This item from the Searchlight archive, an editorial published in April 2006, is self-explanatory.

In the early 2000s the British National Party were doing increasingly well in local elections in certain parts of the country. The fear was that they would break through on a national scale.

In 2004, Searchlight launched Hope Not Hate as a mass-community-based campaign determined to put a brake on their progress.

The 2006 local elections were a key moment in that campaign which culminated, several years later, in a complete and humiliating defeat for the BNP.

Editorial

THis month16 different editions of the Searchlight tabloid newspaper are being distributed across Britain. This is our main contribution to the campaign to stop the BNP making gains in the local elections on 4 May.

We believe these newspapers are the best we have produced. This is no doubt because much of the material comes from local activists who are keen to drive the BNP out of their area.

It is because our material is produced with local activists – the people who know best what is happening on the ground – that we believe it is particularly hard hitting.

The BNP has invested much time and effort in trying to convince the British public – with some degree of success – that it is not a nazi party but merely concerned about putting “British” (white) people first.

But while the BNP presents one face to the British public, Nick Griffin and his coterie went on a jaunt to the United States to attend the American Renaissance conference where they showed what they are really like. As can be seen from the article in this month’s magazine, the BNP rubbed shoulders with David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and a whole host of Holocaust deniers, antisemites and racists.

That is the real face of the two-faced BNP, an organisation that sees itself as part of a worldwide racist struggle but which is pursuing a particular soft-edged strategy which it believes suits the British palate better than crude racism.

And it is the reality of what has been described as the new face of the BNP – though it is no longer new – that we have to combat with effective strategies. Labelling the BNP “Nazi” and “racist”, important as that is, is not enough to defeat them. We need real answers to the real issues that affect people’s lives.

Of course the BNP’s answer is to “racialise” every issue. Crime, lack of housing, whatever the topic, the BNP knows whom to scapegoat. So when the BNP talks about preferential treatment of black people and suchlike we must be able to answer with facts because it is the absence of an alternative voice that leads people to believe the BNP’s lies.

The BNP often campaigns on specifically local issues which is why leaflets and other material produced by local anti-fascist groups, with local knowledge, are particularly important.

You can read Searchlight’s build-up cpverage of the 2006 elections here: