The British National Party
is building an alliance with radical anti-abortion activists in an attempt
to reach out to Catholics and secure their votes in future elections.

Nick
Griffin, the BNP leader, and one of his close deputies confirmed yesterday
that they held private talks last week with the UK co-ordinator of Life
League, an anti-abortion lobby group. Griffin and Mark Collet spent
two days with James Dowson, an Ulster-based businessman and the main force
behind Life League.

The meeting has outraged other anti-abortion
campaigners. A number of them, who wanted to remain anonymous, contacted
The Observer this weekend. One, who described himself as a ‘mainstream
anti-abortion and anti-racist’, condemned the BNP. [sic]

Griffin
claimed that amplifying the party’s ‘pro-life’ policies would win it new
votes among Catholics. ‘There used to be a perception in Northern Ireland
and Scotland that we were an Orange party. This is not so,’ he said.

The
BNP, like Dowson, wanted to reach across the sectarian divide. ‘If there
is any plus for us in meeting Life League and highlighting our opposition
to abortion, it is that it chimes with the feelings of many working-class
Scottish Catholics,’ the BNP leader said.

His main candidate in
Glasgow would be stressing the BNP’s opposition to abortion in the
forthcoming Scottish elections. Dowson said the league had a ‘moral duty
to engage with anyone who will listen in order to promote our pro-life
agenda’.

Matthew Collins of Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine,
said it was odd that the BNP ‘welcomed Holocaust deniers’ yet believed in
the ‘right to life of the unborn’.

Full story at The Observer.

• Filed under Elections, Glasgow, West + Ayrshire, Roman Catholic Church, Scottish Christian News Monitor, Sectarianism, Social Policy.