Posted on 05/03/2002 7:00:24 PM PDT by blam
'David Edwards won but I wouldn't have minded Adolf Hitler'
By Nigel Bunyan
(Filed: 04/05/2002)
THE people of Worsthorne awoke yesterday to the realisation that they live in a village that is now likely to be vilified as the most racist in Britain.
Having for decades formed a stronghold of rural Conservatism, overnight they had granted the neo-Nazi British National Party its first intrusion into mainstream politics for nine years.
BNP leader Nick Griffin gives a campaign trail victory salute
Such an outcome might have been predicted had Worsthorne been part of the deprivation that spills out from the centre of Burnley three miles away.
It is not. If anything, it appears to be a typical Lancastrian village: church square, school, a huddle of sandstone cottages, village store and a 17th-century hall.
As Nick Griffin, the BNP's chairman, arrived to survey the territory he had just conquered, some villagers spoke of their shame, while others reflected the disenchantment with the main political parties.
Her voice rising against the Dambusters theme blaring from Mr Griffin's converted meat wagon, Isobel Fitzsimmons, 51, a receptionist, said: "I'm just shocked.
"But I have to say that deep down it was something I was fearing, even though this isn't a racist village." Violet Peart, 78, a retired nurse and one of the latest recruits to the BNP cause, was delighted.
"It's brilliant," she said. "It's woken people up. September 11 rattled their cages, and that's what started all this. They have taken away our freedom of speech. You can call the Irish Micks, the Welsh Taffies and the Scots Jocks. But then you have to stop.
"I'm just delighted somebody is standing up for us." Geoff Sweetman, 58, a retired police inspector, said: "I don't know anyone in the village who is a racist. It's just that the money seems to always go the wrong way."
On the modern estate that has grown up on the eastern fringe of the town, a self-employed businessmen expressed similar frustrations. "You can go down to Stoneyholme, where the Asians live, and find nice housing and floodlit football pitches.
"We get jack s***." He conceded that for many it had been a protest vote. But he added: "Do you honestly believe that three councillors on Burnley council will make a difference? I don't.
"But it might make Mr Blair think. People around here don't care whether they're neo-Nazis, they've just had enough. It happened to be a bloke called David Edwards, but I wouldn't have minded if it was Adolf Hitler."
Mr Edwards, 40, was conspicuous by his absence throughout yesterday, just as he had been since the immediate aftermath of his victory. So, too, were his fellow BNP councillors, Carol Hughes and Terence Grogan, both 42, whose wards are more obviously the feeding grounds of the far Right.
Both scurried away from the counting room at Turf Moor Social Club, refusing to comment on their victories. It appeared that they were under orders from Mr Griffin to let him deal with the media.
He explained that they were "decent and honest" people who were obliged to return to work. Mr Griffin claimed that his candidates' success had actually served to reduce racial tension in the town.
"The people who voted for us now feel they have a voice in the council. They don't feel they have to mutter privately among themselves in pubs and clubs."
Mr Griffin was particularly pleased with the Cliviger with Worsthorne result. "We didn't expect to win because it's a very middle class area," he said. "It's an astounding result."
Labour politicians have already blamed the Tories and Liberal Democrats for failing to field candidates in each of the 15 wards. Labour admits failing to counter the impression that the Asian-dominated Daneshouse community received too great a share of the municipal cake.
Kevin Meagher, a party spokesman said: "There was a perfect storm of combustible ingredients, including an all-out election, re-drawn boundaries and an opportunity for people to split votes."
The fledgling BNP candidates can expect to be ostracised when they attend their first council meeting on Wednesday. Rafique Malik, Burnley's deputy mayor, said: "I don't think that anybody with a bit of sense would like to co-operate with them because of what they believe in.
"Millions of people died during the Second World War to oppose the Fascists and the Nazis, and that is what they are. I have lived in Burnley for 36 years, but today I have no hesitation in saying that I am ashamed of being a resident.
"Yet I will never believe that all the 8,000 people who voted for the BNP are racist." His son, Shahid, a member of the Labour Party's NEC, said: "It is critically important that all the mainstream parties pull together to resist the BNP and re-engage those who voted for them."
Lord Clarke, the Labour peer who wrote the report on the Burnley riots, expressed his dismay that "the good name of Burnley" had been besmirched. But he was not surprised.
He hoped the BNP candidates - whom he described as "these vile people" - would be marginalised and then removed at the first opportunity.
No one in America is surprised to see this. The disease of anti-semitism is pretty much like BSE. It's there. It happens. There's nothing anybody can do about it apparantly.
David Ward
Saturday May 4, 2002
The Guardian
As Burnley's three new BNP councillors dived for cover away from the media gaze yesterday, the party's leader, Nick Griffin, took a trip to the pretty village of Worsthorne, a couple of miles from the depressed terraces and estates where he and his supporters usually lurk.
While his loudspeakers belted out a distorted version of the Dam Busters March, he did a victory lap round the village green, in the shadow of the church of St John the Baptist (1835) and two pubs.
Eight hundred and ninety eight people voted for the BNP's David Edwards in the usually solidly Tory Cliviger with Worsthorne ward and he will now sit on the council for two years. The result was as much a surprise to Mr Griffin as anyone else and marks a strange shift in far right politics. The BNP does not usually do well among gritstone cottages and clematis, even if Worsthorne is about as close as you can get to the all-white society the party dreams of.
Outside the Worsthorne with Hurstwood village rooms, retired police inspector Geoff Sweetman cheerfully admitted he had voted for Mr Edwards as a protest against all the money being spent in the Asian area of Stoneyholme, where homes had new iron railings, porch lights and hardwood doors. "No one in this village is a racist," he said. "But the money seems to be going to the wrong areas. I have read the BNP manifesto and I have voted according to what they say. If they do not do what they say, they won't get my vote next time."
In Worsthorne's newsagent's, Janet Sharp said the result was a disgrace. But in the village shop, Vi Peart, 78, a retired nurse hailed it as brilliant. "I think it's time someone woke up," she said.
Back at Turf Moor, home of Burnley FC, a woman chucked a glass of water over Mr Griffin as he waited for the Gannow result - which gave the BNP's candidate, Terry Grogan, a seat on a four-vote majority after five recounts. After the re sult, workers from mainstream parties tried to work out why the BNP, which did well in seven other wards, had managed to pick up a third of the vote despite a turnout double that in 2000.
The Conservatives stood in only five wards, and Shahid Malik, Burnley resident and member of Labour's national executive, said they and the Liberal Democrats had to take responsibility for giving the BNP a free run in some areas.
"Many of the people who voted BNP are not racists," he said. "We have to see how we can engage with these people and win them back."
But Burnley's Labour leader, Stuart Caddy, said: "We will not work with the BNP, a fascist organisation. This is a disaster."
We in the U.S., especially our elected reps. should take notice that our future is being played out in Europe. If we care to look.
I viewed this voter result as being anti-immigrant, not anti-Semitic.
It's not what the voters are into, it's what the political party thinks of things.
On the elction is held, European politicians go on to do whatever they wish.
These people were making a protest vote, they were not voting for a political philosophy/party. They would have voted for Adolph Hitler if he was the only one to vote for to register that protest.(IMO) They want something done about immigration. (The folks in Michigan gave George Wallace 19% of the vote in the presidential race, way back when. He was running on the American Independent Party (AIM) ticket. Another protest vote)
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