Public meeting at NUM miners hall against BNP Barnsley

[sonny61]

akimbo, okay, I can see your passionate in your beliefs. One hundred, but that is only a third what the BNP had at their meeting. And I can't help thinking those who took part in your march, have been on many other various marches and protests before.

Now this is the hard bit for you, the people supporting the BNP, the members, more importantly the voters, who will be voting for them in Yorkshire in their hundred plus thousand in the Euro, and possibly giving the BNP a MEP. Don't like immigration.

Are you going to tell them immigration is a good thing, and hope they will agree with you(they won't). Or just might the penny might drop if a real left party is to come into being, then they will have to have a firm anti immigration policy(not based on race lines), if they want to make inroads into the working class population.
There is the one policy which is holding back the left.

 

[soam]

Yeah it was a good demo, At least a 100 or so and good to see new faces not the usual SWP/UAF?union folk who have been the visible face of the left in Barnsley for too long!

After a good hour of speeches the demo was allowed to move off towards the BNP. They had a large turnout around their sale, as well as a few infiltrated into the demo. I also clocked one guy with a camera who i found pretty suss - pro camera, but carrying a tripod, which he didn’t use, and why would he need one for daylight demo photography? Something about him just didn’t seem right.

Once the demo got into the precinct where the BNP were selling i felt it all started to go a bit wrong. It was like the five-minute hate, the demo yelling Nazi scum? off our streets etc. Watching the onlookers there was some support, a lot of angry words directed at the demo, but mostly a sense of bewilderment as the demo directed chants at a the BNP who stood under their flags without responding. After a few minutes the demo moved off, the chanting stopped and everyone went home. While the BNP continued selling for a few more hours…

It felt good to be showing the public that there is an opposition to the BNP, but I did get the feeling that the demo looked like a clichéd left wing rent a mob in the minds of the public!

There is another demo planned for the 30th of May, perhaps this opposition to the paper sales will become a regular event.

 

[treelover]

Watching the onlookers there was some support, a lot of angry words directed at the demo, but mostly a sense of bewilderment as the demo directed chants at a the BNP who stood under their flags without responding. After a few minutes the demo moved off, the chanting stopped and everyone went home. While the BNP continued selling for a few more hours…

Surely everything that is wrong about the far left/student appraoch to the far right

 

[purplex]

I was browsing the bnp website looking for an article highlighted (and condemned) in the news of the world today about a black soldier getting a victoria cross due to political correctness, the article seemed to have been pulled but i did have a browse through their paper to see if it was in there and I noticed one of the articles was how they would reopen the pits, now if youre from some far-flung northern mining town with little or no work around, I could see how that could be an attractive policy, my point is by gearing their policies around the issues affecting a smaller section of the electorate they are more able to target their imaginary policies to those people. They are bound to pick up votes by doing that. The centrality of the big parties means that the issues are more generic and wider in focus. What can the big parties offer these small mining towns that they have failed to do already?
I can see why disillusionment could turn someone toward the BNP when they are coming out with such policies. The major parties need to develop better alternatives to the BNP policies. As for demonstrators, shouting that they hate the working class at them when "they" say they are going to reopen the mines is pretty unintuitive, it makes you look like liars. The solution for labour of course is to properly re-engage with their electorate and to represent their needs and not leave it to the bnp to fill the vacuum.