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%

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!

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.

Simon Sheppard jailed for nine months in latest ‘opinion crime’

Yorkshire-based author Simon Sheppard was jailed yesterday for the latest in a series of ‘opinion crimes’.

A judge at York Crown Court sentenced Mr Sheppard to nine months imprisonment after a jury convicted him of using “racially aggravated words” to a Sky engineer fitting a satellite dish to the next door flat in Selby, North Yorkshire.

The words were not aimed at the engineer, but referred to Mr Sheppard’s complaints against his black neighbour. The jury acquitted Mr Sheppard of waging what the prosecution had called “a two-year racial harassment campaign”.

Mr Sheppard is perhaps best known for his attempt in 2008 to claim political asylum in the USA after an earlier conviction under Britain’s infamous race laws. Neither that nor this week’s conviction would have amounted to criminal offences in the USA, where Mr Sheppard’s alleged ‘criminal’ conduct would be covered by the Constitution’s protection of free speech.

 

‘Liberal’ thought police crush local democracy in Bradford

Former MP David Ward has been banned by the national leadership of the Liberal Democrats from contesting his old constituency Bradford East at the General Election on June 8th.

Ward was defeated by Labour in 2015: two years earlier he had served a three-month suspension from the Lib Dems for anti-Zionist comments including calling Israel an “apartheid state”.  He had posted on Twitter in July 2013: “Am I wrong or are am I right? At long last the Zionists are losing the battle – how long can the apartheid State of Israel last?”

Responding to that suspension, Ward had been defiant: “I will not apologise for describing the state of Israel as an apartheid state. I don’t know how you can describe it as anything else. I am genuinely quite shocked at the reaction to the kind of thing many people say.”

Earlier this week the local Lib Dem branch in Bradford East selected Ward as their candidate for this year’s election, but responding to complaints from ultra-Zionist Tory rivals such as Theresa May and Sir Eric Pickles, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said today: “I believe in a politics that is open, tolerant and united. David Ward is unfit to represent the party and I have sacked him. …I am fully aware of the comments David Ward has made in the past and I find them deeply offensive, wrong and antisemitic.”

This latest move indicates a complete Lib Dem surrender to profoundly illiberal political correctness, following their suspension of Luton Lib Dem candidate Ashuk Ahmed yesterday.  Ahmed had made a series of anti-Zionist Facebook posts in 2014, including the statement: “Zionists control half the world, we are the other half. So let’s make a lot more noise.”

Is Tim Farron blind in one eye? How else can we explain his insistence on disciplining pro-Palestinian members of his own party, but his failure to condemn a rival party leader – Theresa May – for her blatant support of Zionist terrorism during a speech in 2015.  Mrs May (then Home Secretary) praised commemoration of Yom Hazikaron, the day on which “We remember the sacrifice of those who fought to achieve and protect that independence.” This means most notably those Zionist terrorists who died fighting against British forces and Arab civilians during 1945-48, and includes those who were executed for atrocities such as the murder of Lord Moyne and his driver Lance Corporal Arthur Fuller.

 

UKIP crash to double defeat in Rotherham

UKIP crashed to a double defeat in two Rotherham by-elections yesterday. This is of course the council that was disgraced by its multiple failure to deal with the scandal of child abuse by Pakistani-origin residents. So bad was the scandal that Whitehall commissioners were appointed to oversee with most of the council’s affairs, and every councillor had to face re-election last May, leading to the election of 14 UKIP councillors as the main local opposition to Labour.

Yet far from building on this breakthrough, the party (now under the supposedly more northern-focused leadership of Paul Nuttall) seems to be in reverse gear.

In Dinnington ward, UKIP councillor Ian Finnie (first elected when he gained the seat from Labour in 2014, then re-elected in second place as part of last year’s all-out Rotherham election) had stepped down from the council claiming ill-health and family issues.

Labour hammered UKIP in the consequent by-election.

ROTHERHAM Dinnington (Lab gain from UKIP)

VJESTICA John (Labour Party) 670
HUNTER Lee James (UKIP) 303
MIDDLETON Christopher Norman (Conservative) 238
SMITH David (Independent) 232
HART Jean (Independent) 180
SCOTT Steven (Independent) 81
FOULSTONE Charles David Dowsing (Green) 78
THORNLEY Stephen James (Liberal Democrats) 75

The other by-election was in Brinsworth & Catcliffe ward, where the infamous Cllr John Gamble (later of the NF and EFP) was elected for the BNP in 2008.  This ward went two Labour, one UKIP at last year’s elections.  One of the (White) Labour councillors was forced to resign before Christmas after being found guilty of a sexual assault – nothing to do with kids this time: he ‘groped’ a female colleague at an official function.  We assume alcohol was involved.

