Tatchell shame over this platform share

Letter in Tribune, 7 April 2006

It is ironic that, only a week after Peter Tatchell’s article attacking the anti-fascist movement in Tribune, he appeared on the platform at the “Freedom of Expression” rally which had the support of the British National Party and Civil Liberty, whose director is Kevin Scott, a BNP organiser and candidate at the 2005 general election.

I am shocked at Tatchell’s decision to speak on this platform. The BNP exists in the tradition of the Nazis, who not only opposed freedom of speech in the abstract, but exterminated millions of people in the death camps. The BNP denies the reality of the Holocaust and calls for an all-white Britain.

As the secretary of the National Assembly Against Racism, I will unite with everyone who will fight against fascism so that such murderous policies can never be pursued in Britain, even if I profoundly differ with them on many other questions.

Had he attended the Unite Against Fascism conference he would know that this very point was made by almost every speaker, including the Muslim Council of Britain.

Lee Jasper