The following has been recieved from Hope Not Hate.
"In the next few months the British National Party will be seeking to win control of its first council, gain dozens of new councillors and even its first Member of Parliament. If we’re going to stop them we’ll need to roll out our largest and most sophisticated campaign yet.
We’ll need to will mobilise thousands of people, raise money, distribute millions of pieces of literature, talk directly to voters in our key wards and harness new technology. It is going to be a tough fight but one, with your support, that we can win.
The BNP threat
The BNP is likely to contest over 200 parliamentary seats in the General Election and up to 1,000 council seats. The main threat is in Barking & Dagenham, where they could take overall control of the council, and Stoke-on-Trent, where they could become the largest single party – and we fear that Nick Griffin could win the parliamentary seat in Barking.
The HOPE not hate campaign has identified 102 council wards in 31 local authority areas that are at risk from the BNP. Just over half of these risk wards are in just 10 local authority areas. The concentration is even starker when one counts the most at risk wards. All but three of the 25 most at risk wards fall in 10 local authority areas, as do 38 of the 50 most at risk wards.The high risk local authorities, where the BNP pose a threat in multiple wards, are Barking & Dagenham, Stoke-on-Trent, Thurrock, Nuneaton, Sandwell, Amber Valley, Burnley, Barnsley, Rotherham and Leeds. But there are other areas, such as Wigan, Tameside and Bexley, where the BNP will be pushing strongly for the first time.
However, amidst the BNP threat we have an opportunity to roll them back. Over half of BNP councillors are up for re-election this May. That means that if we can run an effective campaign we can actually remove a large swathe of BNP representation in local government. It is going to be a hard fight but it is one that we can win.
Barking & Dagenham will be our national priority. We simply cannot allow the election of a BNP MP or for them to take control of the council. While we are massively increasing capacity in the local area we will be giving our supporters ways they can help.
To defeat the BNP we have devised our largest and most sophisticated campaign plan to date."
As you can see, Hope Not Hate are setting out their strategy for the forthcoming period and would like feedback from people as to what they are willing to do to support the campaign. They have prepared a short on-line survey for the collection of this information which can be accessed here.
Please take a moment or two to fill it in.
