If you are unaware of the Red, White & Blue festival, the best way of describing it would be an annual Hate Event.  Previous years have featured guests from across the entire far right movement, including american racists, french & german Neo-Fascists and others.

A Strong Turnout on the day of Anti-Fascists will help the locals show that the BNP are not welcome.

The BNP tell Fascist Lies

We Fight back and organise.

Help prove that this is true, and come along to codnor on the 15th.  Buses are being run from all over the country, so you have no excuse for not being there.

http://www.uaf.org.uk/resources/0907UAF_Codnor_leaflet_A5_web.pdf

http://nobnpfestival.wordpress.com/

http://www.uaf.org.uk/resources/0907Codnor_coaches_list.pdf

LMHR & UAF are not organisations that only campaign during election season, they do work all year round to ensure that the Fascists and hypocrites within the BNP do not get elected. This is a constant struggle, as anyone who was involved in the election campaigns in may will tell you. 

Love Music Hate Racism needs all of our support, there is so much you can do,  organise an Event, go to an event, spread the word to colleagues friends and neighbours. Every single thing you do helps to fight the Far Right.

NASUWT in the eastern region are looking at the possibility of running the LMHR - Trade Union training course, organised by Dave Smith & ian Solomon of Love Music Hate Racism.  This is a way of ensuring that our members have all the skills and knowledge they need to be able to help stop the rot of the BNP, and also to be able to pass this knowledge on to their pupils – the future voters. If We can show todays Teenagers the right path to head down, hopefully when they get to voting age, they will mark their cross for anyone but the BNP

If anyone is intereted in the LMHR training course, if you contact LMHR, or dave smith (Both contact details are on www.lovemusichateracism.com and get your trade union to back it.

On Another note, I got back from the Latitude Festival yesterday, after an exhausting, but exhilerating 4 days of music, comedy, literature and theatre. Was good to see te Bars being run by the Workers Beer Company, where bar workers get free entrance, secure campsite, free meals, and alcohol tokens, in return for a 6 hour shift each day, with the wages going to organisations they represent. The Trade Union movement was represented in force!

Back on the 11th May, the BNP held their European Election Manifesto Launch at the Thameside Theatre in Thurrock – which has historically been a hot bed for BNP activism. 3 Days later, the NASUWT eastern region sponsored a Love Music Hate Racism gig at the same venue. When we set up the event, we were unaware that the thameside was where Nasty Nicks Nazi party were going to be holding their launch, in fact we only found out on the monday night when it was all over the national news.

The Event ran well, with the only downside being a turnout smaller than we would have hoped for, however the general feeling was that we had wiped the taint of the BNP away from the Venue, the Town, the County and the Region.

NASUWT and other trade unions cannot take all of the credit for the lucky failure of the BNP to gain any elected position in the Eastern region, whether on County Councils (they stood a candidate in every seat for the essex county council) or for europe, however I think that all of the Trade Unions in the Area did do a large amount of work in stopping them. I Would especially like to thank Geoff Webb, the PCS Make your vote count co-ordinator for the eastern Region for all the invaluable help and support he gave us, to Dave Smith, the LMHR convenor for Essex for organising the bands, and to Sally Carpenter, of V-One TV, a Thurrock Council run inclusion initiative, for organising the use of the Thameside.

Thurrock is such a target for the BNP as it is an area that was once very highly unionised – the Tilbury Docks are within the area, where most of the jobs have now gone. These people are in such a position that they can start to believe the malicious untruths that the BNP deal in – you haven’t got a job because “They” came over and stole it etc etc, and there are no strong community/social organisations in place to combat it.    Thurrockians are also one of the targets when the BNP say “British Jobs for British Workers”. When you have no job, or an incredibly poor paying job, and no prospect of improvals, these sort of insidious whispers can bury themselves in your mind, and you can start believing them. When the BNP say they are the party of fairness, people believe them, because they see all the newspaper reports about expense claims. I personally believe that the BNP do truly believe they are the party of fairness, however they don’t mean fairness as in equality, they mean fairness as in the colour of your skin!

Trade Unions need to rebuild the strength and organisations they once had in areas of these, and they need to promote inclusion, justice and fairness (Equality).  Reconnect our members with the founding principals of trade unionism (All for one and one for all to quote from numerous books, songs etc.)

How can NASUWT and other unions move on now?  Well, the hard work being done around anti-fascism needs to continue, just because the elections are over for now doesn’t mean we can rest. We need to be engaging with our members, not telling them “Don’t vote BNP” but letting them see the reality of the BNP, and the Xenophobia and hatred which underlies everything they do.  All of our members have brains, and a mind, and know how to use them,  if we tell them “Don’t vote BNP” without giving any reason, without showing them what the BNP does (Or doesn’t do in the case of the councillors they already have”, then they’re likely to go out and vote just as a “No-one tells me what to do”.

We also need to overcome Voter Apathy, in the European elections, for every 1 voter who voted BNP, 29 eligible voters didn’t vote at all. If this is reflected in our members, if we can get them out voting, if we can show them that the extreme right shouldn’t have a place in our councils, parliaments, schools, job centres, hospitals etc, then maybe, just maybe the BNP can be returned back to where they belong,  the gutter!!

I Hope this makes sense, but it was jotted down inbetween doing other little bits of work!!

                 1.  Working on organising members in schools which are slated to become academies within the next year or so

                 2.  Developing an informal structure to help0 develop some of the Younger Members within the Eastern Region,  leading towards a strong turnout at a Young members seminar being held on the 26th/27th June.

                  3.  Working with our exisiting Bedfordshire Association to build strength so that when the county of Bedfordshire splits into 2 unitary authorities (Bedford Borough, and Central Bedfordshire), we have enough activists to be able to cover both areas.

During my 6 months i have met a lot of committed and enthusiastic Teacher Activists, and i hope that they keep up the hard work that they have been doing,  and i wish them all the luck for the future

We’ve all realised that organising is incredibly hard work and tiring,  I Think we all just need to get some rest now!

On Tuesday, a few of us from this years academy intake attended the Building Stronger unions event at Congress House, which was an eye opener,   it also let us meet a lot of previous years graduates, who were able to give a few tips on things to avoid/things to make sure do happen!

Yesterday was an interesting day,  Visiting a school in Cambridge in the morning to do an audit (where we go to the rep with a checklist to see if there are any problems happening in the school), then to ipswich in the afternoon to attend the first meeting of a campaign group.  I can’t give any more details at the moment, but hopefully i can give a bit more information after the next meeting on the 23rd.

Last week the 14 of us attended out first training block up in Newcastle,  again,  very hard work, but incredibly interesting, the 3 days training have helped quite a bit with the work i’m doing down in east anglia. We also got to find out quite a lot about each other during the mandatory socialising events after each days training (the Student union just across the courtyard from where the course is held),  and it’s good knowing that there are 13 other people in exactly the same boat as me, who are there for support if needed, like i’m there for them!