Teaching Unions in the UK are currently campaigning to get a website closed down. The website is run by supporters of the British National Party. What the website does is to publish the name and address of teachers who have criticised the BNP. In some cases the website also includes photographs of the teachers listed. The tactic is to intimidate teachers into silence. Several of these teachers have been the victims of attacks after their names and addresses have appeared on the website.

If you want to find out if you appear on this website type in Redwatch and your name into Google UK.

I will be disappointed if I don't

It was reported that anti-fascist campaigner Alec McFadden, president of Merseyside TUC, has been stabbed in the face after his details appeared on the Redwatch website. As I reported earlier, this website includes the names, addresses, photographs, etc. of teachers who have been involved in the fight against fascism.

A delegation of anti-fascist campaigners will meet Home Office ministers today in order to demand that the website is removed. In the past the government has claimed that it cannot take action as the website is hosted in the US.

We should not be surprised to learn that fascists are violent anti social thugs.

It's still there I notice...

Like Andy, I would not be surprised to find myself there (as well as in Special Branch files and/or MI6).

I can't remember at this stage the proportion of Bolsheviks with a criminal record for 'nefarious purposes' in 1917. If one is 'doing one's job' as a lefty, presumably one comes to be noticed by the forces of reaction.

If being a socialist became a crime (one might add "officially"!) how many could honestly say they stand a chance of being convicted?

During the recent local election in Redbridge, the BNP published a leaflet attacking Andrew Beaumont, head of Woodford Green High School, for supporting Black History Month. The leaflet claimed that the head was a “dripping wet liberal” and the school was guilty of “brainwashing” pupils with a “factually incorrect” syllabus. The BNP leaflet claimed that the content of Black History Month was “factually incorrect, wrong, brainwashing at its worst (mental child-molestation) and needs to be dropped forthwith”.

The seat was in a high-income area and the BNP got 800 votes compared to the Conservatives 1,014. The real problem is in working-class areas where the Labour Party virtually does not exist as a result of Blair’s right-wing policies. My mother lives in a council flat in Basildon. It has always returned a Labour candidate. In the local elections in May, the Labour Party was unable to find a candidate willing to stand. I expect the seat will go to the BNP at the next election.