A telling result in a historic Rotherham council ward
There have been some doubts as to whether Labour’s revival under Sir Keir Starmer would extend into White working class areas of the North, and tonight’s by-election gain for Labour in a working-class Rotherham council ward hasn’t quite resolved those doubts.
It now seems pretty clear that Sunak’s Tories are in big trouble in the ‘red wall’ (formerly solid Labour areas where the party declined sharply in or before 2019). But neither Reform UK, nor any of its civic nationalist rivals, nor (needless to say) any racial nationalist party, has yet even laid the foundation for a serious electoral challenge any time soon.
Tonight Labour gained Keppel ward, Rotherham, from the rebranded local branch of UKIP, the Rotherham Democratic Party,
For our readers, this is a ward that will evoke poignant memories.
The late Marlene Guest fought Keppel ward three times for the BNP, polling 16.4% in 2004, then finishing a close second to Labour in 2006 and 2007 with 27.7% and 28.5%. A few years after the collapse of Griffin’s party, UKIP were the beneficiaries, gaining the ward in 2014 and 2015, and holding on to two of its three seats in the 2016 all-out election.
Following Rotherham council’s well publicised problems and reorganisation, Labour took two of the three seats in May 2021, but the third was retained by one of the surviving UKIP councillors now rebranded as a Rotherham Democrat.
This Rotherham Democrat was thrown out for non-attendance at the end of last year and his party didn’t even field a candidate in this week’s by-election.
Neither was there a candidate from any other civic nationalist party, though an ex-Labour councillor stood as an independent and the Yorkshire Party (regionalist populists) had a candidate who took 15%. The Brexit Party polled 17.2% in the Rotherham constituency in 2019, but its successor Reform UK again showed no interest in contesting a local by-election, even in such a promising area.
Labour ended up with a majority of 300 tonight, with an Asian Liberal Democrat in a surprisingly close second. The Tories also put up an Asian candidate and slipped to fourth place with a truly appalling vote, down from 24% to 5.8%.
Lab 36.1% (+4.6)
LD 21.6% (+14.7)
Ind 18.5%
YP 15.2% (+3.5)
Con 5.8% (-18.2)
Grn 2.9%
Stretford & Urmston by-election: another episode in the slow death of Faragism
The result of the Stretford & Urmston parliamentary by-election was declared a few minutes ago. Predictably it resulted in a massive majority for Labour, but for H&D readers the more interesting aspect was another shockingly poor result for Reform UK, the latest vehicle for the political ideas of Nigel Farage, who was once among Europe’s most successful populist leaders.
Farage was most famous for his decade as leader of UKIP. He had a year out of office from 2009-2010, but was otherwise leader from 2006 until the Brexit referendum victory of 2016. Having made a huge contribution to the UK voting to leave the EU, Farage returned to electoral politics from 2019-2021 as leader of the Brexit Party, so as to ensure that the political establishment was unable to frustrate the referendum result.
In 2021 the Brexit Party was rebranded as Reform UK and Farage retired in favour of his close political ally Richard Tice, but he has remained a powerful voice in support of the party and has hinted that he might return to the arena at the next general election.
The problem is that Reform UK (despite being hyped recently by academics and journalists) seems to have very little public support and little ideological coherence.
At yesterday’s by-election in Stretford & Urmston (a socially and racially divided constituency west of Manchester), Reform UK’s candidate Paul Swansborough polled only 3.5% (650 votes), an equivalent percentage but far lower numerical vote than the Brexit Party achieved in the same constituency in 2019: 3.5% (1,768 votes).
At its peak in 2015, UKIP polled 5,068 votes (10.9%) here.
This is the sixth successive parliamentary by-election at which Reform UK have lost their deposit, despite in this instance spending lavishly on their campaign and busing in activists from elsewhere in the region.
What makes it far worse is that the Tory vote predictably collapsed at this by-election, but disillusioned Tories stayed at home, unpersuaded by Reform UK even as a protest vote option.
One insuperable problem is that UKIP and the Brexit Party had a clear message that attracted large numbers of otherwise politically diverse voters: i.e. leaving the European Union.
That battle has been won – not even the most diehard pro-European nor the most paranoid Brexiteer believes that the UK will re-enter the EU in the foreseeable future. The issue is now settled, and the issues on which Reform UK is choosing to fight are mostly ones that cannot possibly enthuse the White working class who delivered the Brexit victory.
Reform UK are essentially a post-Thatcherite, right-wing version of the Tories – tax cuts, shrink the state, free market capitalism, ‘Singapore on Thames’.
