18th May
Love Music Hate Racism concert at Sussex University.

Students at Sussex have organised an event that features bands, Djs and other acts from 12.pm to 8pm on Monday. It will be an excellent day, come and enjoy the music and stop at the LMHR and UAF stalls while you are there.

21st May
Mass leafleting at Brighton Station

Assisted by the South East region PCS and others Mid Sussex UAF will be holding a mass leafleting at Brighton Station from 5.30 –7.00pm the aim is to have as many people attend as possible to create a memorable and eye-catching event that will send out our message as widely as possible. Meet in front of the station gates, we will be leafleting in the area outside the station property. Please join us for this important event.

26th May

Lewes Trades Union Council is running an anti- BNP public meeting at the All Saints Centre, Lewes 7.00pm Dealing with the fight against fascism both past and present speakers include representatives of the International Brigade and Unite Against Fascism. There is a short film showing as well.

29th May
Mass leafleting at Haywards Heath Station

Richard Trower, one of the BNP’s key figures in the South East is standing for election to WSCC in Haywards Heath. As a key commuter town this is another opportunity not only to damage the vote of a leading member of this unpleasant party, but to get information widely spread across the south east by creating a spectacle event. Meet from 5.30, outside Railway premises.

Stalls.

Mid Sussex UAF are already holding a stall every Saturday from 2pm in Churchill Square Brighton. Please come along and help, or say hello, have a look at their selection of literature, badges, shirts etc.

Special guests and speakers include:

• Ken Livingstone
• Jon McClure (aka 'the Reverend' from Reverend and the Makers
• Glyn Ford MEP
• Billy Hayes (CWU)
• Megan Dobney (Southern & Eastern TUC)
• Dr Abdul Bari (Muslim Council of Britain)
• Wes Streeting (NUS)
• Edie Freedman (Jewish Council for Racial Equality)
• Weyman Bennett (UAF and ANL)
• Sabby Dhalu (UAF and National Assembly Against Racism)
• Martin Smith (LMHR)

Tickets will cost £20 for Organisation delegates, £10 for inviduals, Student/Unwaged £3 - 100 free student places available on a first come first served basis.

Last year’s Unite Against Fascism conference was extremely successful with over 500 people attending the event. This year’s conference will be an important event that will enable discussion on strategies that have been successful in defeating fascism and help us organise activity across the country to stop the BNP in these elections. There will be a number of practical workshop sessions dealing with ways of opposing fascists in the workplace and wider communities.

Full details here

Online registration will be available shortly via the above link.

Their plan had been for BNP members to meet in a car park in Crawley to get directions to the secret venue for their party, but these plans were thwarted in two ways.  Firstly the secret venue was made aware that the booking they had was for the BNP using a false name and cancelled the booking.  Secondly, local anti-fascist campaigners gathered in the car park for the benefit of those partygoers who had not got the message about the change of plans.

Having shown that this corner of Sussex does not want to be associated with the BNP, the protesters heard some short speeches from local MP, Laura Moffatt, national LMHR organiser, Lee Bellingham, and representatives from Wealden UAF, the national UAF, National Union of Students and the trade unions.

Wealden UAF would like to thank the NUS, trade unions, LMHR, UAF and all the other organisations and individuals who turned out to show their support tonight.

THIS SATURDAY 13th DECEMBER
GATHER 6pm, B&Q CAR PARK, London Road, Crawley, West Sussex RH10 6WD

PEACE AND GOODWILL TO ALL IN THE FESTIVE SEASON – BRING CANDLES, BANNERS, WHISTLES AND FESTIVE SONGS

Anti-fascists in Sussex have already stopped two BNP meetings/socials going ahead in our area this week – they had to cancel their Hastings meeting on Monday after the venue pulled following pressure from local LMHR supporters, the local MP and local councillors. Then on Wednesday a magnificent 300 people turned out to occupy the planned redirection point for the relaunch of a Brighton & Hove BNP branch – the BNP have postponed this meeting.  Join us on Saturday to make a hat-trick of triumphs for everyone opposed to racism and fascism in Sussex.

Called by Unite Against Fascism and Love Music Hate Racism, supported by National Union of Students, PCS London& SE Region, Medway Trades Council, Merton Trades Council, NASUWT, Kingston/Sussex/Kent Uni's NUS; Brighton/Hastings/Portsmouth/East Kent/Surrey LMHR groups; Kent/Brighton/Wealden/West Sussex Coast UAF groups; Worthing Against Racism, Kent UNISON, Sussex Univ UNISON

WWW.UAF.ORG.UK  0207 833 4916

WWW.LOVEMUSICHATERACISM.COM  020 7801 2781 // 07838 156

Crawley News story

The part of Surrey that Wealden UAF covers includes Redhill, Merstham, Reigate, Oxted, Horley, Felbridge, Lingfield… that sort of area: the postcode areas RH1 to RH9 and RH19.

Within that area there are a mere 34 members listed, living in 28 households.  10 are listed as activists and, again, the presence of the few BNP members known to us lends some weight to the authenticity of the list. The breakdown is:

It looks like the same picture as in Crawley and Horsham - a few empty vessels making a lot of noise. But the warning signs are there too.  We have seen how much attention the two activists and four others in Merstham have managed to attract: imagine what they could do with a whole ten members…

So memberships seems to be at similar levels to Crawley, but a lower proportion are active.  This could be because they are more spread out and have fewer expectations of success, and because they are concentrating their efforts more on neighbouring Crawley.

Again, this pitiful level of membership (no wonder Griffin was less than pleased about the leak!) should not tempt us into complacency.  We have seen how just a few people can give the appearance of greater numbers if they are fanatical and well-organised- but these low numbers should give us some comfort.

It looks like the list produced is fairly accurate and quite up-to-date.  Certainly everybody who we know of appears on the list, although it appears from comments elsewhere that the list also contains non-members - those who have left the party, those who never joined but made donations, children of party members who may not even know they are on the list, etc.  The point is that this list probably represents the maximum membership and real figures could well be lower.

In the RH10 and RH11 postcode areas there are 53 names.  Three of them live in places like Crawley Down and Copthorne so there are 50 'members' in Crawley itself.   Of those 50, 14 are tagged as activists.

The spread of members is as follows:

So, Furnace Green supplies 22% of the BNP's membership in Crawley.  Looking in a bit more detail we see that 8 of those names come from just two households -so there are only five houses containing BNP members in Furnace Green.

Looking further afield we can see that just four families represent nearly a third of the BNP membership in town (32%= 16 people).  Apart from Furnace Green no neighbourhood contains more than half a dozen members, and there is not a single member in the whole of Maidenbower.

That is the good news: the British National Party do not actually have the level of support they would like us to think that they have.  Through a combination of fanaticism and hard work by a few of those members,  imported literature in large amounts, and possibly help from neighbouring towns they do try, and largely succeed in making it look as if they have more support than they actually do.

And that is the bad news.  They may have fewer members than any of the three main parties in the town, but those few are extremely efficient, extremely committed, extremely effectiv…  and just extreme really.

The rest of us can take some comfort in the confirmation that BNP membership is a lot lower than they would want us to think, but we must not let that be an excuse for complacency: what they lack in numbers they make up for with effort.

Some similar analysis of other parts of the Wealden area to follow.