Sonia Gable | ukwatch.net

BNP accounts don’t add up

Ellie Keen — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:16:17 +0000

When the British National Party told its members in January that it had raised £70,000 as a result of its “Building to Grow” appeal, Searchlight was sceptical. After all, the appeal was launched just as the internal crisis erupted last December. Who in their right mind, we thought, would donate such sums to a party that seemed about to collapse.

We were wrong. A printout of transactions on the BNP’s main bank account, which fell into our hands recently, shows that between 14 and 31 December alone Ged Munns, the BNP’s chief fundraiser, paid in £41,605 described as “appeals”.

During January he paid in a further £30,011.50, making a total of over £70,000 though a long way short of the “well over £80,000” that a report on the BNP website on 14 February claimed the appeal had raised. Why tell the truth when it is so easy to lie to the party’s gullible members?

How strange then than the BNP’s audited accounts for the year to 31 December 2007, released by the Electoral Commission at the end of July, show the total raised from “fundraising activities” during the whole year was £23,433, less even than the £38,970 raised in 2006.

Why would the party not want to highlight the success of the “Building to Grow” appeal, run for Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, by the Belfast-based Midas Consultancy, to which the party paid £6,900 during March and April this year? Midas, owned by the hardline anti-abortion activist James Dowson, also produced the begging letters for the BNP’s recent “truth truck” appeal and arranged the party’s officer training sessions in Spain in spring.

It would be tempting to conclude that the appeal money swiftly found its way out of the BNP coffers and into Griffin’s back pocket, but that would be wrong. The bank account balance of £30,417.58 on the printout for 31 December matches the £30,418 shown on the balance sheet at that date, so all the income must appear in the accounts somewhere.

Has the “Building to Grow” income simply been hidden in donations, a figure that nevertheless fell from nearly £290,000 in 2006 to under £200,000 in 2007? Of this sum £36,000 came from four supporters whose donations were declared individually to the Electoral Commission. Including the “Building to Grow” income in “donations” would mask a huge drop in ordinary donations.

The BNP’s 2007 accounts revealed some other interesting features. Most notable is the opinion of Silver & Co, the party’s regular auditors, that the financial statements do not give a true and fair view of the state of the party’s affairs at 31 December 2007 and of the year’s results.

An adverse auditors’ report is normally devastating for a company, making it almost impossible to obtain credit. A normal political party would find that donors lose confidence that their money will be used properly and income dries up. The BNP no doubt hopes that its donors will not notice or be too stupid to understand.

Griffin tries to skate over the embarrassment by blaming Kenny Smith, who was one of the leaders of last winter’s BNP rebels. “Accurate accounting for this year is problematic owing to the point-blank refusal of the former head of Administration to account for large amounts of expenditure”, he writes in his introduction to the accounts. But mindful of the potential financial implications of a libel claim, he hastens to add that much of the money was undoubtedly properly spent.

Smith was also blamed in the 2006 accounts, both for their lateness and for a qualification to the auditors’ report on the grounds that no vouchers had been produced to show how £14,000 transferred during the year to Smith’s “B N Publications” account had been spent. In fact B N Publications was a separate business run by Smith outside the party so arguably did not need to explain how it spent the fees it received for its services.

The reason why the 2007 accounts were “not a true and fair view” may be the size of the amount involved, especially compared to the party’s gross income, which was considerably lower in 2007 than the previous year.

But there nay be another explanation, contained in a further attempt to cast aspersions on Smith as well as explain the party’s reduced income despite a claimed 56% growth in membership. Griffin writes: “Income was down on the previous year, but given that we never received crucial accounting records from British National Lottery or Excalibur [both then run by Smith], we have estimated that we could have lost nearly £70,000 in unaccounted income”.

Is Griffin saying that Smith extracted £70,000 from the party in addition to failing to account for £32,271 of fees paid to him? How? Even the newly revamped and expanded Excalibur is not expected to make more than £20,000 a year profit from a £40,000 turnover.

