BNP leader to challenge Cabinet minister at general election

[Spursman]

Nick Griffin launched the “Battle for Barking” yesterday by declaring that he will stand against Margaret Hodge, the Culture Minister, at the next general election.

The BNP leader told his party’s annual conference that the East London seat was high on a list of half a dozen constituencies across the country where they now represented the “really serious” challengers.

In his keynote address he was anxious to revive morale among delegates after the party lost its deposit at the Glasgow North East by-election and his own lacklustre performance on the BBC’s Question Time.

Mr Griffin, who was elected in June as one of the party’s two MEPs, has long regarded a seat in the Commons as his political holy grail.

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He said that he would gladly exchange Brussels for Westminster, insisting: “I do not want to be in Europe any longer than I have to.”

The BNP has struck significant victories at Labour’s expense in Barking, where its message on immigration policy strikes a chord among blue collar workers and poor white voters.

They currently have 12 seats on Barking and Dagenham council, and are the official opposition party.

During the local elections in 2006 they seized on Mrs Hodge’s remarks that eight out of ten families were fearful of the influx of workers from Eastern Europe and were thinking of voting BNP.

Mr Griffin said told the conference held in a bar and fitness centre in Hindley, near Wigan in Lancashire: “I will be standing in Barking against Margaret Hodge. The thrust of the campaign will be the housing and education problems in the borough, and how the Labour Party has let the borough down in a quite catastrophic way.

“For the first time ever we are really challengers in half a dozen seats where we will be concentrating large amounts of resources.”

Central to the party’s election strategy, he suggested in his keynote address, will be a call for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.

Mr Griffin, who has recently been criticised by General Sir Mike Jackson and other military figures for associating the BNP with the Armed Forces, was happy to pose for photographs in front of scenes from Britain’s military past, not least the Battle of Trafalgar.

He said: “In my opinion, and to some extent I am looking for reassurance and guidance from the party, the core thrust of our campaign should be opening up a new front in terms of what the public think we are about.

“We will be the only serious party calling for the immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. I believe that will be the key to the election for us.

“Afghanistan will have a huge resonance with ordinary voters. We want to present a moral choice between those parties supporting a futile and counter-productive war and one that says we should be out of there immediately.”

The conference venue was the Legend’s Bar and Body Fitness centre on the edge of a run-down industrial quarter in Hindley. Upstairs party strategists worked in rooms shared with keep fit enthusiasts exercising on treadmills. Outside a small army of security men kept guard in the car park.

On Saturday the party’s faithful voted overwhelmingly in favour of allowing a party-wide ballot on membership rules to bring their Caucasian-only policy in line with the recent Equality Bill.

Party activists had been fearful that a protest by anti-fascist demonstrators would halt proceedings, delaying the timetable for compliance, but yesterday the protestors had disappeared. There were a few scattered police officers, and only a solitary van.

Withdrawal from Afghanistan is likely to be the subject of the party’s television and radio party political broadcasts.

“We know it is hugely popular out there,” he said. “We have done some tests in a few places in the last few days. It is the issue everybody wants a party to take the lead on.

“The three main parties are completely out of kilter with the public. That gulf just gets bigger every time one of our boys comes home in a coffin”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 917817.ece