Letter of Rebuke send to Establishment Parties
Created: Tuesday, 04 May 2010 08:39 Author: Green Arrow | 
It was also pretty disgusting of those organisations that did invite the British National Party to take part, to withdraw those invites when petulant bully boy candidates from the Tri-Axis of Evil parties spat their dummies out and said they would not attend if the BNP were to take part in the democratic process of giving the voters the chance to question their polices. Shame on those cowardly organiser who caved in to The Establishment and helped silence the voice of freedom.
But even more shame should be put upon the shoulders of those candidates who said that they had no objections in sharing a platform with the BNP but still attended the hustings from which the BNP were excluded. By their appearance at these sham political debates they supported those silencers of free speech. They should have stayed away.
And if shame should be heaped on the above then credit should go to those organisations who, when informed by the rats of the Establishment candidates that they would not attend if the BNP were to be invited did not cave in to the Establishment candidate threats but went ahead and held their hustings with empty seats to represent the absent candidates.
Those candidates who spat in the face of democracy and the faces of the people they are standing for election to represent by not sharing a platform with the BNP should be advised that the public's memory is not as short as they think and their actions will come back to haunt them.
They will be haunted by organisations like the Bognor Regis Civic Society, that has its dander up over a Public Meeting they organised to allow the public to see and question the election candidates in their area and are rightly annoyed that Lib/Lab/con candidates all chickened out of attending at the last moment in "protest" at the BNP exercising their candidates democratic rights to give the people in that constituency a chance to question them on BNP policies.
All the 6 election candidates were contacted well in advance and all 6 agreed to attend. They were Nick Gibb (Cons), Michael Jones (Lab), Simon McDougall (Lib-Dem), Douglas Denny (UKIP), Melissa Briggs (CLIP) and Andrew Moffat (BNP). All 6 knew that all the others had been invited, and the Labour and Lib-Dem candidates asked if the BNP candidate would be attending. They were told that he had been invited and probably would attend. No candidate said that if the BNP were to attend they would not.Well done to Bognor Regis Civic Society on posting the truth but true to their word, they did not let it drop there and have now sent a Letter of Rebuke to the cowardly candidates of the Lib/Lab/con alliance that I publish in fall below:-
Late on Friday evening the Society’s Deputy Chairman was telephoned by Jan Cosgrove, agent for the Labour Candidate, and treated to an hour long harangue ranging from his view of the BNP to the Holocaust and the history of the Weimar Republic. All this was designed to bully us into excluding the BNP candidate. It was explained to him that we are non-political and have to be even-handed and accept all 6 candidates, regardless of his (or our) personal views. He threatened to withdraw his candidate from the meeting and was told that would have to be his own decision.
2nd May, 2010.
Michael Jones,
x xxxx xxxx,
Southgate,
Crawley,
West Sussex.
RH10 xxx
(Also sent to Nick Gibb and Simon McDougall)
Dear Mr. Jones,
Re: Election Meeting, Alexandra Theatre, Saturday 24th April 2010
The intention at our recently held pre-election meeting was to allow the public to question all six parliamentary candidates of the Bognor Regis and Littlehampton constituency on local issues affected by government policy as well as hearing debate on these issues between the candidates themselves.
You will recall that you agreed to attend this meeting and that you were well aware that all six candidates were to be invited. You will also recall that you asked if the BNP would be attending and were told that they probably would, but at no point initially did you indicate that if the BNP candidate attended, you would not.
It is now a matter of record that on the day of the meeting you withdrew and failed to attend, thus depriving the public of their opportunity to question you and hear debate between you and the other five candidates.
Some 270 people attended the meeting, and they were informed of the reason for your non-attendance before the debate went ahead with the three candidates that agreed to attend. During this debate there were a number of expressions of disapproval of the candidates that had failed to show up from the audience. This was followed by a proposal from the floor that a “letter of rebuke” should be sent to the three absent candidates, which was voted on by a show of hands and resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour, with only seven votes against.
Accordingly, you may therefore consider this to be the letter of rebuke from a large body of the public who considered your non-attendance at the meeting, and your reasons for this, to be unacceptable.
In addition you may consider this to be a letter of rebuke from ourselves. We went to an immense amount of trouble and expense to put on this meeting, not only for the public but also for yourselves to be able to communicate directly with them. We are a voluntary organisation who take particular care not to involve ourselves in political bias but, equally, in a democracy, we attach the highest importance to providing a platform for freedom of speech. One would have thought that you would consider yourselves fortunate that an organisation such as ours exists in the town to take the trouble to involve ourselves in such matters.
We and our audience therefore find it wholly unacceptable for you to initially lead us to believe that you would take part, in full knowledge of who would be attending and without any mention that if any particular candidate attended you would not. To withdraw in this manner at all is not remotely in the interests of free speech and open debate; to leave it until the very day of the meeting cannot be considered in any other way than as treating your potential audience and us with total disregard.
Furthermore, we found the suggestion from some of you non participating candidates that we could resolve the matter by excluding one of the candidates as being quite remarkable and completely unacceptable. Not only would this have compromised our position of strict political impartiality but it would have compromised the principle of freedom of speech which is the bedrock of democracy and which this country, as the Mother of all Parliaments, has gone to war to defend.
It is scarcely surprising that the audience took such exception to your actions, some of them voicing their view that you do not deserve their vote.
Whatever the outcome of the election, from our perception of our audience’s responses, there will be many in Bognor Regis who will not forget this lightly. We can confidently predict that, had we asked them, our audience would have overwhelmingly supported our view that you should attempt to ameliorate this situation by holding a further meeting with all six candidates present, rather than the one with just yourselves that you have planned. In this way the democratic rights of Bognor Regis electors to simultaneously hear the views and witness the debate of all their six candidates will be upheld.
Freedom of speech and informed debate is not remotely served by two separate groups of candidates addressing different questions at different meetings with no possibility of interplay between them.
Yours sincerely
Hugh Coster
Deputy Chairman.
Well done Hugh Coster and well done Bognor Regis Civic Society. Pity you are non political. People who believe in Freedom of Speech are always welcome in the patriotic British National Party.
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