BNP in turmoil as members row about ‘ethnic’ candidate: Selection of
Sharif Gawad provokes uproar among ‘whites-only’ hardcore
The Guardian – United Kingdom; Apr 08, 2006
MICHAEL WHITE MARTIN WAINWRIGHT
The British National party was riven last night over its decision to
select the grandson of an asylum seeker to fight a seat in next
month’s local elections.
Sharif Abdel Gawad, whom the BNP describes as a “totally assimilated
Greek-Armenian”, was chosen to stand in a Bradford ward as part of the
party’s biggest ever electoral push.
The decision has provoked a backlash among BNP hardliners who
described Mr Gawad as an “ethnic” who should be barred from the party
on race grounds. One regional organiser responsible for the
candidate’s selection is thought to be under pressure to
resign. Another regional organiser is leading the dissent against the
party leadership, saying it had betrayed the members and would confuse
voters.
On online noticeboards used by BNP supporters, scores of contributors
denounced Mr Gawad’s selection. They said the BNP should remain an
all-white party and the decision to appoint him was taken over the
heads of rank and file members.
Yesterday the BNP admitted it had received a number of calls from
angry members and that a hardcore had refused to accept Mr Gawad’s
candidacy on race grounds “even when it was explained that he was not
a Pakistani Muslim”.
BNP spokesman Phil Edwards said those members who refused to accept
the candidacy had no place in the party.
The rift follows a dispute in 2004 when the party leader, Nick
Griffin, tried to force through rule changes allowing non-white people
to join the BNP. After widespread opposition from members, the
leadership was forced to abandon the proposals.
The BNP says Mr Gawad was named after the actor Omar Sharif because
his mother was a fan, and that his grandfather was an Armenian
Christian who fled to Britain as a refugee.
But opposition to his selection has filled extremist websites. “It
won’t deter me from doing what’s needed for the election, but we have
been let down,” read a posting on the Stormfront bulletin board.
“The BNP is the last bastion of hope for our people, they too have
been let down if just anyone is allowed to join. Ethnics have every
single opportunity afforded them, and now they even get to join the
BNP. Just like immigration into this country, we were not
consulted. When an ethnic wants to join, it should go to a membership
vote. We’re the ones who do all the work, we should have a say.”
Another read: “No one is listening, and the worst calls I’ve had today
are demanding a leadership challenge.”
Several postings said a senior Yorkshire figure had been forced to
resign over the issue, a claim the BNP denied last night.
Nick Lowles, from the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, said the
row, which came as the BNP announced it is to field a record 357
candidates on May 4, went way beyond the usual opposition within the
party. “The modernisers are trying to make the party seem more
acceptable, more mainstream but for most BNP members race is the
bottom line, it is a party for white people and that’s that.”
In 2004 the BNP fielded 313 candidates and received around 800,000
votes. Next month it aims to double its current tally of 20 elected
councillors and four parish councillors.
MPs and activists say it is posing a serious threat in up to 80 wards,
many of them in five areas in Yorkshire, the Midlands and east London
where immigration issues mingle with those of industrial decline.
According to Dagenham’s Labour MP, Jon Cruddas – a former adviser to
Tony Blair – the BNP is trying to appeal to working-class Labour
voters who who feel disenfranchised by New Labour’s “middle Britain”
strategy, as well as rightwingers.
In industrial areas where coal, steel, textiles or pottery jobs have
gone – or shrunk in the case of Dagenham’s once-mighty Ford car plant
in which 3,000 now work instead of 25,000 – the BNP issues leaflets
with slogans such as “Shut Down by the Tories, Abandoned by Labour,
Only the BNP Will Stand Up for British Workers”. The leaflets depict
the BNP as untainted by old, rotten political ways, willing to stand
up for ordinary people and say what they think.
Nick Cass, a former Yorkshire and England squash player who is now the
BNP’s full-time Yorkshire organiser, echoed the theme: “We need a few
scallies on the council who’ll say, ‘I’m not having this.'”
But opponents say the BNP’s record as effective councillors is poor,
although another form of record has tarnished some prominent
members. In each of the last two years, a candidate in the Kirklees
area has been convicted of drug offences.
Labour says it is taking the BNP threat seriously. Dudley North MP Ian
Austin, who faces BNP candidates in five of his seven constituency
wards, has started organising trips to Auschwitz for students. An
anti-racist festival is planned for April 30.
Counter-measures including heavy leafleting and canvassing have also
proved effective in Dagenham. Here the BNP won a ward from Labour in a
byelection in 2004 with 52% of the vote, campaigning on the shortage
of affordable housing and an “Africans for Essex” claim – part of what
Searchlight calls the Big Lie technique – that foreigners were being
subsidised to move in. Labour later regained the seat.
Keighley, where Mr Griffin did badly at the general election, saw a
further BNP setback last month when it lost the safest of its four
seats on Bradford council to an outraged local mother, Angela
Sinfield. She stood for Labour after her campaign against the grooming
of young girls for prostitution, including her own daughter, was
hijacked by the BNP, which portrayed the pimping, wrongly, as
organised by Asian gangs.
Sharif Abdel Gawad, a ‘totally assimilated Greek-Armenian’ and ‘not a
Pakistani Muslim’, the BNP insists