BNP-supporting teacher described immigrants as 'filth'

A BNP member posted comments on the internet describing some immigrants as "savage animals" and "filth" while working as a technology teacher, a disciplinary panel heard today.

The General Teaching Council (GTC) was told that Adam Walker used a school laptop to access an online forum in which he claimed parts of Britain were a "dumping ground" for the Third World.

Mr Walker, who resigned from Houghton Kepier Sports College in Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, in 2007, is the first teacher to appear before the GTC accused of racial intolerance.

Opening the case against the former soldier, GTC presenting officer Bradley Albuery alleged that postings made by the teacher demonstrated views suggestive of both racial and religious intolerance.
Mr Albuery said Mr Walker used the pseudonym Corporal Fox to make the postings to a forum on Teessideonline, which addressed the popularity of the BNP, during February and March 2007.

In one posting, Mr Walker claimed the BNP had risen in popularity because "they are the only party who are making a stand and are prepared to protect the rights of citizens against the savage animals New Labour and Bliar (sic) are filling our communities with".
In another posting on the same day, Mr Walker wrote: "By following recent media coverage of illegal animals and how they are allowed to stay here despite committing heinous crimes, I am, to say the very least, disgusted."
Another posting claimed that some immigrants hated people who were white and had western values.

It is alleged that the views expressed in the postings constitute unacceptable professional conduct.
Concluding his opening statement, Mr Albuery said: "This case is not about the BNP or whether teachers should be members of that lawful party.
"This case is about the actions and behaviour of a registered teacher, using a school property on school premises in school time."
Mr Walker, from Spennymoor, County Durham, is alleged to have spent more than eight hours using the laptop for purposes not connected to his school duties.

The teacher, who worked at Houghton Kepier for more than six years, resigned after his headteacher asked IT staff to investigate his use of the internet.
The teacher's trade union representative, Patrick Harrington, told the three-member disciplinary panel that Mr Walker accepted he was wrong to use a computer to access Teessideonline during school time.

But Mr Harrington submitted that none of the terms used by Mr Walker had demonstrated racial or religious intolerance.
"To us, the subject matter of what he was doing is not relevant," Mr Harrington said.
"Immigrant is not a racial term. Immigrant is simply a description of people moving to one country from another country - immigrants comprise of all different races."

Many people objected to the fact that people were not deported after committing serious crimes, Mr Harrington said, claiming that assumptions had been made about Mr Walker's views because of his membership of the BNP.
"There is an underlying prejudice and assumption that he is thinking in a racial way," Mr Harrington told the panel.
In a statement read to the hearing, Mr Walker stressed that he had not communicated his political thoughts and beliefs to staff or pupils at Houghton Kepier.

His statement read: "I have always sought to bring out the best in my pupils.
"I have certainly never discriminated against an individual on grounds of race, faith or sexuality. Part of why I became a teacher is to help people overcome social disadvantage and reach their full potential."

Mr Walker, who lived in Germany, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel while serving in the armed forces, said many teachers used the internet for many different reasons.
"I do not deny that I used my computer to access the internet," he stated. "With the value of hindsight I now regret making any personal use of the internet during lesson time. I would like to apologise for it."

Mr Walker - who previously lived and worked as a teacher in Japan and married a Japanese woman - said his travels had led him to value the beauty and diversity of different cultures.
Commenting on the content of his postings, Mr Walker said he had been influenced by media coverage of a female PC shot dead by two illegal immigrants and the murder of British hostage Ken Bigley in Iraq.

"Looking back now I feel that I was unduly influenced by the hostile climate the media created," Mr Walker explained. "This led me to express intemperate views which lacked complexity and balance.

"I should have taken more time to think about the possible offence my words might have caused and I think I could have expressed myself more carefully and positively.
"I have never condemned all immigrants or asylum seekers. My comments relate to those I perceive as coming to our country and committing criminal offences or otherwise behaving badly.