The accounts certainly do show a large reduction in income. Alongside the drop in donations, income from commercial activities fell by over £70,000 to £175,000. And nearly half of this income consists of sales of the BNP’s monthly publications Voice of Freedom and Identity to the party’s own local units.

The regional accounts, which bring together the income and expenditure of all the party units, suggest they only recoup a fraction of this from sales to the public. However the truth is unclear.

While some of the local units’ income is properly categorised as “donations”, “commercial activities” etc, more than half – over £147,000 – was not, and appears in the regional accounts as a “petty cash difference”. This failure fully to record income sources suggests that the BNP rebels had a point when they accused Dave Hannam, the regional treasurer, of incompetence. Stating where income comes from is one of the most basic of bookkeeping tasks, though the accounts blame the “volunteers” who keep the local groups’ petty cash books.

Returning to the main accounts, membership income is up, though not by the same proportion as the growth in membership numbers. Presumably some people are joining on the cheap. But the increase is not enough to set off the fall in donations and commercial income. Total income in 2007 was £611,000 compared to £726,000 the previous year.

Although the BNP managed to save on some costs, it ended 2007 with a deficit of over £50,000 compared to a £19,000 surplus in 2006, increasing its insolvency.

No wonder the party needed Dowson to extricate it from bankruptcy. The “Building to Grow” appeal was supposedly intended to expand the party’s capabilities. For example the BNP claimed the new funds enabled it to open its new premises in Deeside with “a vast array of new equipment with a value of well in excess of £35,000”.

In fact it seems that only about £18,000 was spent on buying new equipment, from a company called Twofold Ltd. The rest seems to be leased. Leasing is often commercially sensible but not when you give your members the impression that their donations have been invested in acquiring the equipment the party needs to progress.

The rest of the “Building to Grow” money is being spent on paying the salaries of the party’s officers and meeting its debts, such as the more than £20,000 it still owed to HM Revenue and Customs for value added tax and income tax and national insurance deducted from employees’ salaries.

As well as not paying over the PAYE deductions, the BNP continued to get away with paying half of its staffing bill in the form of “professional fees” to avoid national insurance and income tax. Staff paid gross included Simon Darby the party’s deputy leader, Munns, Hannam, Arthur Kemp who runs the party’s educational and training department, and a number of the BNP rebels who complained about the policy.

The BNP ended 2007 insolvent to the tune of £86,000. It survived because the party was able to borrow nearly £42,000 from its local units. In 2006 it ran up a debt of nearly £22,000 to the local units, but the full amount was repaid in January 2007 as the party was keen to announce.

Such prompt repayment was not repeated after 31 December 2007. The auditors’ report on the regional accounts highlighted the debt, pointing out that the party had “insufficient funds, which places doubt on the ability of the Party to repay this money”. Hannam’s treasurer’s report states: “It is the aim of central office to repay this internal loan with monthly standing orders”, but the party seems in no hurry to get on with it.

One person who is doing well out of the BNP is Mark Collett, the BNP’s former director of publicity who is still responsible for its graphic design. One of the main targets of the BNP rebels, he remains widely unpopular in the party. Between May 2007 and April 2008 his Vanguard Promotions business received nearly £50,000 from the party, most of it after “Building to Grow” started bearing fruit.

If the success of “Building to Grow” was repeated in the Truth Truck appeal, the BNP may now have reversed its financial woes. The election of Richard Barnbrook to the London Assembly in May will also have helped. His £50,000 salary is far higher than any BNP officer receives so he has generously agreed to donate £5,000 a year to party funds. In addition he has been able to employ three assistants at London taxpayers’ expense, one of whom is Darby, saving the BNP the expense of paying him. It is such financial gains multiplied several fold that await the BNP if it succeeds in getting candidates elected to the European Parliament next year.

Truth truck or lie lorry?