They talk a good fight about immigration, but their devotion to international capitalism means that at root their ideological commitment is to the very force that drives migration and ‘One Worldism’.
In short, they have nothing to offer to White working-class voters, and unlike the Brexit Party are unable to disguise that fact. Moreover many voters are waking up to the reality that Brexit is failing to deliver the changes that were once expected, especially regarding immigration.
Civic nationalism, Brexitism, Faragism – all these populist forces are now dead or dying. It remains to be seen whether racial nationalism, which unlike Faragism is a coherent programme for national renewal, can revive and unite behind a serious political party. The British Democrats are on the way to achieving that, just as Patriotic Alternative are on the way to creating a broader challenge outside electoral politics, but there is a very long way to go before we can say that racial nationalism in the UK is back on its feet.
Sir Henry Wilson honoured on centenary of his murder
A great British hero was belatedly honoured this week, a century after his murder, by the unveiling of a plaque at the House of Commons and a ceremony at Liverpool Street railway station.
Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was shot dead by IRA assassins outside his home in Eaton Place, Belgravia on 22nd June 1922. Two hours earlier – in full uniform but armed only with a ceremonial sword – he had unveiled a war memorial at Liverpool Street, and had no police or other bodyguards on his return.
Wilson had served the British Empire in various quarters of the globe. For most of his life he bore severe facial scars incurred when (armed only with a bamboo cane) he tackled axe-wielding bandits in Burma.
And his political courage was equal to his physical courage. At the start of 1914 he was one of the most prominent of the senior officers prepared to defy Asquith’s Liberal government when it was prepared to betray Ulster to Irish ‘Home Rulers’. Wilson and others made it clear that if (or rather when) Ulstermen resisted such betrayal, the British Army would not be prepared to take up arms against patriots in order to deliver a political surrender to traitors.
The ensuing ‘Curragh Incident’ or ‘Mutiny at the Curragh’ prevented such a betrayal (although more recent governments in London have done their best to complete the sell-out).
In 1921 Lloyd George’s postwar coalition government suddenly resumed a policy of surrendering the Union to Irish terrorists. Wilson – though at that stage a soldier rather than a ‘democratic’ politician – was regarded as the possible leader of a ‘real’ Conservative opposition, and in preparation for such a role he became an MP for the Ulster constituency of North Down.
Despite (or perhaps because of) his own distinguished war record, Wilson was no ‘Little Englander’, but a bold visionary: a staunch defender of both the Union and the Empire, but someone with close ties to European leaders including the French and Spanish governments, and an advocate of a merciful and rational peace with the recently defeated Germans.
A year before his murder, Wilson had a private meeting with King Alfonso of Spain where they discussed the possibility of an Anglo-Spanish alliance (to be the basis of a broader European alliance) against the growing power of the USA. Unlike the rabid Germanophobes who infested the Foreign Office, he viewed Germany as a crucial potential ally and bulwark against the aggressive schemes of newly Bolshevised Russia.
In 1922, it would not be unreasonable to view Sir Henry Wilson as a potential British Mussolini (who became Italian Prime Minister four months after Wilson’s assassination) or Miguel Primo de Rivera (who came to power in Spain in September 1923, backed by King Alfonso): someone who in the national and imperial interest was prepared to sweep aside shabby parliamentary manoeuvres and compromises. Or what his enemies would have viewed as a potential ‘dictator’. In fact arguably the only realistic potential ‘dictator’ Britain ever had during the 20th century.
So it’s not surprising that there have been many ‘conspiracy theories’ about Wilson’s death.
Many (then and now) suspected that the notoriously unscrupulous Prime Minister Lloyd George and his cronies were happy to see his assassination.
What we do know is that two IRA assassins were lurking at the street corner as the Field Marshal’s taxi approached his home. Their first shot missed. Then, as one of Wilson’s biographers Basil Collier puts it:
“At that point he made a brave man’s blunder. He could have run into the house and saved his life. He might even have scared the men away by shouting at the top of his voice…But he was still the Henry Wilson who had faced the bandits in Burma with a stick. He did not retreat into the house. He did not shout for help. He drew his sword and faced his enemies. They fired again quickly. Then seeing him fall, they ran away. He tried to speak as he was lifted up, but the words would not come. In a few minutes it was over. A man who understood him wrote his epitaph when he said that even in his death, he showed he was a soldier.”
A new biography of Wilson has just been published, and will soon be reviewed in Heritage and Destiny.
Today we salute the memory of a Great Briton.
Conservative Future?
England’s most racially divided borough might soon see the first niqab-wearing Conservative councillor.
