Anti-fascist trade unionist arrested in Oldham

Hackney TUC is supporting Oldham Trades Council in its objection to this outrageous arrest.

Press release from Oldham Trades Council

NAZI BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY HIJACKS HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY
CEREMONY DISRUPTED; ANTI-FASCIST TRADE UNIONIST ARRESTED

The British National Party (BNP) is a fascist party, an ally of the NPD in Germany and the Front National
in France. Its leader, Nick Griffin, has spoken alongside politicians from both these organisations and has
represented the BNP at NPD events in Germany.
The BNP is led by Nick Griffin, who joined the party in 1995. He began to edit The Rune, an anti-Semitic
quarterly and announced that the BNP should prioritise denying the Holocaust to schoolchildren. Griffin
then earned a two-year suspended prison sentence for his sick views on the Holocaust. In 1998, he was
found guilty, at Harrow Crown Court, of inciting race hatred by denying that the Holocaust took place.

This year, in the northern working-class town of Oldham, two notorious BNP activists, Mick Treacy and
Anita Corbett, turned up at the town's official Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony. In a calculated insult, these members of a nazi, Holocaust-denying, party laid a wreath.

This was then covered up by another wreath laid by Martin Gleeson, secretary of Oldham Trades Council
and a prominent anti-racist campaigner in the town. The BNP complained that Martin Gleeson, in laying
the Trades Council's wreath, had damaged their flowers.

Mr Gleeson's supporters say that the presence of the BNP and the local police and council's failure to
exclude them outraged those present, including several representatives of the town's Jewish community.
Displaying total contempt for the day's proceedings, the BNP ignored the agreed protocol for the ceremony and interrupted a speech by black Christian minister the Rev. Donnie Meyer to lay their wreath ahead of other organisations and individuals present.

Mr Gleeson was personally arrested by Chief Superintendent Keith Bentley, the most senior police officer in Oldham. He was held for 7 hours at Oldham police station and charged under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 s.1(1) and s.4 with criminal damage to the BNP wreath, valued at GBP 20.

He later said "I acted because I found the BNP wreath hypocritical and hurtful both to myself and to my
friends present at the ceremony. I intended only to obscure it from public view."

Oldham is covered by Greater Manchester Police, the subject of the acclaimed BBC investigative
documentary '˜The Secret Policeman' which highlighted widespread racism within the force.

Protests to Greater Manchester police chief Michael Todd at  Chief.constable@gmp.police.uk

Messages of solidarity to Oldham Trades Council at  info@oldhamtuc.org.uk

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Tuesday, 24th May 2005
Flower power wins for memorial man

A UNION official walked free from court today after being arrested for laying a wreath on top of a BNP one at a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Greater Manchester.

Martin Gleeson was so annoyed that the far-right party turned up at the event in memory of the victims of Nazi death camps that he placed his wreath "assertively" on top of the BNP one.

Mr Gleeson, at the ceremony in Oldham, with Jewish friends, was immediately arrested and charged with criminal damage to the flowers on the £20 BNP wreath.
The case, which is estimated to have cost taxpayers more than £10,000 was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service today when Mr Gleeson appeared at Oldham Magistrates' Court.

Mr Gleeson, 44, an engineer from Chadderton, Greater Manchester, said: "The whole thing seems farcical to me, it is a waste of public money.

"I was making a peaceful protest that these people who were actively trying to divide the town were using the service to create publicity for themselves. At the end of the day I squashed a few flowers. Is that a crime worthy of arrest and being charged?

"It is important that we stand up against what the BNP are trying to do and make sure that there is respect for the Holocaust Memorial Day service."

He attended the ceremony on January 27 to lay a wreath as secretary of Oldham TUC. Around 60 officials, MPs, local councillors and others were at the town's cenotaph for the event.

The BNP were not invited but members of the party turned up.