JamieSW — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:21:00 +0000

“After months of research, we have come up with a better way of spreading the ‘Nationalist Message’ right across this country,” says the message that the British National Party has been sending out to its supporters for several weeks.

“Our very own personal advertising lorry, a ‘Truth Truck’ – brand new and custom-built, complete with a high definition special lighting system for night-time use, and a massive audio system for addressing the public. Can you imagine it?” continues the appeal in terms designed to pull hard at the purse strings of “nationalists”.

There have been personalised letters from Nick Griffin, the party chairman, headed and “last chance to help ‘Operation Truth Truck’”, imploring in underlined type: “Just imagine how you will feel, being part owner of our very own British National Party advertising lorry …”. The party website has carried a picture and online donation form for several weeks.

But behind all the excitement lurks yet another dodgy deal by the BNP to hoodwink its own members.

One appeal letter puts a figure on the cost of buying and equipping the “truth truck” of £39,550, arrived at after Griffin personally “worked very hard researching this project”. It then suggests that “we can knock £13,000 off the amount needed” by opting for a “used lorry in first class condition”. Yet there is no indication on the website appeal that the lorry will be anything other than “brand new and custom built”.

Such a compromise could be explained away as a better use of members’ hard-earned and generously given donations, though that is no excuse for pulling the wool over potential donors’ eyes long after the decision to go for a second-hand vehicle has already been taken. But the lies go further than this.

At first the excitement rubbed off onto BNP members. Posting on the members’ internet forum, one person, who claimed to have “surprised myself by not even hesitating to donate £100 towards the campaign”, said the truck would also “counter commie smear leaflets”.

One discerning poster was more cautious. “Just one thing What happened to Bodicea [sic]?” asked “the benwell hopper”. “Boudica”, as “Captain Black” was quick to correct, was a second-hand “battle bus” and the target of an appeal in 2006 for money to put it on the road. Agreeing that “a few people will be very miffed that it has never been seen by the rank and file”, Captain Black could only plead that “the failings of the Boudica hobby horse should not detract from the ambitions of this new venture”.

Others smelt a rat. Despite Griffin’s claims to have carried out “months of research” before coming up with this “new, innovative” idea, if it comes to fruition the BNP will not be the first organisation in the UK to pin its hopes on a “truth truck”.

Two years ago the anti-abortion UK LifeLeague boldly announced the “Launch of Britain’s first ever ‘Truth Truck’”. A press release on 21 April 2006 thanked supporters who “donated generously to make this project possible” and claimed this would be: “the most innovative and what will possibly be the most effective campaign in UK Pro-life history”. “Operation Truth Truck” would: “enable the pro-life message to reach the unreached across the towns and cities of Britain. These vehicles are wholly owned and operated by LifeLeague activists,” it continued.

There was a picture. And it was no coincidence that the only difference between the LifeLeague’s “truth truck” and the BNP’s one was the particular lie on the billboard, because it was the same vehicle.

The UK LifeLeague and the BNP had milked their gullible supporters twice over for the same truck.

This is not the first time the BNP has had dealings with the UK LifeLeague, and more particularly its founder and national coordinator, James Dowson. Earlier this year many BNP members were angry when they found out that the party was sending key BNP officers on management training courses in Spain. Why could the training not be held in the UK, asked irate, xenophobic party members on a popular nazi internet forum until the site administrators pulled the discussion thread.

The courses were organised by Dowson’s Belfast-based fundraising and management training business, the Midas Consultancy, which has signed a three-year consultancy contract with the BNP. Whether it was because of the BNP’s growing financial difficulties or because Griffin was reacting to criticism of his poor administrative skills, the party has handed over key organisational functions to the self-styled vicar and militant anti-abortion campaigner.

