The fact that last week's leak reveals that the BNP has only nine members in Hackney is a tribute to the unity and diversity of our borough. But it is no cause for complacency. The BNP has recently started an organising drive in our equally diverse neighbouring area Bethnal Green, and the leaked list reveals a significant increase in their national membership.

Moreover, far-right organisations tend to do well in periods of economic crisis, feeding on despair and spreading lies that the crisis is the fault of immigrants, ethnic minorities or progressive social policies rather than of the capitalist system itself.

The membership leak should be an incentive to renew our efforts against the BNP. We have to defeat them in elections, but we must do more too. The BNP is distinguished from other right-wing parties not simply by its more extreme views, but by the fact that it organises violent thugs to physically fight for those views - to intimidate and hurt the many people they want to silence or drive out. We need to mobilise and protest against them. We need to educate ourselves and our communities about the threat they pose, and about the proud tradition of anti-fascism in our part of London and elsewhere.

While the BNP pretends to champion white working-class people, we must insist that their filth has no place in the working-class movement. Trade unions should use their legal right to exclude fascists from membership.

Finally, the BNP's support has grown among people who feel that their needs are being ignored, and who have fallen for the divisive nonsense that immigrants and others are to blame. To win support away from the BNP, we have to expose their lies, but we also have to fight for the jobs, housing, education and public services that people need, and to unite working-class people in all our diversity in doing so.

Janine Booth