Saturday 5 December 2009

'BNP hijack Mitcham Remembrance Day'

This is Local London reported yesterday on this politicising of a Remembrance Day event:

"The BNP hijacked Mitcham’s Remembrance Sunday event, parading a party banner in front of the War Memorial and duping residents to appear in a photograph.

The propaganda shot has since appeared on London Patriot - an extreme right-wing website - sparking fury among those in the picture who believed it was a photocall for the local newspaper.

Witnesses to the event, which happened moments after Mitcham’s Remembrance service finished on November 8, said the BNP banner was deceitfully handed to a group of children at the front of the picture and quickly hidden away after the shot was taken.

Daphne Adkins, 64, was looking on the memorial for the name of her grandfather who died in World War One when the photocall was hastily assembled around her. She said: “I thought it was just disgraceful. We were completely oblivious to what was going on and I can’t imagine many of the other people knew either. I just thought this was something for the local paper organised by the British Legion. Remembrance Sunday has nothing to do with these people. It was sneaky and disrespectful.”  You can read the rest of this story here.

As various 'tweeters' have commented, "tricking kids into holding their banner, how low can you get?"

3 comments:

Rayatcov said...

Why is it that whenever the BNP are anywhere they are hijacking the event but when Brown and Cameron take the photographers along they are not.

Plummy Mummy said...

Rayacot,
Guess you didn't read the wide coverage on the criticism levied against both Brown and Cameron.
FYI here is a link to the article in the independent. I'm sure you will find other such items if you just search on Google.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameron-and-pm-apologise-over-remembrance-day-photoops-1825689.html

Raven said...

'Hijack' because they are siezing or diverting an event meant to be about something else. The original report also says that they 'duped' people into holding their banner, and certainly children seem to be holding it in the photo - presumably the latter have not signed up to the BNP.