HOPE not Hate

Nick Lowles' assessment (on the HOPE not Hate site) of the national and London results makes for an interesting read. In relation to London he says this:

"So the BNP has one person on the London Assembly.

If someone had offered us this two days ago, coupled with a net gain of just ten councillors across the country, we would have jumped at it. The media's one-sided obsession with immigration and migration and in particular the BBC's and Channel Four's fascination with the anniversary of Enoch Powell, together with the obvious collapse in support for Labour, meant we entered polling day fearing the worst. Even the BNP was predicting 40 new councillors and three on the London Assembly.

That they didn't achieve this was down to the hard work of literally thousands of activists across London and the rest of the country. We have never had so many people involved in the anti-BNP campaign before. Against the odds, both political and climatic, decent people took to the streets and campaigned for HOPE not hate.

We suffered a few defeats but overall we held back the BNP, and in many areas we actually reduced their vote.

Even in London, their biggest prize, we succeeded. In 2004 the BNP polled 4.8%, just missing out on a seat by 0.2%. In the same election UKIP polled over 8%. Since 2004 the BNP has grown significantly in outer East London and generally become a household brand. With the collapse of UKIP we really believed that the BNP were on course for two, if not three, seats.

In the end they just got one. They polled 5.4%, hardly increasing their share of the vote. Obviously, the BNP getting anyone elected is bad but we can all be proud that we helped keep them to just that. Indeed, for much of the day we actually thought there was a chance that we were going to stop them altogether."

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Mary Mary - Can't Give Up Now.