Maryport Against Racism is busy again as coming up on June 5th is a by-election in All Saints ward in Cockermouth, triggered by the resignation of the current councillor.

Why are we interested? Because along with candidates from the Tories, Labour, the Greens and an independent the British National Party are also standing in their first outing in Cockermouth.

Interestingly, the BNP candidate is Paul Stafford, from Wigton, not prominent local member Clive Jefferson who lives in Cockermouth.

The fact that BNP leader Nick Griffin was up in Cockermouth to support the campaign suggests that they’re taking this one seriously, and that Cumbria remains a key target for them.

Members of Maryport Against Racism with shortly be helping out locals to leaflet the ward, get in contact with us if you want to help with the campaign:

maryportagainstracism ‘at’ hotmail.co.uk

If you are a local BNP member or other assorted racist idiot, please follow these guidelines before trying to get information of what we’ve got planned out of us.

As reported on this site earlier the local BNP have sunk even lower than usual and posted details of anti-racist campaigners online, mainly photographs and videos of them handing out perfectly legal anti-BNP leaflets.

Now, the photographs have appeared on ‘Redwatch’, an online far right hitlist designed to intimidate opponents of racist groups in Britain.

Local BNP press officer Clive Jefferson carefully moderates his blog, censoring or removing even remotely critical comments, but allowed these comments:

“dudley said…
well how dusgusting can these people get posting images like that through letterboxes when children could pick it up.theres a site called http://www.redwatch.org.uk/index2.html who may like to publish those photographs.“

“Anonymous said…
Hey good research.Lets see some of the anti fascist red saddos on some posters or this blog.Then we know the scroats, and can have a little session.“

A charming bunch of people.

In theory, Redwatch acts as intelligence to enable members of the far right to attack and silence opponents.

Fortunately, Redwatch is run by idiots who probably couldn’t spell the word ‘intelligence’ and their information gathering doesn’t even extend to using the internet properly as underneath the photos it says:

Bad news for these freaks though, the BNP won the seat!

Wrong again Redwatch. We wish all our opponents were as stupid as they are though.

While you are more likely to be run over by a bus than experience any violence as a result of being on Redwatch, we advise all serious anti-racists and anti-fascists to be careful with their personal details.

The results from the local elections are in, and it’s good news for anti-racists in Cumbria.

The local BNP promised it would be a question of how many seats they would win not Carlisle, not if they would win.

They got lots of news coverage and carried out a huge campaign which saw their leader Nick Griffin visit the city, national mobilisations to leaflet all nine wards they stood in and canvassing in five wards they targeted.

Their local press officer Clive Jefferson even boasted on the day of the election:

I can honestly see no way in which we can be kept out of office.

We can see the way Clive, it’s by people not voting for you because we’re pleased to report that the BNP have not won a single seat in Carlisle. 

Not only that, but they didn’t even come close to winning a seat.

In 2008 they stood in four wards where they had previously stood in 2007. The result of all the hard work put in by BNP members is that in Botcherby their vote went down from 215 to 145, it went up by 10 votes in Harraby and it increased by 32 votes in St Aidan’s. The only place where their vote went up significantly was their target ward Currock, from 309 votes in 2007 to 420 this year.

Carlisle Against Racism should be congratulated for their campaign.

The results at the other end of the county were similarly unsuccesful.

We don’t know why Barrow BNP even bother. They stood two candidates this year, despite getting a poor result last year, in Ormsgill and they got a lower percentage of the vote than when they stood in Central ward at last years local elections.

They did increase the number of votes they got, Mike Ashburner for 100 votes last year and this year he got 184 while Eion McPoland got 136, but their percentage was lower.

This is no time to be complacent though, we’ve got a byelection coming up in Cockermouth and the campaign continues in Carlisle as one of their candidates dropped dead during the election, being in Cumbria BNP is bad for your health, with an election in the Upperby ward still to come.

If you want to help us out in any of these upcoming campaigns, then get in touch.

Still, well done to everyone involved in the campaign agains the racist BNP in Cumbria. Job done.

Voting in this years local elections is almost over and the results will be coming in during the night.

The insomniacs over at Lancaster Unity have promised live election coverage of results and news. We’ll post up the results from Cumbria, the British National Party are standing in Carlisle and Barrow, as soon as we have them.

The BNP are confident they’ll make a breakthrough and it looks likely in London where they just missed out on a seat in the Greater London Assembly by about 5,000 votes in 2004. But, they were confident last year and were rewarded with a poor set of results, ending up with less councillors than before the elections.

Once the results are in stay tuned for some level-headed analysis of whats happened and what we should do about it.

In the last few weeks, Carlisle Against Racism, helped out by people from Maryport, have put together an effective campaign against the racist British National Party in Carlisle, leafleting all nine wards they’re standing in and putting out a second leaflet the day before polling day in key wards.

How have the BNP responded to opposition and criticism?

