On Saturday 20 September three or four hundred BNP activists leafleted and rallied in Stoke on Trent. Their activity was trying to capitalise on the killing of one of their most unpleasant members, Keith Brown, by an Asian neighbour whom he had provoked for many years.
The BNP had a national mobilisation and brought their members in for mass leafleting at what was claimed were ten separate rendezvous points. After some hours leafleting the BNP concluded with a rally that was apparently barred from using a public hall and was held instead publicly in Victoria Road, Fenton, visible to many passing motorists on a busy road.
This is the closest the BNP have come to holding a march in many years and is probably a “feeler” for them to see what the response would be that if they were to go ahead with such a venture.
The counter mobilisation does not give much reason for anti-fascist confidence. The fact that the local campaign NORSCARF and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) held a protest was at least something. However, the mobilisation was only about three or four hundred. It came nowhere near the BNP event. It was heavily dominated by Labour Party loyalists who at no time acknowledged the reasons for the BNP's dramatic rise in Stoke, i.e. the policies of the Labour government that has led to such massive political demoralisation of Labour’s electoral base.
UAF’s Martin Smith made some points about the fact that the BNP were capitalising on Labour’s political legacy. But the UAF-organised platform made sure that few other working-class opponents of the government were heard, although one speaker, seemingly reading from some Notts Stop the BNP placards, called for “Jobs and Homes Not Racism”.
The march’s slogan, however, gave no indication that anyone was critical of the government — it was “Smash the BNP”, though the marchers hadn’t a clue about how such a slogan could be realised on that day.
The march that followed the long rally had a brief and artificially engineered confrontation with the police over access to the city centre but otherwise passed off quietly.
It is good that there was a protest. However the weakness of the Stoke campaign was shown by the fact that the BNP could be organising in sizeable groups in several areas of the town without any effective intelligence coming in about where they were and what they were doing. The only thing that was reported to the protest at any time was that there were only 80 BNPers, a significant underestimate.
News came in after many of the protesters had started dispersing about the location of the BNP rally, but it was too late, inaccurately relayed and too far for on-foot protesters to get to in any case.
A powerful ongoing campaign needs to be built in Stoke. That campaign needs to be active outside of elections, politically independent and critical of the Labour Government. It must take up the social issues that the BNP exploits.
That campaign needs to develop links into the working class community as well as build up the numbers of people on the ground able to identify what the BNP is doing and act against it.
Stoke will undoubtedly be a major target for the BNP.
• Nick Griffin spoke to a large BNP meeting in Derby at a pub on the evening of Wednesday 24 September. Around 30 anti-fascist activists from Derby UAF and Notts Stop the BNP were joined by 10 local youths in a protest outside the meeting. Needless to say the police were also out in force.