It was Dowson who wrote the “truth truck” appeal letters in professional fundraising style. The Building to Grow appeal at the end of last year was also his work. The BNP claimed that appeal had raised £70,000, which paid for the party to move into the new Excalibur warehouse and buy “a vast array of new equipment” including “an envelope stuffing machine”, which by June had mysteriously disappeared when Simon Darby, the BNP’s deputy leader, appealed for volunteers to stuff election leaflets into envelopes by hand.

The involvement of Dowson has already upset some BNP members who do not share his extreme anti-abortion views and think he is a Catholic, which is anathema to many in the nationalist party who view the Battle of the Boyne as one of England’s greatest historical triumphs. In fact Dowson is a Protestant but has been linked to far-right Catholics in Ireland, including Justin Barrett, an anti-EU campaigner and vocal opponent of immigration, which he describes as a “genetic” problem. Back in 2001, when Searchlight first exposed Dowson, Barrett had donated £50,000 so that Dowson’s outfit could produce anti-abortion hate CDs and videos to distribute in schools and churches in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Dowson is a former member of the Orange Lodge in Northern Ireland and has admitted involvement with hardline loyalist groups in the West of Scotland. His tattooed arms are evidence of his extremist hate connections.

The LifeLeague, which is secretive about its finances, uses highly provocative tactics, such as publishing the home addresses of abortion clinic staff. Similar actions by anti-abortion groups in the US have resulted in the murder of doctors.

Dowson’s professional “begging letters”, as one disillusioned party member described them, have not been universally welcomed in the BNP. Some see their “tone of desperation” as indicative of the BNP’s “very serious financial trouble”, according to the blogsite set up in support of Colin Auty’s failed attempt to challenge Griffin for the party leadership.

One member is quoted saying: “These bloody letters are an embarrassment, I’ll not pay another penny so he can go and waste it or lose another blimp”, in a reference to the BNP’s helium balloon that slipped its moorings in June because, Darby suggested, David Shapcote failed to secure it properly. The BNP later blamed the loss on a faulty rope.

The letters themselves may have been professional, but Dowson fell down in compiling the mailing lists. Naturally he needed to dispatch the letters to a much wider audience than the BNP’s members, who have little left to give after constant appeals at branch meetings and to support election campaigns. However Searchlight has received a stream of complaints from anti-fascist trade unionists and members of the Jewish community who have received them.

The website appeal for the “truth truck” shows it adorned with the BNP’s ubiquitous election picture of Nick Cass and his family alongside the slogan “Decent people vote British National Party”. The picture, which adorned election leaflets and newspaper advertisements all over the country in this year’s May elections and several by-elections, concealed Cass’s less than decent “tree of life” tattoo.

The symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide and, under Hitler, was used to represent a project that encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with “Aryan” mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans.

A lying picture for a lying appeal. How appropriate.

The Watchdog that did not Bark

Ellie Keen — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:08:59 +0000

“No party financial records were shredded. They are held in electronic format, and cannot be shredded,” proclaimed the British National Party after Jon Cruddas MP exposed the party’s dodgy financial dealings in the House of Commons on 18 December.

By 13 February, following the broadcast of the BBC’s File on 4 investigation into the BNP’s finances, the BNP had changed its tune. Said John Walker, the BNP treasurer: “The bag of shredded items produced in the studio to me which the listeners were expected to believe the BBC’s claims, appeared to be in the main, working copies of the print outs of the book keeping software and draft accounts. To suggest I shredded cheques and invoices is ridiculous, why would I destroy invoices, as I would not have paperwork to cover the expenditure as required by the auditor.”

The BNP works on the principle that if one lie is exposed, try another, and hope no one notices the contradiction. Apart from the fact that Walker now admits that the BNP does have non-electronic records, Searchlight’s perusal of the shreds has revealed numerous pieces of original receipts and cheques, clearly identifiable by their various colours, typestyles and handwritten details.

They include numerous references to various family members of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, which may bolster the allegations from across the political spectrum that Griffin treats the party as his “cash cow”.

