Now the dust has settled, I'm writing this personal message to all our loyal members and supporters. First of all, I want to thank all the activists and donors who kept us in the field and in the public eye.
You know, if the sinister enemies of nationalism had had their way, we wouldn't even still exist, let alone be able to mount, as we did, the most professional campaigns ever in – for the first time – every part of the United Kingdom.
But fight we did – and hard, although only where we could afford it, in keeping with our determination to avoid fighting elections on debt! This time, we've paid our bills as we've gone along and not lived beyond our means.
I know everyone was disappointed with the results of the elections. Let's not beat about the bush: like nearly all the smaller parties, we had a tough time at most of the counts.
In Scotland we ended up just 0.1% behind UKIP. That's despite all their money and media backing. In Wales we dropped by more than a third, as people voted Labour to kick the Tories and LibDems. The same thing hit UKIP, who yet again spent a fortune but failed to win a seat in any of the three devolved governments.
I was as disappointed as anyone. Not so much by the actual results, but by the huge gulf between them and the fantastic reception that I and so many other party activists enjoyed from the public over the last few weeks. I was out day after day, particularly in the South Wales valleys, and I can tell you that I've never seen so much enthusiasm for us and our message.
Handshakes and photos
Everywhere I went, people of all ages and walks of life wanted to shake my hand and have their photo taken with me. Everywhere our speaker cars and the Truth Truck went, people – especially the young – repeatedly mobbed them for leaflets and copies of Freedom. That's what all your past work, donations and sacrifice have helped to achieve.
But it seems really weird, doesn't it? More people than ever agree with us, but frankly, in most areas, our vote was way below expectations.
This gulf between our growing popularity on the streets and the actual vote is disappointing and puzzling, but something strange is happening out there. I think people are starting to view us as a sort of insurance policy, welcome as being there to call on if the need arises. I agree that it's not as good as getting elected now, but it must give us hope for the future.
The extent of the growing 'soft' support was particularly highlighted in Northern Ireland, where we were standing for the very first time.
I spent a whole day out on the streets of Larne, Ballyclare and East Belfast with our enthusiastic local activist team, and I was amazed by how many people, of all ages and from all walks of life, were on our side.
Even better is the fact that, although we didn't received enough first-preference votes to have our second-preference votes counted, from the ballot papers seen, we appear to have got more than 10% of the second preferences of voters for other parties. This too bodes well for the future as we expand our organisation and external circumstances are more favourable.
More than anywhere else in our United Kingdom, the people of Northern Ireland – just like us – have had to suffer and fight for the right to be British. So we can be really proud that we were there for them, truly the British National Party at last!
English council elections – Rough, but we're not going away!
As for the results in the English council elections, first of all, let's get things into perspective. We had it rough, but others had it worse, and (unfortunately) they're not going away either. While we lost 11 district seats, the LibDems lost around 700 of them and control of nine entire councils.
Labour candidates with UAF banners in StokeWe lost seats, but despite the wholehearted backing of the Daily Express, and repeated plugs for Nigel Farage from almost all the other papers and the BBC, so did the phoney Establishment safety valve UKIP. The candidates for the pro-IRA, Muslim-loving English Democrats were humiliated in most areas. They won in only one small ward in the country, and even then only because the Tories didn't stand.
We, by contrast, faced ruthless Establishment opposition. Five of our 11 losses were in Stoke, where the ruling Labour regime were so desperate to get rid of our highly effective opposition group on the council that they did away with 16 seats and redrew all the ward boundaries in order to split and swamp our strongholds.
This is gerrymandering on a scale unseen in the United Kingdom since Northern Ireland 50 years ago. The fact that Labour's corruption worked reflects badly not on us, but on the political Establishment and on the media prostitutes who have kept quiet about the scandal. We weren't just fighting with one hand tied behind our back, but with chains on our legs as well!
You may have seen the disgusting footage on the Internet of the mob of far-left thugs, middle-class students and swaggering Muslims in Stoke. Labour organised them with taxpayers' money to threaten and abuse our brave candidates, barring their way into the count.