One might have thought this situation was made for UKIP, but again they polled very badly.  Surprisingly the Lib Dem won by a landslide: apparently he’s a well known local doctor and they did one of those typical intensive Lib Dem local campaigns.  Labour didn’t help themselves by putting up a (female) Asian candidate in a 90% White ward!  Fair enough, she had won the ward in 2012 (when the main opposition was the BNP, who were damaged by the Gamble fiasco and generally dying).  But in 2016 she was the one out of three Labour candidates who didn’t get in: UKIP beat her to get the third spot.  I assume she will now retire from politics…

ROTHERHAM Brinsworth and Catcliffe (Lib Dem gain from Lab)

CARTER Adam Jonathon (Liberal Democrats) 2,000
AHMED Shabana (Labour Party) 519
WEBSTER Steven (UKIP) 389
OLIVER John Lester (Conservative) 91
WHYMAN Rebecca Louise (Green Party) 30

NF’s Richard Edmonds to contest Batley by-election

Richard Edmonds of the National Front will contest the parliamentary by-election in the West Yorkshire constituency of Batley & Spen.  Polling day is October 20th.

Mr Edmonds began his involvement in British nationalism following an impressive NF result at another famous by-election, at Uxbridge in 1972 where the NF polled 8.7%, convincing many patriots (including Richard) that they represented a serious alternative to our corrupt and treacherous political establishment.

Some years earlier Richard graduated with a first class honours degree in Electronic Engineering. After working as a schoolteacher and later with the telecommunications company Cable & Wireless, he devoted a large part of his life to nationalist politics, including most of the 1990s as proprietor of a nationalist bookshop and party headquarters in Welling.  He achieved the best racial nationalist result of the 1992 General Election, polling 3.6% in Bethnal Green & Stepney.

During the early 2000s Richard returned to teaching for a few years, before rejoining the struggle to reclaim Britain for the British, as a National Front activist.

Launching his campaign earlier today, Richard Edmonds pointed out that “one quarter of all the births in this country are to mothers themselves born overseas, …it is time and it is legitimate to put the interests of our people first.

“It is time for a British voice to speak up loud and clear: Put the British people First. That British voice is the voice of the National Front.”

Click here for further information about the National Front and Richard’s campaign.

 

Bradford by-election challenge

Marsha Singh, the Labour MP for Bradford West, has triggered a parliamentary by-election by announcing his resignation due to ill-health.  This turns the spotlight on the most Asian-dominated city in England, and poses a challenge to the BNP and the various factions seeking to replace it.

Bradford West is a very diverse constituency, stretching from the city centre with large numbers of students (more than 10% of the electorate), through some of Bradford’s main Asian ghettos (now more than half of the electorate), out into the semi-rural hinterland where most voters are White and there is potential nationalist support.

Local millionaire Paul Cromie tapped some of this support as BNP candidate for Bradford West in 2005, saving his deposit with 6.9%.  By the time of the 2010 election (when the BNP candidate was Jenny Sampson) this support had halved to 3.4%, partly due to unfavourable boundary changes but also affected by splits within Bradford BNP.  The then newly formed Democratic Nationalists put up Neil Craig, who polled 1.1%, while UKIP also fought Bradford West for the first time, polling 2.0%.

Since 2010 the BNP has weakened further to the point of virtual collapse, while the Democratic Nationalists have grown – so it will be interesting to see whether local nationalists will now decide to unite behind a DN candidate for the by-election.

Whatever happens it is particularly crucial that there is some sort of nationalist campaign, as the present unfavourable boundaries are scheduled to change again in the near future.  Though the by-election would of course be on the existing boundaries, planned changes for the next general election would see the Queensbury ward brought into Bradford West, as well as White wards from neighbouring Shipley, while the heavily Asian and student wards of City and Manningham would move into a new Bradford Central & East constituency.  Queensbury was once one of the strongest BNP wards in the country, though its two councillors Paul and Lynda Cromie have now left the BNP and sit as independents.

If these changes go through, the new Bradford West will be a prime target for any viable nationalist party at the next general election.

For once Labour might have even more serious problems than nationalists.  Bradford West is one of the top ten most Muslim constituencies in Britain, but it has never had a Muslim MP.  This is no coincidence.  When far left MP Max Madden retired before the 1997 election, amid the usual reports of Muslim “community leaders” trying to fix the selection for one of their own, Labour’s bosses put in their own anti-Muslim fix.  Local councillor Zulficar Ali had been nominated by the two largest wards, but was excluded from the shortlist.  Max Madden attempted to reverse his retirement and make a comeback as a “unity candidate”, alleging that a secret “United Front of Pakistani Muslims” had been formed to ensure a Muslim candidate won, something he described as “fundamentally undemocratic and offensive”.

