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Wiltshire town Calne leafelted against BNP

Andy | 07.06.2004 00:39 | Oxford

20 supporters of Unite Against Fascism, (including members of the Labour Party, Lib Dems, Greens, Socialist Alliance, RESPECT and hunt sabs, and people who just don’t like fascists) leafleted Calne with 3000 Searchlight newspapers on Sunday 6th June. Calne is a small town in Wiltshire, quite nice, but not at all affluent and there are a few social problems.

Our original intention was to do the whole town, but it was simply too hot, we managed about half, then gave 1000 papers to other activists who will be leafleting Chippenham.

Why Calne? Robert Baggs, local manager of a health centre (with two asian doctors!) is a BNP candidate in the South West Euro election. He lives in Calne so this is the 3rd time we have leafleted in the last eighteen months.

We are mainly trying to demoralise him, as well as knock his vote down, and make it hard for him to recruit others. We did notice his house had a “for sale” sign outside, so hopefully he might be leaving.

Mainly positive reaction when we met people, but had a couple of “Mr angry” responses, and did notice a vote BNP poster in one window (not the candidate's)

Andy

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

And what did you do about it?

07.06.2004 22:05

I do hope you took the time to, as large group of people, knock on the door of this other supporter and ask him (politely) to take the poster down. What should follow, though obviously you should gauge the best way forwards on the day, is that everyone sit down in the drive way until the police come, and then make a complaint on the grounds of incitement to racial hatred. And please don't say you were scarred you'd get shot at, or driven over. The BNP don't need that sort of publicity for our campaign, so they wouldn't do it. Likelyhood is, you'd just get the chance to draw the police' attention to who really is driving the racial tension in town. (Most police seem to think that racial tension is from Black to White exclusively).
Rebel W

Rebel W


no we didn't do any of those things

08.06.2004 01:25

Actualy there were only 3 of us there as we had spilt up by then for more efficient lefaleting. But actually that wasn't the reaon we didnt do anything.

More pragmatically, we wanted to get on and leaflet as much as possible of the town, and the poster wasn't visible from the road.

We have bumped into Baggs and his 6 foot minder when we have previsouly lefalted the town. I am not scared of him - especally in an el3ection they don't need the bad publicity. I did receive threatening BNP stuff through my front door a while ago, and called in my contacts in the press to get a front page story in local paper about BNP bully boy intimidation.

In any event knowing that all of his neighbours has recieved and anti-BNP lefalet woulfd have made him/het ueasy I think.

On the other hand if you are asking whther anyone made a note of the address for the future ... ... ...

Andy


Searchlight anti fascists hmmm

08.06.2004 02:59

Why is it that anti fascist are handing out searchlight? beware of searchlight bunch of grasses to tha state. They provide information about militant anti fascists to secret service speacial branch mi5. Rather an autonomous anti facist movement than statists anti fascism.

aaa


why searchlight leaflets

08.06.2004 17:34

becasue serahclight produced 1,3 million full colour 12 page tabloid newspapers, paid for by the TUC, that are full of very readable anti-BNP stuff. Thiis is likely to decrease their bvote, and make people less likely to join them

I don't think it is perfect - but it is good.

What alternative meterial have the anarchist anti-fash produced that we could have used instead?

Or are you saying that only your form of anti-BNP acivity is worth doing - whatever that is. Please enlighten me.


andy


buy any means nessesary

14.06.2004 13:56

I think that aaa is making a vaild point, is it better to make a stand againsts politcal fascism, left and right, aaa is trying I think to make apoint that anti-fascists groups could be relying on themselves to produce there own literature, public/community meeting, surely we don't need to rely on trade union leaders. In Bristol some anarchists have been doing anti-fash graf, making there own stickers by hand and physically attacking fash when they are found. Although racist attacks are still happening, which is one of the real issues, how to give solidarity to people who are facing fascist abuse? because in reality whether bnp get elected or not such fascist activities will continue. I personally don't think it's about the right or wrong way, lets face it though lab/conservative have played into the hands of fascists on the right, I would rather produce my own info then rely on trade unionist that sell us out in the workplace, Rarly support strike action and advise there members to vote labour a party contributing to this snowball of fascism.

blahh


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