"In many cases, I cut and pasted views from a variety of sources in order to provoke debate and these were not attributed.
"Had I been posting under my own name, I would have taken more case to distinguish between my own views and the views of others I was reposting."
24 Dash

PARTY DITCHES CANDIDATE OVER PRO-IMMIGRANT VIEWS (Sweden)

The nationalist Sweden Democrat party has jettisoned a candidate for election to the local council in Ljusdal in eastern Sweden after the renegade politician expressed support for a refugee centre in the town.

Fredrik Hansson was the Sweden Democrats’ sole candidate for election to Ljusdal's governing council until his comments led local leaders in Gävleborg county to withdraw the party's ballot list for the town. “His remarks contradict the party’s programme,” said Sweden Democrat county chairman Roger Hedlund to newspaper Ljusdals-Posten. Fredrik Hansson said the decision was laughable, arguing that further immigration is necessary if Sweden is to cope with the problems associated with an ageing population. “I thought I’d stir their macho pot,” said Hansson of his involvement with the Sweden Democrats. “Nobody told me what I could and couldn’t say,” he added. Roger Hedlund said the party would now consider drawing up a new ballot list for the local elections. “We have a working group of around ten people and should probably be able to come up with something closer to the election,” he said.


The Local Sweden

FAR-RIGHT BRITISH PARTY LICKS WOUNDS AFTER POLL WIPE-OUT

As the dust settles after Britain's election, the far-right British National Party, or BNP, is reassessing its strategy after its much-hoped for success turned into a spectacular defeat. After winning its first two seats in the European Parliament last year, the BNP had promised to create a "political earthquake" in the May 6 elections by winning its first member of parliament, or MP, in Barking, east of London. On the night, however, leader Nick Griffin did not even come close to unseating incumbent Labour MP Margaret Hodge - and the party lost all 12 of the local councilors that it won here four years ago. "You're not wanted here and your vile politics have no place in British democracy. Pack your bags and go," a defiant Hodge said in her victory speech. Their poor showing was a surprise and goes against a European trend - the far-right entered parliament for the first time in Hungary this year, holds power in Slovakia and Italy and contested presidential elections in Austria. But experts warn it is too soon to write them off, as the party won half a million votes nationwide, a tripling of its support since the 2005 election. "It certainly wouldn't be wise to be complacent about the BNP's demise," said Dr. Robert Ford of the University of Manchester. One reason for this is that the key concerns that drove the party's support show no signs of going away, in particular immigration, which the BNP has promised to halt and reverse with a voluntary repatriation scheme. National politicians avoid the issue - but Hodge has tried to tackle it ever since the BNP won its 12 council seats in 2006, as well as a perception among many working-class Britons that the Labour party has abandoned them. While she can do little about the influx of migrants, she assured voters she would address the perceived unfairness in the way they use public services, in particular social housing, and sought to listen to their other concerns. "Was I certain we would win? No," she told AFP - but hundreds of hours of campaigning, with the help of anti-fascist groups, ensured she took 54 percent of the vote compared to Griffin's 15 percent. The message she sent to her Labour party - currently embroiled in a leadership election after Gordon Brown stepped down - was that they had to engage with the BNP. "You can't beat them by ignoring them," she said.


In a radio interview shortly after polling day, Griffin admitted the party "took the most terrible battering" in Barking but blamed in part the "very high expectations" after the EU elections last year. The BNP campaign was damaged by the arrest of its publicity chief on suspicion of threatening to kill Griffin, and the taking down of the website by a disgruntled party member just two days before polling day. But Griffin also said Labour had put together a "fantastic" operation and said the BNP's trouncing must be taken as a "wake-up call." The party has a serious image problem, however. Despite Griffin's modernizing efforts over the past decade, the media and many voters still see it as racist and Ford warned this could prevent them ever winning power. "It's not that there isn't a potential support for the kind of politics that the BNP represent, it just looks increasingly unlikely that the BNP will be the party that successfully mobilizes that potential," he said. This view is reflected on the streets of Barking, where Rashid Aleem, 41, pointed to Griffin's appearance on a prime-time TV debate last year as the moment when it became clear what the party stood for. Although he cites immigration as a concern, he told AFP: "People saw that and realised he's using the influx of eastern European immigrants as a front for his real agenda, which is racist." Unemployed construction worker Guy Kerr, 47, admits he is the kind of person the BNP courts and backs their policies on more jobs for indigenous British workers and to pull troops out of Afghanistan. "But they're racist," he said, adding: "I honestly thought they would get in here and I'm glad they didn't."

