West Midlands teacher was last night suspended from his job at a Catholic secondary school after declaring his candidacy in the June European elections for the far-right British National Party.

Simon Smith, a maths teacher at St Peter's Roman Catholic secondary school in Solihull, has posted his details on the BNP website for public scrutiny. His personal website, offline after a dispute, included an inflammatory denial of the Holocaust.

After initially insisting that teachers were eligible to stand for election on behalf of a legal political party without it affecting their employment, the local education authority later backed the decision by the school and the Birmingham Diocesan Schools Commission to suspend Mr Smith.

The development came as church leaders in West Yorkshire united yesterday to condemn the BNP and to urge congregations not to support its candidates in June's local and European elections. Bishops, priests and ministers gathered in Leeds to sign a statement drawn up by the West Yorkshire Ecumenical Council.

Mr Smith, of Smethwick, is number two on the BNP's list of European candidates in the West Midlands. He is understood to be working at the school on a one-year contract, and is a member of the National Association of School Masters/Union of Women Teachers.

NASUWT deputy general secretary Chris Keates said: "NASUWT abhors and condemns the policies of the BNP. It has been a long-standing rule that disciplinary procedures will follow the linking of NASUWT with disreputable organisations."

At its annual conference in Llandudno at Easter, the union called for a change in rules to allow it to expel members from racist groups without fear of compensation claims for discrimination.

Phil Edwards, national spokesman for the BNP, said: "This is absolutely deplorable and amounts to unreasonable intimidation and hypocrisy. This is a good teacher who has done nothing wrong and the head teacher has made it clear she is very happy with him. This is high-level intimidation to try and stop people use the democratic process. We're no longer a free country."

On Mr Smith's personal website, which was closed after a contractual dispute last year, he wrote of the Holocaust: "The 'six million' and 'gas chambers' story is a lie - this sounds delusional when you first hear it - but investigate the matter for yourself."

The site was shut down in March after the search engine Yahoo claimed the domain name, www.yahho.co.uk was too close to its own.

An independent expert who ruled in the case said Mr Smith's site consisted "of inflammatory political materials espousing racist/anti-semitic/white supremacist views". The website included links to far- right groups as well as revisionist historian David Irving, Hitler's Mein Kampf and eugenics websites.

Last night Mr Smith was not available for comment, but the BNP's West Midlands spokesman said: "The internet is a broad conduit of information and websites can have links to all kinds of things without necessarily supporting them."

Solihull council said in a statement yesterday: "It has become clear that, whatever the circumstances, the disruption to pupils' education has become far too great, especially at this time of year when many are preparing for exams. In these circumstances it is deemed appropriate to suspend the teacher to allow the school to return to normal."

The document from the West Yorkshire Ecumenical Council - a response to the BNP's growing political activity in parts of the north - deplores the party's racist policies and calls on Christian people to use their vote.

The leaders also urge Christians to follow the example of Christ and love their neighbours.

"We feel the BNP is a deeply worrying movement and its policies are racist and fascist," said Stephanie Rybak, the council's executive secretary. "We are concerned at the level of voter apathy, which means people won't vote. If they don't, there's a real danger that extremist parties might get elected."

 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,11375,1205599,00.html


Clearly the far left are the real Nazis as they would deny people any chance of voicing their opionions democratically unless they agreed with them. Also, a teacher was involved in an assault on Jean Marie Le Pen, who is an old age pensioner, and this Marxist teacher has not been suspended. Clearly there is a PC agenda in my opinion, what do other people think??