Firstly with legal threats, and when this didn’t halt the campaign against them they took pictures of Carlisle Against Racism members, including children, and posted them on the internet. Local BNP blogger and press officer Clive Jefferson has also posted a video of their leafleters up on Youtube where other BNP supporters are happily providing their names and workplace details.

This behaviour is sick but this is normal politics for racist political groups who can’t tolerate any opposition or people disagreeing with them.

Within days of starting a campaign against racism and the BNP in Maryport, local campaigners found that their photos and details had been posted up on far right websites and were subject to a campaign of harassment and intimidation.

It didn’t work and we’re still here, and are more than happy to offer anti-racists in Carlisle any support they need as the BNP continue their campaign of dirty tricks.

A Happy St George’s Day to all our supporters and readers.

St George is a remarkable multi-cultural saint, England shares him with Aragon, Catalonia, England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Palestine, Portugal, and Russia

The real St George, who didn’t slay a dragon, was born in modern day Turkey to a Palestinian mother, but wasn’t Turkish either since the Turks didn’t arrive there until the 11th century. A strange symbol for England!

We’ve noticed that the BNP trying to capitalise on their two new parish councillors in Carlisle are going around boasting how they are elected. In fact in the election leaflet for Brian Allan he writes in his blurb “I am the elected councillor for Cotehill on Wetherall parish council”. Now correct me if I’m wrong but to be elected, doesn’t an election have to have taken place? In the case of all of Cumbria’s BNP parish councillors, none of them have faced an election but have been unopposed on councils which have always had spaces. Perhaps this is an insight into the BNP’s vision of democracy where you merely have to declare yourself elected.

This shows the BNP will say anything to mislead the public, they have not received the majority of the vote in any elections in Cumbria and just because they suggest they did doesn’t make it so.

The BNP are nothing but another bunch of anti-working class, lying, self-serving politicians who if given your vote will do nothing for there constituents.

If you even bother to vote in the elections, think twice before you give the BNP your X.

There is no evidence that new migrants are jumping the queue for council and housing association homes to the detriment of any other group, including white families, according to new research.

The study, published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Local Government Association, found that more than 60% of new migrants to Britain in the last five years are living in private rented accommodation, with most newly arrived migrants banned from access to social housing.

The study, carried out by the Institute for Public Policy Research, follows claims by the culture minister, Margaret Hodge, and others last year that the housing system gives priority treatment to recently arrived migrant families over the entitlement that others felt they had to resources in the community. The interim findings of the research, based on a snapshot of council housing allocations and a poll of local authority housing managers, says there is no evidence to suggest that the present system of social housing demonstrates measurable bias against any group, including UK-born nationals.

The IPPR study shows that out of the 10.1 million council and housing association tenants in Britain, 9 million are UK-born and just over 1 million were born outside the country. It adds that only 183,300 - less than 2% - of tenants arrived in Britain in the last five years and most of the 1 million are long-settled migrants who have been here for years and may have become British citizens.

The analysis of housing for new migrants to the UK who have arrived over the last five years, including those from Poland and other east European countries, shows 60% living in private rented accommodation, 18% owner-occupiers and only 11% allocated to social housing.

Most new migrants in the past five years, particularly those from the eight east European countries which joined the EU in 2004, are not eligible for social housing unless they have been resident in the UK and in work for at least 12 months. Any application they make must meet the same criteria of need as UK-born applicants.

According to the latest figures for 170,263 lettings in the social housing sector in 2006-07 in England, where the nationality of the named tenant was collected, less than 5% went to foreign nationals and less than 1% went to new migrants from eastern Europe.

The picture is confirmed by the results of a poll of 66 housing managers across Britain, of whom 74% said they believed that migrants had “not very much” or “no” impact on increased demand for housing in the social rented sector, while 66% said they had increased pressure on private rented accommodation.

A councillor in Cockermouth has resigned, so there will be a byelection in All Saints ward, which is mainly the Slate fell estate, sometime in the next month or so.

The BNP have announced they’ll contest it, so we’ll be active in the next few weeks as well.

Stay tuned.

 This is the frontpage of todays Daily Express in response to a study prepared for the Association of Chief Police Officers on immigration and crime.

The report actually says that immigration into Britain has not caused a surge in crime. The co-author of the report says:

“the evidence does not support theories of a large-scale crime wave generated through migration“

What the report does point out is that:

“While this country has accommodated this huge influx with little rise in tensions, in some areas sheer numbers, resentment and misunderstanding have created problems”.

What newspapers like the Daily Express say doesn’t make sense. They argue that Britain is being ’swamped’ by migrants and that migrants are bringing more crime with them.

Yet crime has been falling consistently for the last few years. Between September 2006 and September 2007 recorded crime fell by 9%, a greater fall than in previous years. In Cumbria 2007 saw an overall drop of 7.4% in crime, including a 20% reduction in anti-social behaviour, during a period when a lot of Eastern Europeans arrived in the county.