BNP is trying to hide its true character to maximise votes

I am surprised to hear that the Ham&High is publishing an advertisement for the British National Party, an organisation which promotes extreme rightist ideas and whose leader, Nick Griffin, was fined for incitement to racial hatred only ten years ago.

I am surprised to hear that the Ham&High is publishing an advertisement for the British National Party, an organisation which promotes extreme rightist ideas and whose leader, Nick Griffin, was fined for incitement to racial hatred only ten years ago.

While the BNP is trying to hide its true character in order to maximise votes, it is quite clear that it promotes racism.

Its own website, for instance, suggests that people only have a right to be in Britain if descended from those who were here just after the last ice age!

This may seem laughable as a nonsense concept which could well rule out all or most of the population but it seems less comic when you consider that the intent is to single out as 'not belonging' citizens who look or sound as if they or a recent ancestor may have been foreign.

Newspapers indeed often accept paid advertisements promoting causes or goods that are not endorsed by the editor and/or owner but rarely ones the paper strongly disapproves of and which would be considered harmful by most of its readers.

Does this mean that the Ham&High does not strongly disapprove of racism?

Margaret Dickinson

(address supplied)