No to the BNP's attempt to divide Stoke's communities!

So far this year at least 19 people in London have lost their lives through knife crime, with 14,000 receiving hospital treatment nationally. Recently 400 people, mainly young, marched through north London to protest against the stabbing of 16-year old Ben Kinsella demanding: "stop knife violence". This expressed the view of millions across the country who want an end to all knife crime.

On the other hand, the BNP are planning to hold a national rally in Stoke-on-Trent on 9 August, not to campaign against knife crime, but to exploit the tragic death of Keith Brown from Normacot for their own vile purposes.

By highlighting this tragic death the BNP are trying to sow division among the community in Normacot and beyond. Mr Brown was stabbed to death on 6 July last year, by his Muslim neighbour Habib Khan, following a long-running dispute. Khan was convicted of manslaughter by reason of lack of intent and is still awaiting sentence.

But BNP leader Nick Griffin saw it as opportunity to try to whip up racism and said: "Despite the manslaughter verdict we still regard Keith's death as murder and we need to highlight how the police and criminal justice system fails to properly investigate such racially-motivated crime."

Creating division will do nothing to stop knife crime or solve any other problems faced by ordinary working-class people and will make things even worse.

The BNP's aim is to promote disunity in our communities by setting one section of the community against another so that they can then pose as the defenders of the 'whites' in Britain. But this is a con! We must unite to defend our communities instead!

The BNP are now the second largest group on Stoke-on-Trent city council with nine councillors but this has done nothing to defend any working-class people.

In fact, as the number of BNP councillors has increased our council has got worse! 1,000 much-needed council jobs disappeared in the last year alone as well as there being an increase in closures and privatisation of our services. Scapegoating sections of our communities will do nothing to stop this onslaught.

All working-class people need to stick together and fight to defend our jobs, services and communities. The BNP's divisive policies make us weaker and create a smokescreen to make it easier for the government and local councils to close or privatise our care homes, schools, NHS, postal services etc.

From Stoke Socialist Party newsletter July 2008