Hurriyet daily news

Swedes more positive to immigrants: report

Swedish attitudes to immigration and refugee centre has become more positive with urbanites, women and young people among the most favourable, a new report from the SOM institute in Gothenburg shows.

The SOM survey, conducted in the autumn of 2009, shows that 36 percent of Swedes consider that there are too many foreigners living in Sweden. In 1993 the figure was 52 percent.

"Never before have Swedish attitudes been so accepting as their are now," Professor Marie Demker wrote in an opinion article in the Dagens Nyheter daily on Monday.

In 1993, 25 percent replied that they would not like an immigrant from another continent marrying into the family, this figure had dropped to 12 percent in the autumn.
"Despite the attempts to mobilize, groups which oppose immigration remain a peripheral sub-culture," Demker wrote.
Among the parliamentary parties, supporters for the Moderates are most sceptical while those who back the Green Party are the most enthusiastic supporters of immigration.

While support for the right of immigrants to freely practice their religion has not changed since 1993, and remains at around 40 percent among Swedes. Supporters of the Liberal Party (Folkpartiet) have however become less tolerant of immigrants' religious practice today than 17 years ago although it remains above average at 41 percent.
Supporters of the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), who strive to make immigration an election issue, show the lowest levels of tolerance towards both immigrants and refugee centres, representing a clear exception in the SOM institute survey.

Among SD supporters, 95 percent agreed with the statement that Sweden "should accept fewer refugees" compared to 46 percent of the population as a whole. 88 percent agreed with the statement that there "are too many foreigners in Sweden" as compared to 36 percent of the population as a whole.

Since 1993 SOM has monitored Swedish attitudes to immigration and refugee centres on six occasions. The surveys are based on a series of standardized so-called tolerance claims.

The Local Sweden

HOTEL FINED FOR GUEST SLUR AT DISCRIMINATION SEMINAR (Sweden)

The court upheld a district court ruling in favour of the Discrimination Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsman - DO) who had taken up the woman's case, and ordered the hotel to pay 8,000 kronor ($1,000) in compensation plus interest and court costs. The woman, whose is member of Sweden's Roma community, was attending the conference at the Elite Grand Hotel in Norrköping in eastern Sweden when she was repeatedly asked by staff as to why she was there. According to court documents three different members of staff approached the woman and asked her whether she was a guest at the hotel. At one point she was informed that the coffee which she was helping herself to at the time was for the consumption of paying guests only. The woman was in Norrköping to attend a conference addressing the subject of ethnic discrimination and she later reported the hotel to DO. The hotel responded, in its defence, that it had previously had problems with Roma and thefts, an explanation the hotel later changed, arguing instead that staff are instructed to check the identity of all guests that they don't immediately recognise. "It is almost impossible to imagine that hotel staff in practice approach every single guest that they do not immediately recognize," the court stated in response to the hotel's explanation. The court furthermore ruled that the Grand Hotel had not sufficiently been able to prove that the woman had not suffered insult or injury as a result of the discrimination and thus remained liable to pay the damages awarded by district court. The Elite Grand Hotel Norrköping's general manager, Krister Eriksson, told The Local on Friday that he was unwilling to comment further on the case.


