British Freedom makes themselves look stupid

Paul Weston

At Christmas time the far right aided by some sections of the right wing tabloid press traditionally cook up a “Christmas is being banned” story that inevitably turns out to be untrue.

This year’s Yuletide award for stupidity goes to the miniscule BNP splinter British Freedom led by UKIP reject Paul Weston.

British Freedom announced a link up with the thuggish EDL just last month with the possibility of EDL members standing as election candidates under the British Freedom umbrella.

It seems the victim of this year’s made up Christmas story is the much loved charity The British Red Cross with British Freedom announcing on their Facebook page “The British Red Cross has again banned overt reference to Christmas from its 430 fundraising shops to avoid “cultural insensitivity” Do not donate to them.”

However The British Red Cross are old hands at this having dealt with this kind of nonsense since The Daily Mail printed an incorrect story about them back in 2002.

On their website The British Red Cross under an article entitled “How the Red Cross didn’t ban Christmas” quickly demolished the untrue story.

“To reiterate: this story is now nine years old. Many of our shops and offices are decked out in Christmas decorations, and our online Christmas gift shop is open for business. We have in no way “banned Christmas” nor have we discussed doing so.”

They continued “It’s true that you won’t find explicitly religious items or displays, relating to any faith, in any of our shops, at Christmas or any other time. But this certainly doesn’t amount to a ban on us celebrating or mentioning Christmas, or any other holiday. And it’s absolutely nothing to do with “offending non-Christians” or to serve any other sort of politically correct agenda.

The point is that the Red Cross is not a political or religious organisation. This neutrality is one of our fundamental principles and governs everything we do in the whole Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. We can’t let people in need down by compromising our neutrality. That is why we do not align ourselves with any particular political cause or religious creed anywhere in the world. And that’s why we don’t have any items of a religious nature in our shops.”

Red faced British Freedom administrators quickly deleted the posting from Facebook when it was pointed out to them that what they had claimed was nonsense and are now pretending the whole incident didn’t happen.

Good job we managed to get hold of this screen grab.