Another name that appears on several of the bits of paper is Vanguard Promotions. This is the private printing business in Leeds owned by Mark Collett, the party’s unpopular and incompetent graphic designer and star of the Channel 4 television documentary Young, Nazi and Proud. His imprint appears on many BNP leaflets and many people have questioned the relationship.

Walker was also rather coy about the BNP’s failure to include a donation of £5,315 from Steve Johnson on its return to the Electoral Commission for July to September 2007. “Only one donation for the 3rd quarter of 2007 … was missed,” glossing over the fact that this was 50% of the total number of donations. “It was not reported to my regional treasurer at the time,” he continued, protecting another seriously incompetent BNP officer David Hannam, “and as soon as the Electoral Commission brought this matter to my attention it was duly reported to the satisfaction of the commission”.

Walker does not explain how the Electoral Commission knew about the donation to bring it to his attention before he reported it. Perhaps he does not want to admit that he found out about the omission from Searchlight’s Stop the BNP website.

Reporting a donation late is not the unique preserve of the BNP. The Electoral Commission publishes a list of donations reported in the fourth quarter of 2007 that should have been reported previously. Donations to all three main parties and others are on it, but not Johnson’s, which has simply been added to the BNP’s quarterly list as if it had been reported on time. It is unclear why the BNP receives such apparently preferential treatment from the Electoral Commission.

The BNP reported three donations received in the final three months of 2007, from Sheila Butler, Charles Wentworth and Adam Champneys. Each gave precisely £5,000. Champneys, who has made large donations to the party before, appeared on the BNP’s list of candidates for the South East in the 2004 European election. Butler is new to the donors’ list. It is not known whether she is the same Sheila Butler who made donations to the UK Independence Party in the South West in 2003 and 2004.

The shredded financial records had originated from John Brayshaw, Walker’s predecessor as BNP treasurer. Before resigning he refused to sign off the party accounts because he had not been given access to all the records he wanted to see. He told the Electoral Commission that he had resigned as BNP treasurer “as a number of irregularities had come to light”. Explaining that he had seen Walker and Hannam shredding the documents and been told to burn them, he declared: “I have not seen what the party sent to the commission but do not believe it is a full and accurate set of accounts for the BNP”.

But the Electoral Commission was unconcerned. It took just two weeks to dismiss the matter, without even asking to see his evidence. Its response to him was blunt: “with regard to a breach of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, we currently have no reason to believe that such a breach has taken place”.

Jon Cruddas MP was similarly unable to persuade the Electoral Commission to take complaints against the BNP seriously. In a letter dated 28 January 2008 the Commission pointed out that the BNP had paid the “appropriate fine of £1,000” for the late submission of its 2006 accounts, in other words end of story. As for the BNP’s attempt to solicit donations from overseas via its front group Civil Liberty, the Commission dismissed the concerns stating that there was not “sufficient evidence to establish that ‘Civil Liberty’ was an organisation of any significant scale, that it raised any substantial funds from any source, or that it passed funds to the British National Party”.

Civil Liberty is not a limited company and has no obligation to make its accounts public. How exactly did the Electoral Commission investigate what funds it had raised? Did the Commission do any more than ask the BNP and/or the BNP officers who ran Civil Liberty, Kenny Smith and Kevin Scott? On this the letter is silent.

“The Commission does however monitor the activities of political parties and associationed [sic] organisations and individuals, and keeps matters under review,” the letter concludes. We are not reassured.

Immigration, the Real Issues

jo — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 20:36:34 +0000

The British National Party wants an immediate halt to all further immigration and voluntary resettlement of immigrants already here with generous financial incentives. The BNP also wants to clamp down on the flood of asylum seekers, all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries. This is no more than you would expect from a racist, fascist party.

The UK Independence Party is also against immigration. It has linked Europe and the immigration and asylum issues together in a bid to shake off its image as a single-issue party and gain popular support on an issue that it has identified as a vote winner. In September Robert Kilroy-Silk, then a UKIP MEP, made a hardline speech promising that the UKIP would set a quota of no more than 100,000 immigrants a year allowed into Britain.