The Local Sweden

ANTI-ISLAM MOVEMENT REACHES POLAND

European anxiety over the presence of Muslims in traditionally Christian societies has arrived in Poland, where the capital has been blanketed in anti-Islamic posters and several hundred protesters recently showed up to denounce the construction of a mosque. Demonstrators waved signs proclaiming “Stop Islamization,” galvanized by posters put up around Warsaw showing a woman clad in a black chador, with menacing minarets that looked like missiles peering out behind her. Counter-demonstrators, separated by a line of police, denounced them as “fascists” and “racists.” What makes the demonstration surprising is that unlike western European countries where there are millions of Muslims, Poland, a country of 38 million, has only about 30,000 Muslims. But at a time when Switzerland has voted to ban the construction of new mosques, when France and Belgium are considering restrictions on women covering their faces in public, and Italy’s nationalist Northern League wants to keep mosques at least a kilometer away from any churches, Islam as a political issue has arrived in Poland. “We wanted to start a public debate,” Piotr Slusarczyk, one of the demonstrators' leaders, told the Rzeczpospolita daily. “We are warning against radical Islam in Europe.” Samir Ismail, a Kuwaiti Palestinian doctor who has lived more than 20 years in Poland and is the leader of the newly formed Muslim League, said that for the capital's 10,000 Muslims, the mosque would simply be a place to pray. He pointed out that the community has been careful not to offend, opting for a 16-yard high minaret instead of the 25-yard one approved by the building permit. “We don’t want to create misunderstandings,” he told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. “We are aware that we have a problem with being accepted.”

The friction around Poland’s still tiny Muslim minority is a sign of the country’s growing normalization and integration into the European Union. Immigrants were almost unknown in communist times, but as Poland becomes wealthier, it is starting to attract outsiders, from Ukrainians working on construction or as domestic help, to Muslim Chechens escaping Russian repression in their homeland. In one sense, Poland’s growing diversity is a return to the past. Before World War II, Poland was a multinational stew, with ethnic Poles making up only about two-thirds of the population. The country had large numbers of Ukrainians, Jews and Germans, as well as a small Muslim minority — Tatars descended from the hordes of Genghis Khan who had terrorized Europe in the Middle Ages. Several thousand Tatars had settled in Poland and Lithuania in the 14th century, and, despite losing their language, never lost their religion. World War II left Poland a very different country. The Jews had been mostly murdered by the Germans, and most of the survivors left after the war. Germans were expelled, and by shifting Poland’s borders hundreds of miles to the west, there were no large Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities. After 1945, Poland was almost completely monoethnic — one of the only minorities left were the Tatars, who have two villages in northeastern Poland, each with a small mosque. New Muslim migrants, like Samir Ismail, have very little in common with the Tatars, who have been well integrated into Polish life for centuries — they even had their own cavalry unit before the war. Ismail and other Muslims formed their own organization in 2003, designed to advocate for the interests of new immigrants, including the need to build themselves a place to worship. From that time they have been trying to build a mosque in Warsaw with the help of Saudi sponsors. As the project has neared completion, it has begun to arouse the ire of some Polish nationalists, who fear that their country could soon have the same issues with Muslim minorities as countries in western Europe. “We have the example of other countries where the idea of freedom of religion is abused,” said Slusarczyk. But Poland’s laws do not allow for any religious discrimination. “The decision permitting this investment has been taken long ago,” said Tomasz Andryszczyk, a spokesman for the Warsaw city government. “What are we supposed to do? It would be bad if this project ran into any troubles.”

The Global Post

Nick Griffin to step down as leader of the BNP in 2013 ? ? ?

Lancaster Unity has posted an interesting item today stating that Nick Griffin has stated to the BNP advisory council that he intends to step down from his Herr Leader position in 2013.


Could this be real intention or could it be that Nick been watching too much Black Adder and hatched a (not so) cunning plan?

Personally I doubt very much that Griffin will goose step away that easy!

Anyway the full story can be read by clicking HERE