Genre: Opinion/Argumentation

More Our front-page article last week provoked quite a reaction among the English nationalistic community. Shortly after TCS went to print, English Democrat Steve Uncles ("part-time management consultant" and full time jingoist), who is standing as an ED candidate in Kent, posted an image of our News Editor, Ben Richardson, beside a series of swastikas. Bizarrely, he went on to label him as a "racist bigot" and anti-English. This comes from a man infamous for posting racist jokes on forums (and later claiming he was "experimenting"), and trying to curry favour with the members of the English Defence League on their facebook site. The ED's chairman Robin Tilbrook has challenged TCS to host a debate with Cambridge University Students' Union President, Ros Old and Cambridge MP, Julian Huppert to see whose views are "truly odious". But, in the words of Huppert, this would be giving too much of a platform to a party which doesn't "deserve to be taken seriously." Dear Sir I am writing in reply to your article about the English Democrats' candidate for Cambridgeshire Police Commissioner which will have left readers with a misleading impression of the English Democrats Party. The English Democrats are the English nationalist party and so are similar to Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party but in our case we are campaigning for the interests of England and the English Nation to be properly taken into account constitutionally, and in the political process. Our call is for there to be an English Parliament, First Minister and Government with at least the same powers as the Scottish ones. We don't think that such a call is either Right or Left that is why we say we are "Not Right, Not Left, Just English!" At the moment the English are being used as a 'cash cow' to give extra subsidies to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is at the rate of over 49 billion per year according to a 2009 House of Lords report. This unfairness at the heart of British Government policy is what has led to the gross unfairness of only English students being required to pay 9,000 tuition fees whilst Scottish ones go freely, paid for - by English taxpayers! Robin Tilbrook, Chairman the English Democrats Dear Sir Just to let you know that I have been involved with a few others, including several former members, in investigating the English Democrats for some time. Well done for exposing the danger of this party that is targetting a few Police elections in the hope of a surprise result on the back of lousy turnout. To point out a few things I would query in your article - the Eng Dems claim they are equivalent to the SNP and PC. Neither party would want to be associated with them in any way and PC refuse to talk to them at all. Your BNP infiltration figures are way under the mark. They stood 102 candidates in May elections (4 people stood for 2 separate elections). Of these, 43 are known recent BNP activists. These included Chris Beverley and Eddy Butler former leading figures in the fascist party who still work for BNP MEP Andrew Brons; and Paul Rimmer who ran for mayor of Liverpool, is now running for Merseyside Police Commissioner - and is suing Merseyside Police for flying the Rainbow flag over a police station. I can give you all the details you need to find out more about the party and direct you to helpful sites if you wish. Goldspink is being disingenuous in saying other parties have ex BNP members. Tories or Labour are very large parties who might have one or two very junior former members of the BNP. The Eng Dems claim to have 3000+ members, but clearly have less than 1000 if you look at their accounts with the Electoral Commission. They deliberately courted leading BNP figures to join them, their leaders have boasted of bringing these people over and these ppl [sic] make up at least a third of their key activist base now. In addition, there are several EDL organisers and others who have made incredible racist, homophobic or other extremist comments publicly including on Facebook. Again well done for highlighting the problem - and please get in touch if you want any further info or advice. By the way, if you get a letter from their Chairman Robin Tilbrook threatening to sue you - dont worry. Everyone does. We can help you with that as well. John Snelling This article was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2012. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS 2.0 feed. Have your say You must be logged in to post a comment. You can easily login with Raven. Those without raven access can always email comments to the editor at editor @ tcs.cam.ac.uk.