The controlled commercial media have deliberately blacked out the surge in BNP votes in Whitehaven and Ibstock, despite the fact that the BNP beat all three of the major’ parties in these two by-elections.

The Whitehaven result, announced on Thursday evening, has only been reported in one local paper and on 24dash.com, which carried this interesting comment: “The last 2008 council by-elections produced a night of high drama with mainstream parties holding off the BNP by knife-edge majorities in two contests…”

This obviously important development has been studiously ignored by all other media outlets, particularly the result in Whitehaven which saw the safest Labour council seat in Cumbria nearly fall to the BNP.

In the deliberate absence of media coverage, BNP News is proud to bring readers this first-hand account from Cumbria BNP press officer, Clive Jefferson:

The British National Party took a massive 40.1 percent of the vote in the Kells and Sandwith by-election. Unfortunately for the residents of the ward, it was not quite enough to win outright. Nevertheless, Labour’s massive majority of 1010 was almost completely demolished by Simon Nicholson and his team, leaving Labour with a majority of just 16.

No stone was left unturned in this election and we are now a very efficient, dedicated and professional election unit.

My thanks to everyone who contributed to this campaign and especially to those who put in seriously long hours on election day — our core people simply did not sit down from five am to midnight.

We have stunned the political establishment with this result!

We were the only party to man all the six polling stations, all day. We have precise records of everyone who voted and our polling agents then affixed the BNP seals to each box and followed the boxes to the count.

With our whipping teams still bringing our voters to the polls between 9- 10pm, and the yes voters being ticked off, we knew this one would go right down to the wire.

This knowledge was instantly confirmed when the first boxes were opened and tipped onto the table. The room was absolutely silent; the Conservatives actually left the counting tables well before the end.

Labour were absolutely devastated as it became apparent that they could well lose this, their safest seat in Cumbria, to the BNP.

The votes were then separated into candidate piles as the atmosphere became even more electric. In some areas, we won hands down, some we were level pegging and in just one of the six polling districts was there a large enough Labour vote to save them from defeat.

The votes were banded in piles of twenty fives and taken to another table to be piled into one hundreds. We lost by half a bundle of votes, a handful!

Our election agent called a re-count which uncovered a discrepancy of one vote. Just to be sure, we had one more re-count after that.

The result was announced to a stunned and subdued Labour Party. I went over to the winner, Wendy Skillicorne, and said “Let me be the first to congratulate you,” offering her my hand.

“I think not!” was the sneering reply, as she turned away and refused my proffered hand. “That says it all; you are even a bad winner,” were my final words to her.

We called this election and forced it on the others when they did not want it. We now know why. This election was run by a group of volunteers from Cumbria (apart from Ken Booth and two lads from Sunderland who came over to help us on the day). They took on the ruling powers of the Borough, County and indeed the country, and came within sixteen votes of taking the safest Labour seat in Cumbria which had previously had a 1010 Labour majority.

We were disappointed, but as I said when we left — “See you all again in June when we do it again!” That seat, and indeed all Cumbria County Council seats, are up for re-election next June and we have already started work in the wards.

The outcome of this election has not dented us — it’s electrified us. We had never set foot in that ward before, our only other County Council effort was in January, 2007 and we polled 6.7 percent.

Imagine how our team now feels, going into all out county elections in wards where we are established and have already polled well! It might well be decided to run a full slate of candidates for the whole of Cumbria.

I hope you enjoy your six months, Wendy, and are most relaxed with your 16 vote majority. We will be monitoring every move you make, and those that you don’t make, and we will take that seat in six month’s time.

Photograph: The BNP team at the count. From left to right — Ken, NE Regional Organiser; Bill, Election Agent; Paul, Allerdale Organiser; Clive, Copeland Organiser; Natasha, Youth Leader; Simon, Candidate; Mike, Barrow-in-Furness & South Lakeland Organiser; Alistair, Carlisle Organiser; Brian, Counting Agent.

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