The Hope not Hate campaign are asking for support for their next Day of Action on Saturday 19 March. Their recent Fear and HOPE report highlighted that economic insecurity was a key driver in support for right wing parties. As a response the HOPE not hate campaign is organising a day of action on...
Stop the BNP
If you haven’t already done so you can protest about the BBC extending a hand of friendship to the BNP via the Hope not Hate website. On Thursday afternoon (22 October) Hope not Hate are going to the BBC to deliver the Question Time presenter, David Dimbleby, thousands of messages of hope from supporters....
The Forgotten Story
More than 60 people filled the Working Class Movement Library in Salford on 30th May to see former POUM militia man Roma Marquez Santo unveil a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers. In a moving speech Roma declared it an honour for people, like himself, who fought fascism in the 1930s to...
Not Just Orwell
Christopher Hall explains what drove him to discover the untold stories of ILP volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War In 2006 many new books were published and many events held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. As an historian and researcher on the Spanish Civil...
Spanish Civil War Commemoration
Seventy years after the end of the Spanish Civil War the first ever memorial plaque to the anti-fascist British and Irish volunteers who fought alongside George Orwell in the ILP Contingent will be unveiled. Two political veterans will do the honours: Sidney Robinson, an Independent Labour Party activist in the 1930s who chaired the...
Covering the real issue
The veil debate obscures a bigger question, says BEN TURLEY. What place should faith have in our public life? When, on 5 October 2006 in the Lancashire Times, Jack Straw started a debate about the wearing of the veil by Muslim women, he did so with characteristic modesty and equivocation. While Straw said that...
It’s the end of the world as we know it
The British National Party won its fifth local council seat in a matter of months in Halifax in January, attracting a brief flurry of national media comment and political hand wringing. BEN TURLEY looks at what happened. “Halifax is a wonderful place and its people are not racist,” Alice Mahon MP said the day...
The Travellers’ tales
Gypsies have become the object of increasingly racist, anti-immigration demonology over the last few years. As MATTHEW BROWN reports, they have been the one of the most victimised groups in society for centuries. It could be any day in modern London. A tube pulls into King’s Cross underground station. The doors slide open and...
Towering success
The east end of London used to be one the BNP’s electoral targets. MATTHEW BROWN reports on how the policies and priorities of one local borough has improved community relations. Juneha Chowdhury is nearing the end of her first year as a newly qualified teacher. It hasn’t been easy but, at 27, she’s finally...
“Mavis Grimett is out”: The rise of fascism in the north
BEN TURLEY looks at some of the social and political roots of the BNP’s success in northern and midlands towns, and offers some suggestions for how they should be tackled in the future. The local council election results on 1 May 2003 confirmed the BNP as a significant electoral force in some northern and...
Racisms, multiculturalisms and fascisms
BARRY WINTER argues for more plural ways of thinking, if we are to meet the challenges posed by racism and the far right. The title of this article, ‘Racisms, Multiculturalisms and Fascisms’, may at first, appear perverse. But it is not meant to be. The reason for adding an ‘s’ to the three terms,...
Valley Fever
Ben Tullett reports on the battle to beat back the BNP in Halifax during the latest round of local elections Outside London, the June 2004 council elections were particularly significant. Following boundary changes, in large swathes of the country all seats were up for election, meaning that instead of having just one vote, many...