As usual, the chocolate fireguard police stood by and did nothing. You can see for yourself by clicking
HERE. Watch out for the Labour councillors wearing rosettes and stickers – then come back and find out how we're going to wipe the smirks off their hate-filled faces.
Blooded, but not beaten. And fighting back already!
But despite the spittle and the hatred, our people came through with their heads held high and are already working on their campaign to expose the orgy of anti-English spending bias that Labour will run now they've fiddled and bullied their way to power in Stoke. That's British National Party true grit!
That's the kind of thing the British National Party's front-line fighters go through for you and yours and to secure a future for our race and nation. And it's the sort of spirit that drives our opponents to despair, as we shrug off whatever they throw at us, dust ourselves down, learn from the setbacks, and keep moving forward.
Right across the country, every single one of our councillors was targeted for Labour's ruthless far-left smear campaign, invariably paid for with taxpayers' money by anti-British Equality Councils or Marxist trade union bosses.
But we stood and fought our ground. After all, that's what we British have always done throughout history. From Harold's shield wall on Senlac Field, through to Agincourt, Waterloo and Dunkirk – however tough things get, we never give up. Which is why, even though we sometimes lose battles, we bounce back and usually win the wars!
And even last Thursday, we won some of our battles. While we lost seats to Labour - who had the advantage of now being in opposition – in the two district seats where we were up against the Tories, we held them both.
Two of our best lady councillors worked really hard and held their District council seats despite ferocious efforts by the opposition to defeat them. Cathy Duffy won in Charnwood, Leicestershire, beating the Tories by a nail-biting five votes.
In Queensbury, Bradford, Lynda Cromie polled 1,461, increasing her majority over the Tories by 170 and repeating the success of her husband Paul, who won a second term last year.
Cathy, Lynda and Paul are fantastic, caring councillors, and all have put a lot of effort into making sure the public hear about their many successes for local people.
The Labour traitors were on a roll – We were fighting to survive. And we did!
Other councillors of ours have done just as good a job, but, being in Labour areas, they never stood a chance this time around. It's unfair, but that's politics. And at least they'll never lose the experience of their first term in office – and now have more time to campaign to build the party and to win again in future.
We'd have stood a better chance this time if, like Labour, we'd been able to invest enough time and money into building our election machine and training people to use it effectively.
While Labour were free to do that, we were fighting for our very survival against their taxpayer-funded Equality Commission attack dogs, and being stabbed in the back by the black-op lies of Searchlight's 'Enemy Within' and their Useful Idiots.
The fact that all the seats we took or held were in Tory wards highlights the fact that we've lost to Labour because, on top of their election machine, their councillors are no longer being punished by voters for their failings in government. Now it's the Tories' turn, so from now on, we'll be targeting them.
By doing so, and applying the many lessons we've learnt from fighting Labour's unrivalled election-winning machine, we can and will win more Tory seats next year and beyond.
Now for some real good news!
I've saved some of the best news for you until now. You wouldn't know it from the snide put-downs on the Searchlight-run black propaganda blogs, but the British National Party came out of these elections with a dozen more councillors than we had last month.
This success is thanks to National Elections Officer Clive Jefferson, who provided the leadership to push for a record number of our activists to stand for election to Parish, Town and Community councils.
Because there are no salaries on these first rungs of the political ladder, the other parties often neglect them. As a result, we had two dozen local councillors elected unopposed. Showing the way ahead was West Cumbria, with ten new British National Party councillors, followed by the East Midlands with six, plus others in Burnley, Yorkshire, Essex, Sussex and Somerset.
We also won three contested Town Council seats in Pendle, Lancashire. In a hard-fought contest in a ward where we already hold the two District Council seats, our three candidates each beat their Tory rivals.
Meanwhile, on the edge of nearby Burnley, our John Cave showed that serving the community in these unpaid positions can produce big political rewards, when the announcement of his appointment as Mayor of Padiham hit the national headlines.
So now we know that this tactic of flying under the enemy radar can work so well, we'll be doing a lot more of it. And we'll be working on a number of other techniques to help us sink the deep local community roots that will nourish our growth for the long haul ahead.
