I am writing to update you on the voter registration and turnout campaign designed to ensure that people in Hackney use their vote in the EU elections on June 4th and thereby reduce the risk of a BNP success in that election.

This email asks for your help in

• A voter registration drive

• A tabloid newspaper which we intend to distribute in the borough
• 'mapping' the wards of Hackney
• Cascading this email on so that our message reaches a wider audience.

The EU elections take place nine weeks on Thursday. We have a lot to do to bring out communities together and convince people to participate.

A tremendous start

Over the last four weeks we have distributed in excess of 20,000 leaflets door to door across the borough, (thank you to everyone who has been involved). We still have a few leaflets left, if your street has not been leafleted, then please let me know.

Meanwhile our facebook group, Hackney Unites to stop the BNP has reached 260 members in just four weeks. If you are not already a member, why not join now and invite your friends to do the same; (http://www.facebook.com/friends/?ref=tn#/group.php?gid=68201514752)

We have been overwhelmed by the wide range of support we have received in this first wave of leafleting by people from across the political spectrum, and from people with a wide range of religious faiths (or none).

Voter Registration

Our attention is now turning to the issue of voter registration. We have a list of 7,000 addresses in the borough where no-one is registered to vote. While some of these will no-doubt be derelict properties, others will be neighbours who will be disenfranchised unless they register by 19 May. We are therefore planning a concerted voter registration drive, the leaflets are being finalised now. If you can help, or are prepared to organise a group of people in your ward, please let us know.

Tabloid newsletter

We are planning, in collaboration with the national Hope Not Hate campaign and the Daily Mirror newspaper a tabloid supplement on the European Election and opposition to the BNP. While this is a national initiative we have agreed to 'personalise' 40,000 of these newspapers to Hackney. We need your help.

We need to demonstrate and celebrate the width of opposition to the BNP and their politics of hatred that exists in Hackney's communities. So we are planning to agree a joint statement of opposition which we will be asking people and organisations to endorse. There will be more to follow on this statement.

We are also keen that we get some quotes from 'community leaders' so please seek out faith, community, trade union, tenants and political leaders in your community and ask them to send us a statement which we can publicise.

If you would like to help with the collection of news and features for this tabloid, please let us know.

Issues for our communities

We also want to identify the issues that matte for our communities. Once we have identified these we can demonstrate that the BNP are not the answer. We know that they build their support by parasitically exploiting genuinely felt grievances. We need to demonstrate that not only do we oppose the poison of the BNP but we care about the issues confronting our communities. Some of these issues will be obvious (job insecurity in the current climate for example) others will be very local and specific (the absence of an accessible venue for a community group to meet for example). Please tell us what you think are the issues that are deeply felt and widely felt in your corner of our community.

We will need a lot of support to distribute these newspapers. Please let us know now, whether you can help. We are looking for people, preferably operating in pairs, to take enough for their street, or part of their estate. We are also looking for people to co-ordinate distribution in their own ward (the more help we have with co-ordination the more efficient we will be).

These newspapers will celebrate the best in multiculturalism, expose the thugs behind the BNP's mask of respectability, and look at the issues in our community and suggest that we will be more likely to successfully address these issues by getting our communities to work together (rather than letting others tear us apart).

How else can you help

We are looking for supporters to 'map' their ward. This means identifying the faith, community and political groups in the ward, and then tracking down contact details for their leading figures (we want to ask them to lend their weight to this campaign). We are also interested in the various workplaces in the borough and identifying whether there is a trade union representative there (again we want their contact details so we can approach them for support). The same goes for tenants and residents representative.

If you already know these people, or are prepared to spend a little time tracking them down you will be contributing tremendously to our campaign.

We are also keen to be invited to address any meetings taking place in the borough over the next month or so. Whether it is a trade union, tenants, political, faith or community group, we want the opportunity to spread the word, and to answer questions on the campaign. Let us know if you want a speaker.

If you want to help in any way, please drop us an email, tell us what you can do (and any further suggestions you have). Please tell us which ward you live in (or your postcode if you don't know) and your phone number.

The BNP need just 8% of the total vote cast on June 4th. With your help we can ensure that people in Hackney make that less likely by voting for an anti-fascist party.

Finally, can I ask you to cascade this email onto friends, neighbours and colleagues in Hackney

Thank you for your support.

John Page