Diane, the landlord was asked if the orgsanisers could hold a gig in his pub. He has a young family. He was threatened with "trouble" if the gig went ahead. People respond in lots of different ways to these kinds of threats, and if the gig is happening effectively in your home, as is the case with a pub, it's easy to feel you are exposing your family to risk.

It's not a nice decision to have to make, and perhaps his reaction was knee-jerk and disproportionate to the expressed threat, but I still can't find it in me to condemn him for it. With the greatest of respect, I'm not sure how your own experience of fighting fascism in the 70s is relevant. The landlord is not a campaigner - he simply agreed to host a gig. While giving in may lead the BNP to think that they've won, it's important that the news of what happened is spread as widely as possible, as exposing the BNP's tactics shows them for the nasty thugs they are, despite claims to the contrary.



mikesamwild, the landlord did know what sort of gig it was. The leaflets stated very clearly that the event was a Folk Against Fascism/Hope not Hate gig. There are all kinds of ways of defeating the current threat from the BNP. FAF is an awareness-raising campaign. No one is suggesting that stickers on guitars are going to defeat fascism, but if they do the job they were intended for - helping artists to repel attempts by the BNP to hijack their music in a very public way - they will have contributed to undermining this current BNP tactic of attempting to cloak itself in respectability and legitimacy.