BURNLEY’S anti-racist majority has scored another victory over the British National Party. The Nazi BNP had been planning to march through the streets of the town on Saturday 21 September, ostensibly to demonstrate against the closure of local care homes. But the BNP has now called off its plans following pressure from anti-Nazis and an unequivocal rejection from the real care homes campaigners in the town. The care homes campaign march will now go ahead free of the distraction of the BNP’s attempts to hijack the issue for its own racist ends.

The struggle in Burnley to save care homes from closure has long been hampered by BNP attempts to infiltrate it. But the Nazis’ humiliating climbdown over their proposed march demonstrates that the tide in the town is turning against them. The BNP is now running scared from a popular anti-racist fightback. It no longer dares to spread its racist poison in public and can only hold its rallies in secret or behind police lines.

A spokesperson for Burnley Trades Council welcomed the campaigners’ victory over the BNP: "The BNP’s threatened presence had been putting people off from joining the care homes campaign. We need to build a positive and united campaign against closures. The BNP delivers nothing but race hatred and division."

The Anti Nazi League will no longer be demonstrating on Saturday, but will instead run a street stall to further publicise the real nature of the BNP. The BNP cynically pretends to be in favour of public health provision in order to make itself appear respectable. But its real views were made clear by its Hitler-worshipping founder, John Tyndall, who said: "The NHS symbolises everything that is wrong with British society today, with its indiscriminate and promiscuous compassion."