The quota no longer features in UKIP policy. The party now wants stricter embarkation controls, a points system for immigrants and a withdrawal from the EUs Common Asylum Policy, Roger Knapman, the UKIP leader, said in February. However he accepts that immigration is necessary, and that Britain has a long tradition of accepting genuine refugees, which we would continue. The party would aim to approach zero net immigration but UKIP does NOT favour the application of quotas either for legal immigrants or for refugees (their emphasis).

Nor does the quota appear in the immigration policy of Veritas, Kilroy-Silks new party wants to admit only those that are needed because of their skills. They will be expected to speak English, pass health tests, have no criminal convictions and integrate into the British way of life. The party would only take our fair share of refugees.

In fact to its shame only the Conservative Party now wants a specific quota on immigrants and asylum seekers. Trailing badly in the polls, the Tories know that immigration is the only issue on which they have a significant lead over Labour and intend to milk it for all it is worth. A Conservative government would limit immigration to 100,000 a year, the same limit that Kilroy-Silk proposed. The Tories are no doubt mindful of their support on this key issue haemorrhaging to their anti-Europe rivals.

The Tories also proposed a points system for determining who should be allowed to enter Britain. Not to be outdone, the Labour government responded with its own very similar proposal to award points for work skills, knowledge of the English language, and other desirable attributes. Then the Conservatives came back with proposals for health checks on would-be immigrants, whereupon Labour quickly pointed out that this was already Labour policy.

All this vying for the support of what Labour and the Tories see as widespread public sentiment against immigration and asylum is quite simply destructive. It exploits and builds up baseless fears. And it plays into the hands of the far right, who oppose immigration and asylum, not because Britain is full up or they take our jobs or they are all spongers on welfare (spot the contradiction here), but because they are racists.

The issues that really interest people are their economic wellbeing, the health service, crime, pensions and education. The various problems under these headings are difficult to solve and the issues are often complex. How much easier it is to divert attention from parties lack of answers on these matters to immigration and asylum, and even to blame immigrants for the problems. Crime is rising, blame it on immigrants. Council tax too high? The money is going on housing asylum seekers and paying them benefits.

But the truth is that immigrants benefit Britain immensely. Home Office research shows that immigrants and refugees are a net benefit to the community to the tune of £2.5 billion. A record 340,000 legal migrants travelled to Britain to fill job vacancies according to government figures published in February. More than 130,000 of these came from the eight East European countries that joined the EU last May. A further 181,400 work permits were issued to people from outside the EU. These are people who come to work and are needed because the British economy is enjoying the longest sustained expansion in its modern history.

Indeed increased immigration might not only be the result of Britains prosperity, it might also have made a significant contribution to it. Unemployment is low. In the past low unemployment and a high level of new job creation have resulted in inflation, as wage pressures have caused price rises in an upward spiral. This is not currently happening. There are several reasons for this, but one is that an influx of energetic young people with skills and the will to work has helped the two million new jobs created since May 1997 to be filled without triggering wage inflation.

Some economists believe that new restrictions on immigration could push up interest rates. The resultant labour shortage, they argue, would result in higher wages and greater inflation, which the Bank of England might counter with interest rate rises. Treasury figures suggest that economic growth would fall by 0.5% over two years if immigration to Britain ceased.

Sceptics and the far right might respond that immigrants are preventing British workers from being better off by undercutting their wages. Mostly that is not the case. All that is prevented is inflation: wage increases that are rapidly eaten up by increased prices. That benefits no one. Legal migrants do not have to work for a pittance. Many have skills that are in demand, that employers will pay for. They have to pay British prices for accommodation, food, etc and quickly realise what they need to earn. And enforcement of the minimum wage is helping to prevent the worst cases of exploitation. Unemployment has not increased, proof that immigrants are not taking jobs from British workers.

