The BNP are enjoying their new found place in the ‘mainstream’ with Nick Griffin on Question Time, and wall to wall coverage in the press.

On Saturday 7 November, the national Hope not Hate organisation are providing us with an opportunity to channel our anger at the BNP in a constructive way to help build an anti-BNP vote in the coming May elections.

As part of our campaign to revive community politics in Hackney and to keep the BNP from wining a seat in the European Parliament, we are having 50,000 tabloid newspapers printed for distribution across the borough.

To prevent the racist, Islamaphobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic BNP getting a London-wide seat in the European Parliament, we must ensure that people in Hackney participate in the elections to be held on 4 June this year. Due to the proportional representation system the BNP will get a candidate elected if they win just 8% of the votes. Consequently we need 12 anti-fascist votes to cancel everyone the BNP get.

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.

At the Hackney TUC AGM on 14 February, we recommitted to campaigning against the BNP in the run up to the European Elections in June (where there is a real risk that they may get a MEP elected). However, we also agreed that, as well as working with community groups, we needed to make progress in building our own trade union base.

As part of its on-going commitment to community organising and anti-fascism, Hackney TUC is seeking to recruit a part time community organiser.

The role is for one day per week from February through to June, with the dual objective of building a sustainable community coalition and mobilising an anti-fascist vote in the June 2009 EU elections.

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.

This post:

• Invites you to a meeting to discuss how we in Hackney can act to undermine the BNP's electoral strategy

• Asks you to publicise Searchlight's website which rebuts the BNP's racist propaganda sheet: 'racism cuts both ways' (which they aim to send to every 18 year old in targeted seats)
  and

• reports on the success of our 'public declaration' letter published in today's Hackney Gazette, seeking to bring together anti-BNP activists from every section of our diverse communities.

Congratulations to everyone who has spent the last two days seeking to convince Archant publishers not to publish an advert from the racist BNP .

We have just received an official statement from Mike Ferris the editor which includes the following:

'We have concluded that it is not in the best interests of the community to publish the advertisement in the Hackney Gazette. Nor is it right to give the BNP further publicity through a prolonged public debate about the merits of the organisation and its advertising campaign. The balance of arguments in this debate has been extremely difficult but we believe that we have come to the right conclusion.'