Fajila Patel is contesting the Bastwell & Daisyfield ward of Blackburn with Darwen borough council in North West England. In 2011’s census the equivalent ward was 85.3% Muslim. Its inhabitants are from varying backgrounds in the Indian sub-continent, some originating in Pakistan but others in India.
According to that 2011 Census, 7.1% of households in the borough had no-one who spoke English “as a main language” – and in Bastwell ward this figure was 26.1%. The main languages spoken in Bastwell other than English are Gujarati, Punjabi and Urdu.
Last year Mrs Patel’s husband – taxi driver ‘Tiger’ Patel – won the neighbouring and similarly Asian-dominated Audley ward, after the campaign video below. These two wards form the core of Blackburn’s Asian population which has expanded into numerous other areas of the town during the decades since Asians first arrived in the borough in the 1960s.
As with many other old industrial towns in the region, including Oldham and Preston, Asians first arrived to work in the declining cotton mills and other manufacturing industry, whose owners liked these immigrants because they would work for low wages and were happy with unpopular shifts such as night work.
When most of this industry disappeared, the Asian communities typically moved into taxi-driving and the retail and food industries, but also experienced high unemployment and crime.
Politically they were exploited by the Labour Party, who treated them as clients who were dependent on the state’s largesse and would therefore have to accept Labour’s ultra-liberal ideas on social issues, many of which are anathema to conservative Muslims.
Typically Labour chose to promote very Westernised, ‘feminist’ Asian women who were in no way representative of their communities, and this led to a backlash. ‘Tiger’ Patel defeated one such very ‘modern’ Muslim Labour woman in Audley ward last year.
The Conservative Party has cynically struck a deal with hardline Muslims in these areas. There could be two defeats for Labour in their former Asian heartland: Mrs Patel stands a good chance of repeating her husband’s victory, while in Audley ward there could be a second shock. Incumbent councillor Yusuf-Jan Virmani is standing for re-election as an independent, after being expelled from Labour last year for alleged ‘anti-semitism’.
What’s certain is that neither Labour nor the Conservatives will speak for Blackburn’s indigenous British. H&D‘s editor Mark Cotterill was elected as a councillor in the mainly White Meadowhead ward of Blackburn in 2006, but since he left the area and moved to Preston, no racial nationalist candidate has come close to being elected.
The Conservative Party’s adoption of an extreme Muslim agenda in Blackburn highlights the desperate need for a party that will address the concerns of the indigenous British. Across the whole of England this year there are very few such candidates. H&D will report on their campaigns, on the results achieved, and on the prospects for a long-overdue realignment of pro-British politics.
‘Holocaust’ memorial appeal judge is wife of leading Jewish politician
Regular H&D readers will know that there has for several years been a plan to build a gigantic ‘Holocaust memorial’ in the heart of Westminster – close to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey – and taking over one of Central London’s few green spaces, Victoria Tower Gardens.
H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton submitted a detailed report in 2019 to the original Westminster City Council planning enquiry, which went on to reject the planned memorial.
However government ministers appointed a central inspector who override the decision of local planners.
Today that central government decision is being challenged in court, reopening the question of whether this monstrous ‘memorial’ will ever be built.
And we shall of course report on the progress of today’s appeal.
However one strange fact is worth pointing out immediately. The judge in this High Court Appeal is Mrs Justice Thornton – better known as the wife of former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.
In 2015 her husband publicly supported the initial plan for a London Holocaust Memorial – and now Mrs Miliband (aka Mrs Justice Thornton) is sitting in judgment on the final version of the same project. We have no reason to believe that Mrs Miliband/Thornton is anything other than totally honest and unbiased, but can this be right, when justice must be seen to be done?
Ed Miliband’s grandfather Sam was a committed communist who fled to London as an illegal immigrant from wartime Belgium. He had earlier fled from his Warsaw birthplace after betraying his own country to fight alongside Trotsky’s invading Red Army during 1920. See our report a decade ago.
Jewish Chronicle boasts of “hounding out” NF chairman from London street demo
Tony Martin, chairman of the National Front, was “hounded out” of a public event in a London street on Monday night, according to a report in the Jewish Chronicle.
An ultra-Zionist lobby group called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) was staging a demonstration outside the BBC, accusing the broadcaster of “bias” against Jews.
In his capacity as a photojournalist and video blogger, Tony Martin has frequently attended and filmed public demonstrations. The CAA were holding a public demonstration in the open air just off Oxford Street – one of the busiest streets in the world – and had absolutely no right to dictate who did or did not film them.
Nevertheless it was entirely predictable that the arrogant CAA chief executive Gideon Falter should assume the right to dictate to native Britons, and Falter duly played up to the stereotype, parroting the far-left antifa slogan “racist scum off our streets”.