There are problem areas, such as agriculture, where gang masters pay legal migrants no more than the minimum wage and keep illegal immigrants on starvation pay and in slave conditions. Stopping immigration is not the answer. Agriculture needs workers and agricultural employers must be forced to pay their workers properly. The trade unions should recruit these workers and fight for decent wages and conditions for all, and against a system that encourages farmers to employ illegal immigrants because they cannot obtain work permits for unskilled workers. And the public must accept that if agricultural workers are not to be exploited, both in Britain and the rest of the world, we have to pay higher prices for food.

The governments new points system, which will give the highest points to skilled workers, is hardly designed to help the economy. It seems that the highly skilled will be allowed to enter Britain regardless of whether they have a job offer. Conversely unskilled but willing workers may be unable to obtain work permits despite a demand. A points system may also drain skills away from poorer countries that really need them and have invested large sums into educating and training their people.

The economy is not the only aspect of British life that benefits from immigration. Searchlight has pointed out many times that the health service would collapse without its huge numbers of immigrant and minority ethnic staff. The growing demand for medical services in Britain has outstripped the supply of indigenous doctors, nurses and auxiliary staff and the only way this demand has been met is through immigration.

Schools also benefit from immigrant teachers and support staff, although this has perhaps been less apparent because many are white from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. Nearly one quarter of staff working in higher education come from overseas.

Immigrants can also make an important contribution to alleviating Britains pensions crisis. Britains postwar baby-boomers are hitting retirement and people are living far longer than before. A period of poor investment returns and a tax change in 1997 that reduced the income of pension schemes have left private pension plans unable to provide the pensions that workers were promised. The stark choice facing Britain is later retirement, lower pensions or higher taxes. It may need a combination of these and the situation may get worse. Today there is one person over 60 for every two of working age. By 2050 it is expected that this will increase to two over 60s for every three of working age.

Immigrants are more likely to be young. They are people with the energy and determination to leave their own country and make a new home in a strange and unfamiliar land. Older people with their own children or aging parents needing care are less likely to do this. Immigrants contribution to Britains economy can stave off the worst of the pensions crisis. Their taxes can help pay for state pensions, and the continuation of economic prosperity can help everyones savings grow. The BNPs response is that immigrants will themselves get old and draw pensions one day so it only puts off the evil day. Perhaps, but putting off a crisis allows more time for other measures to take effect, and not all todays immigrants will stay in Britain for their whole lives. Immigrants from eastern Europe, for example, may well return home after a few years and invest their savings in new businesses opportunities opening up in their own countries.

Despite the undoubted benefits of immigration, it would be wrong for Britain to have no controls, as some people have argued. There are vast differences throughout the world in income, wealth, freedom and social security. There are many countries that suffer from civil conflict or oppress part of their population. Britain is a very attractive place to live. If there were no controls, we would have to give up the principle that no one in Britain should be left destitute. We would have to discriminate between those deserving of benefits and those who are neither genuine refugees from oppression nor have any prospect of looking after themselves. Such discrimination would conflict with human rights principles and more people would be forced to live rough and beg.

Many people express concern about immigration and asylum but this concern has been greatly whipped up by the tabloid press and the right. Instead of trying to fight the far right on their own ground, the democratic parties should highlight how immigration benefits Britain and join in an open and rational debate on what controls because there must be some controls are fairest, most effective and most helpful to Britain and the potential migrants themselves. The only major political party that has had the guts to point these things out is the Liberal Democrats. How immigrants can best be integrated into British society should form part of the debate, as should those problems that arise from conflicts between some cultures and the important British concepts of freedom, equality and democracy. We must also recognise that asylum is an entirely different issue to immigration, a humanitarian rather than an economic issue, for which any sort of quotas are unsuited. And we must prevent exploitation of all migrants by ensuring that they are paid decent wages for their work.