'Way Ahead' meetings – listening to our grassroots
This coming week, I'll be at the first three of a series of 'Way Ahead' regional meetings of our officials and activists. Called by our deservedly popular National Organiser Adam Walker, these will involve our setting out the lessons we have learned from these elections and our plans to put the failures behind us and build on our successes.
Each 'Way Ahead' meeting will also provide a forum for our grassroots activists to put forward constructive criticism of the things we've done and not done. I'm going to listen, and then we'll move forward together. The first three are being held for South Wales/South West, London/South East/Eastern and the East & West Midlands.
Others will follow shortly for our Northern regions. By the time we've held the final one (for Scotland/Northern Ireland) in July, I have no doubt that the brainstorming sessions especially will have given us all sorts of extra strings to our bows.
Ready to roll!
I'm really looking forward to sharing with so many good and positive people the winning tactics and campaigns we're already planning to roll out this summer.
We'll be building on our real success in forcing the Marxist and Common Purpose bigots at Wakefield Housing to drop their persecution of the Christian van driver. From now on, those who bully decent people or wage war on our traditions are going to learn there's a price to pay.
I'm sure that you, like me, have been mad as hell when you've seen the Equality Commission dragging elderly couples through the courts for daring to put their Christian ideals into practice. Weren't you fuming when that idiot judge let that poppy-burning traitor off with a fifty-quid slap on the wrist?
Well, we're going to be equipping and funding teams of volunteer super activists in each of our regions, with loudspeakers, banners, placards, leaflet templates and fuel.
Then we're going to be directing them in a carefully controlled, peacefully militant campaign to show the bullies and overpaid elite leftists what decent people like us think of them, and to tell their neighbours who they are and what they've done.
We'll be running a summer campaign to alert communities and vulnerable children to the dangerous scandal of the Muslim drug-rape gangs – and to how the ConDems have already broken their promise to take action to protect the young victims.
And we'll be pressing ahead with our positive, Heart for Britain rebranding, as everyone on our mailing list will see when they get the next issue of Hope & Glory.
All together, we're going to have a summer of action, of positive steps forward and of strictly legal militancy. Millions of people out there have had enough, and many of them already admire us for standing up for the truth and our identity. Now we're going out to turn that admiration into love.
But please don't leave it to me and my great central team and to our fantastic local activists. We can't do it all by ourselves. There's no knight in shining armour on a white horse out there to ride to the rescue. There's only us. With our flaws and failings and weaknesses, there's only us. And if we are to do what we must do, that 'us' must include YOU.
So please – whether it's by giving if you've not given before, by being active if you've not been active before, or by doing more if you're already one of our Band of Brothers – do your bit.
Join with me right now. Pledge to yourself and to your ancestors and to the future of our sacred land that you will take action to make a difference and help us make history.
Personally, I'm loving editing the new-look Freedom and doing more in the UK again after more than a year learning the ropes at the European Parliament. It's great to be back on the front line with you and for you.
More than anything, I'm completely invigorated by the surge in public empathy that I and so many activists like me experienced during the campaign. It's shown me more than ever the huge potential we have.
And it's made me more determined than ever to lead this party to unleash that potential and to prove to our opponents that – far from being 'finished', we've only just begun! We've got a world to save – let's get back to work.
Yours faithfully,
Nick Griffin MEP
Leader, British National Party
P.S. Perhaps the best thing of all is what I saw time and time again in our week of Truth Trucking in South Wales – enthusiastic members of the public waving and smiling and then very deliberately touching their hearts!
The first time I saw it I thought I'd imagined it, but no, it's real! After just seeing it on a leaflet and on the side of our campaign vehicles, people out there are already taking our heart to their hearts. And, in an inexplicable way that shows just how brilliant our new logo is, they are spontaneously finding a way to show it. Magic!
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However, as usual, this loudly proclaimed clampdown is another Lib/Lab/Con sham to conceal another development in their loss of control of our borders.
A new YouGov poll found the majority of voters for all three establishment parties want a huge immigration cut.
