Oh dear. The BNP Greens keep falling out of the woodwork, and now it turns out, I may have voted for one of them!
Let’s start with this, a statement from local Green Party chap (and an all-round stand up guy), Darren Johnson, which I noticed in the comments section on Bob From Brockley’s blog.
Lewisham Green Party today confirmed that the name of a Mr Nicholas Stone who previously stood for the Greens in the local elections has appeared on the leaked list of alleged BNP supporters.
Darren Johnson, Leader of the Green Group on Lewisham Council said, “The policies of the Green Party and the BNP could not be further apart. The Green Party has long fought for equality for all and there is no room for anyone in the Green Party who holds racist views.”
Mr Stone came to us from the Socialist Alliance and gave us no indication whatsoever that he shared the obnoxious views of the BNP. Mr Stone has had no active involvement in Lewisham Green Party for the past two years. Let there be no doubt that the Green Party stands firmly against racism in all forms.”
I don’t expect you to remember that in the election before last, I got into a little hot water with the Socialist Party after blogging about what – in my judgement – were underhand and devious electioneering at the Green Party’s expense.
I concluded my post with this:
If Nick Long is still in the Green Party, then I hope he’ll be chucked out. What he did is nothing short of a betrayal of his colleagues. If I were Kathleen Easton, Dan Hudson or Nick Stone I’d be hopping mad!
Turns out, Nick Stone was already hopping mad.
Now, while it is true that there were a few Labour and Tories on the list, these are huge broad-church parties with hundreds of MPs, thousands of local councillors and tens, of not hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file members. Yet it seems the Greens have suffered a disproportionately high number of closet right-wingers – especially when you add the antisemitic ‘troofers’ to the leaked BNP list.