spiked-central | Letter

The information being put out by Labour Friends of Searchlight is untrue (Who's afraid of the British National Party?). To say David Beckham would be excluded because he is one quarter Jewish is laughable. I am Jewish and not only a member of the British National Party (BNP), but also one of their elected councillors. I have witnessed nothing of anti-Semitism and there are quite a number of Jewish members.

Pat Richardson, UK

Your article about how the mainstream parties use the BNP as a cloak for their own failure contained a fair few truths. I'm the first to admit that the BNP is organisationally weak, drastically underfunded and desperately short of activists. Though at least we're not in hock to assorted banks and big businessmen to the tune of millions.

It really does not do, however, to repeat propaganda lies from Searchlight as if they were true. The BNP has Jewish members and a Jewish councillor, so why on Earth would we object to David Beckham - apparently quarter Jewish - playing for England? As a matter of fact, we'd leave it entirely up to the England manager to decide who could play for England, since interfering in football teams is no job for central government.

The real story in these local elections should not be the BNP, but the fact that they are perilously close to being the last ones of any import whatsoever. John Prescott's office for deconstructing England and establishing EU-regions is working on plans to abolish swathes of democratically elected local government, including cutting the number of councillors to one-third.

Simultaneously, the East Yorkshire pilot scheme whereby all local council services have been handed over to German media conglomerate Bertelsmanns to run as a for-profit operation is apparently intended be rolled out right across the country.

The inevitable resulting destruction of local and democratic control over our council services and over council issues will complete public disillusionment with local politics. Why should anyone vote for councillors who have no real power to change things even if they want to? These concerns should not be party issues, but if the other parties refuse to address them, they will only have themselves to blame if they find the BNP 'exploiting public fears'.

Nick Griffin, UK