A MAN who teaches English as a foreign language is to stand as a Parliamentary candidate for the British National Party.
Tony Avery, who teaches English as a foreign language, is expected to stand as prospective parliamentary candidate for Enfield North and as councillor for Turkey Street.
According to the BNP website, Mr Avery has worked as a garage manager and "spent several years in Mayfair, looking after 300 company accounts, including many of London’s foreign embassies."
He says he has worked for 12 years for councils in London, although does not explain what his role was.
He said: "I trained as an ESOL teacher in 2005, but found it difficult to find community organisations willing to accept me. They preferred their own nationalities.
"I believe that today’s fashionable left-wing view of equality reeks of hypocrisy: treating certain ethnic groups
preferentially is a flawed philosophy, and can be divisive in itself."
He has also edited several videos for BNP TV.
The BNP, which restricted its membership to people of "Caucasian origin" until 2009, originally formed as a splinter group from the National Front.
It’s leader, Nick Griffin, appeared on BBC’s Question Time last year, when he insisted he was not a Nazi.
He defended being pictured with David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, which has carried out racist attacks across parts of America.
When asked why he had previously played down the Holocaust, he said: “I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial.”
Tony Thake, of the Enfield Island Village Residents’ Association, which was built on the site of a former munitions factory, said: “I have no doubt that people believe the BNP is a racist organisation.
“This is a former industrial area where there have traditionally been a lot of working class. There are some generations whose fathers had good industrial jobs. You can convince people sometimes the reason they aren’t getting a house or job is all the fault of immigrants.
"About a quarter of people here are in social housing so they are much more likely to be targeted by the BNP. Some residents feel they have been in queues for long periods of time.
"But a lot of ethnic minorities have been here for many generations, so we’ve really moved on from dividing people – they are as British as anybody else.”
A snap poll of residents in Turkey Street, conducted by the Enfield Independent, showed that two were sympathetic to the idea of a cap on immigration and said they would therefore consider voting BNP, while six others were against to varying degrees.
Nick Lowles, editor of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, who is also a Chase Side resident, said: “Certainly the BNP are picking up a protest vote because people are fed up with the mainstream political parties. But it is a dangerous protest. The presentable face of the BNP is not the true face of the BNP. You just have to look at the leader Nick Griffin, who is a hardline fascist. What he says now about the Holocaust is that he can’t talk about it. Well you either believe the Holocaust happened or you don’t.
“The BNP divides communities, it is no answer to the problems people face.”
In response to the news, Unite Against Fascism North London is planning to hold stalls and leafleting campaigns in Enfield, with a public meeting on April 18 at an as yet undecided venue.
The final list of Parliamentary candidates will be announced on April 20.
Mr Avery could not be reached for comment.
Endfield Independant
