Cllr Pat Murray takes "grave exception" to the leaflet's implications

BNP targets voters in Harold Hill with anti-Labour leaflet

by Ramzy Alwakeel, Reporter Thursday, January 10, 2013
2:00 PM

Members of the far-right British National Party targeted Harold Hill at the weekend, distributing 500 leaflets smearing the Labour Party by linking it to paedophilia.

“We’ve got quite a good following down there,” Havering BNP organiser Mick Braun told the Recorder.

Asked if the BNP would be contesting the area in the 2014 local elections, he said: “Possibly. There are a few areas in Havering that we probably will be targeting.”

The folded black-and-white A4 leaflet, given out in locations including the Hilldene shopping area, bears the text “Printed and published by the British National Party”, and lists prominent former Labour politicians who have been linked to child abuse.

They include a former Havering councillor who was convicted in 2001 of indecently assaulting four boys in his care between 1970 and 1980 while superintendent at St Leonard’s Children’s Home, Hornchurch.

Mr Braun said he was worried about Labour policy due to its deputy leader Harriet Harman’s history with Liberty, a group that campaigned to lower the age of consent in the UK.

Labour Cllr Pat Murray, who represents Gooshays Ward where the leaflets were distributed, said he took “grave exception” to the leaflet’s tone.

“I’m a qualified social worker,” he said. “My number one concern is child safety.

“I sit on the children and learning committee and I’m known to be very, very concerned about the safeguarding of Havering’s children.”

Four of Harold Hill’s six councillors are Labour – a big increase on the single seat it held in the area prior to 2010.

Cllr Murray and two Conservative councillors unseated the BNP in Gooshays in the 2010 election, and said he believed Labour’s success had “rattled” the BNP – who could now be hoping to regain its lost seat.