On Saturday the 3rd November I was pleased to be invited to Southend High School for Boys to take part in a hustings organised by the Southend Ethnic Minority Forum which is a registered charity number 1116747. They proclaim reciept of funding from Southend on Sea Borough Council and the Ford Britain Trust. Their ‘Mission’ is stated in their website as being:- “to work to eliminate racial and religious discrimination, to champion the needs and interests of the Ethnic Minority Community, and to promote equal opportunity and harmony in the whole community” . I suspect the irony is unconscious and they aren’t aware that the second item is inconsistant with the other two.

Here is a link to their website which appears to be somewhat out of date but the group is still active (click here >>> http://www.semf.info/index.html)

All the candidates were asked searching and, in the main, sensible questions about how policing will be governed after the Police Commissioner Elections.

I was additionally asked questions about English National identity and the direction of travel of English Nationalism.

We had an interesting debate about Englishness and many of the ethnic minority speakers said that they were proud to be British but they didn’t regard themselves as being English.  When I challenged what the situation would be when/if Scotland goes independent and the United Kingdom is thereby dissolved I got a very interesting reaction.  Some of the speakers became very cross at the idea that Britishness might cease to be a possible national identity! Talk about living in denial!

During the hustings the other speakers of our community trotted out all the usual platitudes and tautologies about “valuing” and “celebrating” our ‘Diversity’ of our community.  I made it clear that the English Democrats policy is equality before the law and ‘equal rights not special rights’.

Many of the participants in the Southend Ethnic Minority Forum have had various (seemingly mostly paid) roles within the various consultancy committees which are the products of the British State’s policy of Multi-culturalism!  They were not keen on the idea of ‘equal rights rather than special rights’, as that would impact on their own interests, nevertheless they could see that our policy was a position that it was impossible to openly argue against!

All in all a very interesting meeting!