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Wednesday, 18 June 2008 |
(from Hackney Gazette 5 June 2008)
YOU have published letters about the election of a BNP member of the London Assembly from two far-left groups which totally misrepresent what actually happened generally but particularly in Hackney.
I was the Hackney co-ordinator of the national anti-BNP campaign, Hope Not Hate, which was a joint effort between Searchlight, the Daily Mirror and trades unions. The tactic in London was to get the vote up to dilute the BNP vote by distributing anti-BNP literature at targeted areas and groups.
Twenty-five-thousand copies of a 650,000-run, eight-page tabloid newspaper were distributed by Hackney Labour Party and trades unions. I delivered 5,000 to Cllr Patrick Vernon alone. I came home one night to find that my local councillor, Dan Kemp, had, in covering his entire ward, put one through my door when I had thousands in the garage.
On April 29, the same activists distributed a special leaflet at all of the railway stations in Hackney reaching thousands more voters. While all this was going on, there was no sign of Sasha Simic, of the SWP/UAF/Respect, or Carl Taylor, of Hackney Independent, formerly The Independent Working Class Association, which is a split from the SWP.
It is easy to sit in a pub scoring points off the opposition and passing motions and I have written here before that that is all the Che Guevaras of E8 seem to do, but it doesn't get people out to vote.
Thanks to all those who turned out in some terrible weather to hold back the most successful party of the far right that we have seen in several generations and to the Gazette for not printing the paid-for BNP advert
Terry Fitzpatrick,
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