It’s not clear from the film published by CAA and the Jewish Chronicle whether threats were used by CAA security to remove Mr Martin, but what is clear is that he showed considerable courage in venturing into this Zionist mob alone and unprotected.
H&D readers will know the wailing that would have resulted had the boot been on the other foot: in other words had a Jew or other ‘anti-fascist’ been ‘hounded out’ of a public event on a London street by the NF or any other racial nationalist, or for that matter by any anti-Zionist group.
Congratulations to Tony Martin for getting the enemy to show his true face so blatantly!
The liberal race industry in action: Yorkshire cricket in the dock
Not content with the wave of wokeness that has drowned top-level English football, the race relations industry has now moved on to our true national game – cricket.
Footballers at Premiership grounds across the country ‘took the knee’ yet again this week in a gesture that deliberately overshadows and insults the sacrifices of previous generations whom we are supposed to be honouring in minutes of silence, ‘Last Post’ buglers, and poppy displays this week and next.
The ‘Unknown Soldier’ now counts for little compared with the all-too-well known American criminal George Floyd.
But the big headlines on UK front pages as well as sports pages this week have been about a previously obscure cricketer, Pakistani-born Azeem Rafiq, who played 39 first-class matches for Yorkshire between 2008 and 2018. He took 72 first-class wickets for the county at an average of 39.73, and had just one five-wicket haul in his career. For those H&D readers who don’t understand cricket, that adds up to a modest if perfectly respectable career achievement. By all accounts, he is a player who didn’t quite live up to his youthful potential.
Yet Rafiq’s dossier of complaints about ‘racism’ at Yorkshire have plunged the county cricket club into a media storm and consequent financial crisis. The chairman has resigned and been replaced by former Labour minister Lord Patel, but it seems that the Rafiq saga will rumble on for years to come and become a cricketing equivalent to the endless White abasement that has followed the virtual canonisation of Stephen Lawrence and George Floyd.
While we can’t comment on the full story (since neither we nor any of the eager media commentators actually know the content of the controversial dossier and report), H&D readers can draw their own conclusions from the fact that almost a year ago Rafiq began to be represented by a celebrity PR and legal team with long experience in promoting previous woke heroes.
This includes Australian ‘human rights lawyer’ Jennifer Robinson from Doughty Street Chambers, whose notable former members include Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Ms Robinson is perhaps most famous for representing another media heroine, actress Amber Heard in her successful libel battle against ex-husband Johnny Depp.
In the Heard case as now in the Rafiq case, Ms Robinson worked alongside the PR consultancy Powerscourt, whose director Mark Leftly boasted: “Team Amber, Team Azeem – these are great causes and we look forward to raising awareness of this case in both the media and in parliament.”
Whether or not these are “great causes” is a matter of opinion, but one thing’s for sure: it’s not cricket!
Trans row splits Green Party: ultra-woke leader quits
Sian Berry resigned today as co-leader of the Green Party a few days after the resignation of her colleague Jonathan Bartley. Ms Berry is probably the second-best known Green in England (after the party’s sole MP Caroline Lucas) and was her party’s candidate for Mayor of London in 2008, 2016 and 2021, finishing third with 7.8% this year. She has been a member of the Greater London Assembly since 2016.
Her resignation was prompted by a bitter internal row within the Green Party over “trans rights” – specifically whether a man should be allowed to define himself as a woman even if he has not had “gender reassignment” surgery.
Ms Berry (in common with most of the ultra-woke left – though why this should even be a left v right issue is a mystery to H&D) is a fanatical supporter of trans rights: so far as she is concerned, people can define themselves as male, female, or something indeterminate – regardless of biological facts.
Her problem is that the Greens (being very ‘democratic’) elect their party spokesmen, so she is unable to choose her own leadership team.
In her resignation statement, Ms Berry writes of “an inconsistency between the sincere promise to fight for trans rights and inclusion in my work and the message sent by the party’s choice of front bench representatives.
“This inconsistency has left me in a very difficult position. I can no longer claim that the party speaks unequivocally, with one voice, on this issue.
“And my conscience simply cannot agree with the argument that there is anything positive in sending these mixed messages, especially when the inclusive attitudes of our membership and wider society are clear.”
While Ms Berry was careful not to name names, H&D understands that the split centres on Shahrar Ali, a former deputy leader of the party who stood for the leadership last September against Ms Berry and Mr Bartley.
Shahrar Ali (who has a doctorate in philosophy from London University) is now the Green Party’s spokesman on policing, and it appears that due to his taking an opposing line on ‘trans’ Ms Berry found it impossible to tolerate his presence in the leadership team.
