Councillor Sadie Graham, Group Development Officer, and Harrogate Organiser Tom Linden were the latest guest speakers at Scarborough BNP.
The meeting was opened by Scarborough Organiser Trisha Scott, who welcomed the audience before handing over to Fundholder Vince Rosser, who gave an update on the Group’s finances.
Sadie Graham was the first guest speaker to address the audience, telling them it was the first time she had attended a Scarborough meeting.
Sadie’s speech concentrated on the recent elections, where the Party gained 15% of the vote on average across the country. These figures had risen to 27% in the last 100 by-elections the Party had contested.
MPs Cruddas and Hodge, in Barking and Dagenham, were now worried by the BNP and its success in the area in 2006. Even in non-traditional BNP areas, such as Scarborough, the Party was now fielding candidates, and it seemed there was no longer a “traditional” BNP area. In the last Euro elections the Party needed 12% to win a seat, but the results was spoilt by UKIP and Veritas taking a larger share of the vote and so the Party gained around 6-7%.
Candidates needed to get involved in their local communities, get known to the voters and work hard on campaigning. A good step was to get co-opted onto parish councils and work hard, making a good impression and break down the stigma attached to the BNP. The Party was more than just a political party, it was a cultural movement, Sadie concluded.
After a short break, Trisha introduced the second guest speaker of the evening, Harrogate Organiser Tom Linden.
Tom’s themes for his talk were the issues of eastern European migration and fanatical Islam in the UK.
Thanks to eastern European migration on such a massive scale, it was becoming increasingly difficult for local people to find work in areas such as hospitality, agriculture and building. Some places were even refusing to employ people who did not speak Polish because all the other employees were Polish and locals would not be accepted by the Poles, who did not even speak English. Tom pointed out that, although it was widely claimed that the eastern Europeans were merely doing the jobs that local people refused to do, that could not possibly be the case, as these employers had employed local people before 2004, otherwise jobs would never have been done! British workers have been dismissed from their jobs and replaced by Poles, who were cheaper to employ. However, British workers already had skills, or they could learn them, we do not need the Poles or other migrants to do any of these jobs.
Tom then turned to the worst threat Britain has ever faced - militant Islam.
According to police figures, there were 200 al Qaeda cells in the UK, 1600 fully-trained terrorist operatives and 30 plots currently underway.
In Beeston, Leeds, where three of the terrorists who attacked London in July 2005 had lived, three trees were planted to show solidarity with the community and its loss on 7th July. There had been a two minutes silence at the planting, but it would have been more fitting to remember the 52 innocent victims of 7th July, and plant trees in their memory, rather than the perpetrators.
In France, there are currently 751 Muslim-controlled areas, where the police have no control and do not even venture into. There are riots each weekend and over one thousand police officers injured each year. France is the closest country to England in terms of distance, and now in England there is Sharia law imposed in Dewsbury for civil cases, with funding of £177,000 each year.
Tom concluded that attitudes towards the BNP are changing, and people now want to become involved.
Trisha thanked the audience for attending and announced that the collection raised £111.