Archives for April 2010

The East London Parliamentary constituency of Barking is a key political battleground.

Labour Tourism Minister, Margaret Hodge, is in what she described to me as the toughest political fight of her life.

Both the Conservative candidate, Simon Marcus, and the Liberal Democrat candidate, Dominic Carman, say their job, as much as anything in Barking, is to ensure votes don't go to the fourth candidate Nick Griffin of the British National Party.

They are all trying very hard to get their voice heard.

On what they described as their "day of action" last Saturday it was clear that the BNP were putting a huge part of their national effort into this one constituency.

A lorry with giant posters circulated the constituency declaring that troops should be brought home from war and patriotic songs blared from loudspeakers; Land of Hope and Glory, Jerusalem.

One curious thing I noticed though was the ever present figure of a man in army style desert fatigues. He was constantly being ushered into shots by BNP organisers.

He was there in the background when I interviewed Nick Griffin, he was prominent when Nick Griffin very briefly joined canvassers on the Parseloe Estate and ever present when group photographs were being taken.

Frankly this figure's presence struck me as rather odd. A serving soldier risked being court-martialled. A veteran would usually be happy to wear a blazer and beret.

It appeared to me to be either a clumsy message about the BNP's support for the serving soldiers or the sign of a militia man wanting to make a different point about British politics.

By Monday other people were getting worked up about this fellow too. The Army said that a serviceman should not wear their uniform at a political rally. In fact it was against MOD rules to do so. It has to be said this so-called uniform could quite easily have been picked up at an army surplus store.

I spoke to Adam Walker the wearer of the battle fatigues. He told me he had served in the Hussars in a tank regiment for five years including during the first Gulf War. BNP organisers tell me he was wearing the fatigues in "solidarity with our troops".

Adam Walker is not a serving soldier and hasn't been for a number of years. In fact it turns out Mr Walker has been a technology teacher.

He is currently suspended from Houghton Kepier College near Sunderland, whilst the General Teaching Council consider allegations against him for using school computers to look at extremist literature and engage in racially and religiously intolerant chatter online during school-time. Mr Walker refutes the allegations.

More important perhaps is the fact that Mr Walker is also a BNP Prospective Parliamentary Candidate 260 miles away in the North East of England.

You'd never have known it from the soldiering part he was playing on Saturday. Should PPCs be joining in other people's campaigns dressed in battle fatigues?

All four candidates in Barking support the troops serving in the Middle East.

The BNP ruse, it seems difficult to characterise it as anything else, seems a rather crude way a mixing fact with fiction on the campaign trail.

What it is about the BNP that makes them think it is acceptable to hoodwink potential voters by dressing up in army attire?