Dr Ali issued a statement last July entitled “What is a Woman?” in which he dared to write: “A woman is commonly defined as an adult human female and, genetically, typified by two XX chromosomes. These facts are not in dispute nor should they be in any political party. We campaign for the rights of women and girls to be treated equally on the basis of the protected characteristic of biological sex, as enshrined in the Equality Act 2010.”
While he went on to defend the rights of those who had gone through “gender reassignment”, this statement was interpreted by the ultra-woke as “transphobic”, apparently because Dr Ali seemed not to recognise the “rights” of people to make up their own gender regardless of biology.
It’s not the first time that Dr Ali has been in trouble for speaking his mind. In 2018 the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the Jewish Chronicle reported a speech he had made nine years earlier, describing it as an “offensive” anti-semitic “rant”. Dr Ali eventually won a ruling in his favour from the press regulator IPSO.
Anne Marie Waters contests Batley & Spen by-election
A month after her defeat in a Hartlepool council election Anne Marie Waters, leader of the For Britain Movement, is contesting a parliamentary by-election in the West Yorkshire constituency of Batley & Spen. Nominations closed earlier today and were published a few minutes ago.
Ms Waters is one of sixteen candidates at the by-election. No explicitly racial nationalist parties or individuals are standing, and though there are important policy differences between Ms Waters and most H&D readers, she is clearly the most credible candidate at this particular by-election from our movement (broadly defined). Her campaign unfortunately wasted no time making its first serious error – publicising an endorsement from the thoroughly discredited crook and Israel Firster ‘Tommy Robinson’ – but readers are likely to find that Ms Waters is still the best option on the ballot paper from a pro-White standpoint.
Batley & Spen was held by Labour’s Tracy Brabin until she was elected last month as the first Mayor of West Yorkshire, prompting this by-election. Ms Brabin’s predecessor was the murdered MP Jo Cox.
It seems likely that one campaign issue will be the controversial suspension of a Batley Grammar School teacher for showing pupils a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.
Ms Waters is likely to be the most credible anti-Islamist candidate, while former MP George Galloway (standing for his new ‘Worker’s Party’) will seek to split the Muslim vote, hitherto mainly loyal to Labour.
There is also a bewildering variety of what might be termed Brexiteer, populist, anti-lockdown, or anti-woke candidates including UKIP; the UKIP splinter Heritage Party; the SDP (once centrist but now a populist, pro-Brexit rump); the English Democrats; Yorkshire Party; and Freedom Alliance.
The money-grabbing scam run by Jim Dowson under the name ‘British Freedom Party’ is still not registered as a party, so its nominal ‘leader’ Jayda Fransen is standing as an Independent. She faces compensation for the ostentatiously pious vote from the Christian Peoples Alliance.
In addition to the pro-Brexit leftist Galloway, a leftwing ecologist party called Alliance for Green Socialism is standing, though the actual Green Party candidate withdrew after a Twitter ‘scandal’. And the list is completed by the three main parties, plus the fanatical Remainers of ‘Rejoin EU’.
The Batley & Spen by-election is on July 1st: results will appear on this website, and the July-August edition of H&D will include analysis of how the result affects the development of a post-Brexit, post-Covid, pro-White movement in the UK.
County council updates
Following his 16% vote in yesterday’s Preston City Council election, H&D editor Mark Cotterill today polled 8.8% in the Lancashire County Council for Preston South-East division.
Due to redrawing of council boundaries, this was always going to be a lower vote for a racial nationalist independent. Preston SE includes a very large Asian community which tends to vote as a block for Labour candidates – even Jewish ones! (Jenny Mein has held the seat for Labour for many years, and was part of an unusual tradition of Jewish female leaders of Lancashire county council, following Louise Ellman and Ruth Henig.)
Many of the White voters in Preston SE are in a very depressed council estate, where turnout is traditionally low (exacerbated by Covid restrictions on polling stations and campaigning).
In the circumstances 8.8% was a respectable result, especially as once again (in line with a nationwide trend this year) pro-Brexit voters leaned towards Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.
We await further results during the day from nationalist candidates nationwide including Dr Jim Lewthwaite of the British Democratic Party, contesting Wyke ward, Bradford.
And of course there will be a full analysis and results service on this site and in the forthcoming May-June edition of H&D.
full result – Preston SE division, Lancashire County Council
Mein (Labour) 67.9%
Walmsley (Conservative) 18.3%
Cotterill (Independent) 8.8%
Duke (Liberal Democrat) 4.9%
