Stoke Is a Town in Decline. Just the Sort of Place the Bnp Loves

Summary

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The BNP sees this as an opportunity to expand its support, with a campaign slogan inviting the electorate to "punish the pigs" (an irony, considering the well-documented track record of corruption among the party's councillors). Since June 2008, he has also been a governor at Longton High. Ivan Hickman, secretary of the Stoke branch of the National Union of Teachers, confirms that the BNP has been making a determined effort to get its members elected to governing bodies of schools in order to look like a respectable political party. [...] a shortage of ordinary people willing to take up governors' posts means that there are plenty of opportunities.

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Extract

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Stoke Is a Town in Decline. Just the Sort of Place the Bnp Loves

"They're a bunch of robbin' bastards and I'm not voting for any of them," spits a passer-by in his fifties, in typically blunt Midlands fashion. Sheltering from the rain in the porch of a defunct Woolworths in Hanley, themain retail district of Stoke-on-Trent, anti-racism campaigners are doggedly trying to convince Saturday morning shoppers to vote in the imminent European elections. They are one of many local groups across the UK taking part in Hope Not Hate, a drive to keep the British National Party from gaining a seat - and several hundred thousa...

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