[Reader-list] Sikh campaigner for BNP set to become party's first non-white member

[Taha Mehmood]

'enemy' of an 'enemy' is a friend- it seems

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/20/sikh-man-bnp-member

Sikh campaigner for BNP set to become party's first non-white member

Rajinder Singh says he supports far-right party's anti-Islam stance
   * Haroon Siddique
    * guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 November 2009 14.47 GMT



A Sikh man who has campaigned for the BNP in support of its anti-Islam
stance has been put forward to be the party's first non-white member.

Rajinder Singh, who is in his late 70s, has twice lent support to Nick
Griffin during the British National party leader's court appearances
and appeared in an election broadcast for the party in 2005. There
have been suggestions that he could stand as a BNP candidate at next
year's general election.

Singh, who came to Britain in 1967, used to pen a regular column for
the party's Freedom newspaper and has spoken at BNP meetings where he
has been vehement in his criticism of Muslims, talking about his
experiences at the partition of India in 1947. He was born in Lahore,
which became part of Pakistan after partition, and blames Muslims for
the death of his father during the bloody split of India.

The BNP's senior members voted last weekend to hold a party-wide
ballot on whether to allow non-white people to join. That followed the
party's agreement to a court order last month to use all reasonable
endeavours to revise its constitution so that it did not breach the
equality bill in the face of a challenge to its membership policy by
the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Martin Wingfield, the communications officer for the party's two MEPs
and the its prospective parliamentary candidate for Workington, wrote
on his blog in support of admitting non-whites, and Singh in
particular. "I say adapt and survive and give the brave and loyal
Rajinder Singh the honour of becoming the first ethnic minority member
of the BNP," wrote Wingfield.

Singh, a former teacher from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, said
he would be "honoured" to become a full member of the BNP.

"I got in touch with the BNP on certain core policies that appeal to
me," he told the Independent. "I also admire them since they are on
their own patch and do not wish to let anyone else oust them from the
land of their ancestors."

In 2001, after the September 11 attacks on the US, he said he wanted
to set up an Asian Friends of the BNP group to act as a supporting
body and conduit for funds for people sympathetic to the party's
anti-Islamic stance.

A BNP spokesman said he would be "quite happy" to have Singh as a
member, adding that the retired teacher recognised that he was a
"guest of ours". "We have always maintained it's not really about skin
colour, it's about ethnicity," he said. He emphasised that the party's
membership list, suspended following last month's court order,
remained closed for the time being.