Another local Labour Party activist said: “It’s got nothing to do with Old and New Labour or party policies; it’s all about clans, castes and religion.”

The selection was eventually won by Marsha Singh – a Sikh!  His community represents only about 1% of the electorate in Bradford West, and there are well known cultural tensions between Sikhs and Muslims, not least the frequent tendency of Sikhs to enjoy more than the occasional drink.  (Mr Singh has retired from Parliament after an unspecified illness, having not appeared in the House since April last year.)

Conservatives tried to exploit Labour’s problems over ethnic politics by fielding a Pakistani businessman, Mohammed Riaz, who later served as adviser on Islamic affairs to the Conservative Party leadership.  Mr Riaz said of Labour:
“The political correctness of the Labour party has totally failed minority communities.  Far from helping them it has made them the target of the indigenous population of this country, making them believe they have received preferential treatment when that is not the case.”

Riaz succeeded in denting Labour’s majority and taking a number of city council seats for the Tories.  Both the major parties have a tough decision: whether to select Pakistani candidates to target voters in the existing Bradford West, or whether to keep half an eye on the future Bradford West and select White candidates.  One very likely Labour candidate is Imran Hussain, who represents Toller ward in the constituency and is currently deputy leader of Bradford City Council.

Either way there is potential for further fragmentation and ethnic independent candidates.

State of the Movement 2011

An extensive analysis of the state of the nationalist movement following the May 2011 elections has been published online and will be covered in a forthcoming issue of Heritage and Destiny magazine.

This article by Heritage and Destiny assistant editor Peter Rushton uncovers the extent of the crisis that has now derailed the British National Party as a serious electoral force.  BNP councillors and candidates across the country have now paid the price for years of incompetence, corruption and authoritarian factionalism by their party chairman Nick Griffin.

Click here to read the full article.

Mr Rushton concludes:

A new nationalist coalition will need to adopt the following as absolute essentials, the sine qua non for nationalist success and the very opposite of the Griffin approach.

• Nationalist parties must prioritise training and support for councillors.
• Nationalist parties must demand the highest standards of behaviour from party officials and candidates for public office.
• Nationalist parties must harness the talents of the best available individuals in our ranks.  The cult of the leader is far less important than the need to build a successful leadership team.

Richard Edmonds has pointed the way forward.  It is for other leading nationalists inside and outside the ranks of the BNP to decide how they can best contribute towards the rescue of the movement.  I strongly suspect that the BNP is holed below the waterline, and that either constitutional finagling or financial collapse will intervene to prevent Richard Edmonds and his team from completing their rescue operation.

If I am right, then senior figures in the BNP should right now be preparing clear statements that they are prepared to stand alongside Richard Edmonds and his team, either in a rescued and rebuilt BNP (which I regard as an almost impossible proposition) or in a new post-Griffin coalition.  The need for such a clear statement is urgent.  If nationalism continues to drift through the summer, there might be little left to rescue of the party that elected two Euro MPs in 2009.

State of the Movement 2011 is online here.

BNP hammered in Barnsley

Barnsley BNP – which in 2009 polled 16.7% across Barnsley at the European elections, helping to secure the election of Andrew Brons MEP – was crushed at the Barnsley Central by-election on March 3rd.

BNP candidate Enis Dalton polled just 6%, narrowly saving her deposit, but had to watch UKIP run away with the glory of taking second place to the inevitable Labour victor.  While the BNP vote fell from 3,307 (8.9%) to 1,463 (6.0%), UKIP’s vote increased from 1,727 (4.7%) to 2,953 (12.2%).

The tragedy is that a good BNP candidate was sabotaged by her own party’s leadership, which is in the process of destroying its Yorkshire region, once the jewel in the party’s crown.

Barnsley is not the sort of town where you would expect UKIP to defeat the BNP.  Admittedly UKIP polled 18.7% in Barnsley at the 2009 European elections, but this was across the entire borough rather than just Barnsley Central.  This week’s parliamentary by-election, by contrast, was in the strongest BNP area of the town.  Moreover UKIP used to poll well in European elections – for obvious reasons – but fail to register in local and Westminster elections where their key issue has less resonance with voters.

That seems to have changed during the last year or two, and the biggest single reason for that is the failure of Nick Griffin to take the BNP forward.  In fact he has taken the party backwards, with his disastrous party management, his weak performance on Question Time, and his factional spite towards anyone who dares to disagree with him.

On the same day as Barnsley Central, there was a local council by-election in Walkden North ward, Salford.  This time the BNP was beaten not only by Labour and the Conservatives, but finished behind the English Democrats.  The EDs polled 7.0%, well ahead of the BNP’s 5.2%.

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