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Artist News
Billy Bragg v the BNP
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 27 April 2010
Talking of the British Numpties Party, Billy Bragg has now had two run-ins with the same BNP candidate while campaigning for the Labour Party in East London.
Apparently on one occasion he ended up having an argument in the street with BNP parliamentary candidate and London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook in front of the TV cameras. Bragg told Barnbrook “You do not represent the people of Barking and Dagenham… You are exploiting the genuine concerns of people here and you are making the problems worse”.
I don’t know how Barnbrook responded at the time, but in a subsequent blog he made much of the fact the “has-been rocker from Dorset” agreed that the people of east London had “genuine concerns” about the impacts of immigration and multiculturalism.
He waffled on thus: “It seems quite obvious to me that Bragg, Labour, and the rest of our two-faced politicians are running scared. They realise that people’s concerns about the problems arising from mass immigration are too widespread to be ignored – at least at election time. So now they’re prepared to concede a little and affect a little concern for the situation, just to pacify the voters. In fact they’ve been lining up to endorse the BNP’s viewpoint!”
I’m not sure that’s how Billy sees it though, it has to be said – lefty pop stars and tedious racists rowing in the street, this is what General Elections are meant to be about. Bring it on.
