"JOIN A real political party, labour/conservative/wet and VOTE!".

I entirely agree that the best way to oppose the BNP is to engage with and vote for the mainstream political parties. As I understand it the BNP vote hasn't really gone up much, it's just that people aren't voting tory/lib/lab. (Allowing fascists to get in to power is a pretty stupid way to punish liberal politicians for being a bit liberal with their expense allowances imo.)

The main function of FAF is to provide anyone in the folk scene with a simple mechanism to prevent the BNP implying a connection with them. The BNP are less likely to sell folk cds off their website if they have a FAF logo on the back, and are less likely to infiltrate a morris team if that team wear FAF badges on their kit etc etc. The more omnipresent FAF becomes, the harder it will be for the BNP to attach itself to the folk scene in general.

I, along with the other performers at the Sidmouth launch, have no intention of turning my performances into a political platform to denounce the BNP. To do so would be to let the BNP win on one level - affording them influence totally disproportionate to their actual stature.

I am, as it happens, a member of the Labour party but I'm very keen that FAF should not become a 'left wing' organisation. FAF is about preventing the BNP from making British/English folk culture an exclusively white concern, and as such should be of interest and of benefit to all folkies whatever their party political sympathies.

I should point out that I am by no means a spokesman for FAF, just an enthusiastic supporter.

Cheers, Jon