evening Boris”) would ever print any of the truth about Ken and the Labour Assembly members during the current campaign.

Of course everyone laughed at the prospect of the “Standard” accurately reporting the significant reduction in crime in London.

The event was organised by TULO and held in the historic old Town Hall in Stratford, East London.

On Thursday I went to a Searchlight meeting at the House of Commons, held on “Beating the BNP in London”. Frank Dobson MP chaired, speakers included Jon Cruddas MP, Megan Dobney (SETUC) and Nick Lowles (Searchlight). As you would expect there was a good attendance and range of people present.

Afterwards I went to a West Ham Labour Party Campaign meeting, where we had invited our “City & East” London Assembly member John Biggs, to talk to us about campaign issues. The BNP came up as well since Barking and Dagenham is also in “City & East” constituency (City of London, Tower Hamlets and Newham).

Brilliant first hand account about the master race representatives on earth and their current internal “difficulties” in searchlight. A must read link.

However, usual health warning about not getting complacent for next year’s local elections.

Rats have a habit of surviving sinking ships.

Hat tip to The Virtual Stoa

The BNP is today in deep crisis after the expulsion from the party of two of its national officers. According to a notice posted on Sunday 9 December on the revamped BNP website, Sadie Graham, the party's group development officer, and Kenny Smith, in charge of administration, have been "removed from their posts with immediate effect on the grounds of gross misconduct and now face disciplinary charges over alleged offences against the BNP Constitution and Code of Conduct".

(from Searchlight)

Dear Comrades

The BNP have now started leafleting Kendal, in the consitituency I am standing.  They are doing as they always do leafleting for support.  This has been widely done.  I ask for your support.

John Wiseman
PPC Westmorland and Lonsdale

Will Parbury is alarmed at the prospect of the 2008 elections in London and no it's not just the blond mop.

Before we "tut, tut" too loudly about the morons in Sudan who have locked up a volunteer teacher for allowing a teddy bear to be called “Mohammed”, we shouldn’t forget we have more than our own share of home-grown religious berks. I’m not this time referring to Galloway and his Respect Renewal but rather to the new Christian Fundamentalist website “MegaMosqueNoThanks”.

This site appears to be run by a certain Newham Councillor, Alan Craig, from the “Christian Peoples Alliance” (CPA). His name and telephone number is on the press release.

Got myself down to a new bit of the redrawn Dagenham seat on Saturday for some leafleting and got a decent interview out of Jon Cruddas. He confirmed that he had been offered a ministerial post in the reshuffle but didn't want to be contained. Cruddas is genial, chummy on the doorstep and thoughtful. The following was conducted whilst he was driving from Elm Park to central London, having his lunch (pie and chips) and talking into my tape recorder all simultaneously - talk about multi-tasking!

Below is the text of a message from Luke Tryl the current Oxford Union President regarding the invite that the Union has sent to BNP Leader Nick Griffin and Holocaust denier David Irving.

Last Friday Sadie Graham, a local BNP councillor in Nottinghamshire organised a meeting to discuss crime and policing.

The meeting was attended by local Labour MP for Ashfield, Geoff Hoon. According to the BNP website (the BNP are making a big thing of Geoff Hoon's attendance) the meeting was 'very lively and well received'. Indeed it states that  'Sadie was very surprised and thankful to Mr. Hoon for attending the meeting'.

What do you think? Should a Labour MP ever accept an invitation to a meeting organised by a BNP councillor? Has your MP ever done so? Did Geoff know who had organised the meeting? Does it matter?

campaigntv.org update from gez.sagar@campaigntv.org


Campaigntv got its first nasty attack today.  The BNP have spotted our video about how they were wiped out in the West Midlands at the May elections.  Looks like we touched a nazi nerve.

Supported by BNP thugs and bullys the notable holocaust denier, David Irving, is booked to speak at the Royal Warwicks Club in Coventry later this evening. I, like many others, have phoned the Royal Warwicks Club (024 7622 0425) to tell them how 'disappointed' I am that they have agreed to allow Irving and his supporters to book their facilities. Searchlight are organising a protest outside the Royal Warwicks Club, which is on Tower Street, Coventry CV1 1JS.

To bring people up to date on the story so far: after a number of defections and rumours about internal arguments and rifts. The selection of a local “business wing” candidate for Respect in the recent by-election at Shadwell led to open war between the main Respect “Coalition” allies: Galloway and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

Nearly all the paid Respect Party officials are SWP members. This went from bad to worse when the SWP officials tried to force the Muslim Bangladeshi Respect Councillors to go on a Respect float at the 2007 Gay Pride parade!