A British National Party prospective parliamentary candidate in Shropshire claims he has been excluded from a General Election hustings in the county.
Phil Reddall said he was the only candidate contesting the north Shropshire seat not to have been invited to tomorrow’s meeting in Oswestry organised by the National Farmers’ Union.
But the NFU said today that it had invited to the meeting those parties which it believed had the “strongest agricultural agenda”.
The meeting is being held at the Pedigree pub in Shrewsbury Road at 2.30pm.
The parliamentary candidates for Labour, Lib Dems, Conservatives, UKIP and the Green party have been invited to the meeting.
Mr Reddall, of Cheswardine, near Market Drayton said: “We are not asking to be treated in any way different, we are simply asking for a level playing field, to be treated in the same way as everyone else.”
A spokesman for the National Farmers’ Union, Oliver Cartwright, said: “The meeting was organised for our membership to discuss farming issues with prospective candidates.
“As a membership organisation we have the right to invite whom we wish to our meetings. We have got a limited time for the event and had to invited those we believe to be key players, those who include agriculture on their agendas and manifestos.”
Mr Cartwright said that as well as the three main political parties the Green party had been invited because it was heavily interested in agricultural and environmental issues.
He said UKIP was involved in agriculture at a EU level.
Shropshire’s BNP spokesman, Mr James Whittall, said the NFU meeting was not the first that had excluded the BNP.
“Some areas are inviting us to meetings but certain pockets are not.”
He said the BNP had been invited to church meetings in the Wrekin and Telford constituencies but those invitations had later been withdrawn when some other candidates had refused to share a platform with the BNP candidates.
Earlier this week the Lichfield Diocese wrote to churches urging them not to invite the BNP to meeting that it was organising.
shropshire star
