IAN LAVERY SENDS OPEN LETTER TO THE BNP

The National Union of Mineworkers makes it absolutely clear that when we circulated a letter to all Members of the European Parliament seeking support for Columbian trade unionists who are often murdered for their activities the British National Party (BNP) received the correspondence totally inadvertently.

We apologise unreservedly to all our supporters for this administrative error.

The BNP’s assertion on its website that they are working in anyway with the NUM is totally false and is an attempt to attach themselves to the good name of the NUM.

The NUM abhors the politics of the BNP and has a long and proud history of fighting fascism that goes back to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s in which many miners gave their lives, and many others lost their lives in the fight against Hitler.

The BNP are not the friends of trade unionists and any suggested link between the NUM and the BNP is totally and utterly false and the NUM dissociates itself entirely from any such suggestion.

In the meantime I shall be writing to those individuals who are attempting to mislead people for their own political ends.  The NUM never has and never will be associated with the kind of politics that the BNP represents and to complain forcefully about this blatant political stunt.

Ian Lavery

NUM President