Guess who is Standring for the BNP!

KEITH STANDRING, the man of many part(ie)s,
here conducting a raffle. Could run a sweep on what he will join next.


AN old comrade of mine has been in touch to ask whether I'd noticed that a certain common acquaintance of ours, active on the Left over a decade ago, was standing as a British National Party (BNP) candidate. I thought I'd better check on that, as the guy seemed to have settled on the 'respectable' Tory Right last thing I heard, and surely could not go further? He could, and has. Here he is,on the BNP's own website, standing in the County Council elections tomorrow, Keith Standring.




EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL
ASHDOWN / CONQUEST: KEITH STANDRING
BRAYBROKKE / CASTLE: MICK TURNER
BAIRD / ORE: FRANK SWAINE
CENTRAL / GENSING: STEVE WEIR

Who is Keith Standring? A good question. When he appeared on the Conservative Home website it said:

Keith Standring was a regular soldier in the Grenadier Guards before working for over thirty years in British Intelligence. He is a member of the Conservative Party, The Freedom Association and a supporter of The Bruges Group.

On that occasion he was opposing the introduction of ID cards in Britain. On that issue many of us would agree with him, though I'm not sure all his new(?) volkish party comrades would. But I can understand his being particularly concerned about identity..

When I met Standring back in the 1990s he was a GMB union officer, keen to offer his energies and trade union organising experience to working with the International Trade Union Solidarity Campaign set up by the Workers Revolutionary Party(Workers Press). He became its secretary, campaigning in support of the Liverpool dockers and meeting up with Iranian, Turkish and Nigerian workers, just the kind of people whom his current party wishes to deport, if not destroy. If somehow his performance did not quite suit the part, it still seemed a long way from becoming a Tory councillor in Bexhill on Sea.

But people like Roy Grantham, former general secretary of the clerical union APEX which became part of the GMB general union, had their own memories of union officer Keith Standring. 'One of the oddities in Standring's record is his form in switching both parties and religions. Grantham describes him as "a chameleon" and observes: "When he went to a new religion, he was all for it. And then six months later, he was all for something else." Bob Fazakerley, a former member of APEX in the north-west of England recalls: "He was variously a Communist, Maoist, Catholic, Buddhist or any other affiliation you can think of."
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4373780.MP_will_pay_thousands_to_taxman/?action=complain&cid=7709866

Incidentally, APEX was the union of the Grunwick strikers, though Grantham insists Standring was still the new boy in the union when this bitter dispute broke out, so won't have played much part in it. Just as well. The right-wing National Association for Freedom(NAFF) which worked to break the strike became the Freedom Association, and Keith Standring is a member of it.

A chameleon is expert at changing colour, but apparently Keith was not so good at it. His former union colleagues recall a time when he married a Scandinavian woman and died his hair peroxide blond to suit. Only thing was at the GMB conference he decided to take a dip in the hotel pool, and it all washed out, leaving his hair a purplish colour.

To judge from the items I've been able to google on Keith Standring's recent political evolution, he has been working his way steadily through Tory Right and Freedom Association, and supporting views close to those of the BNP for a while before coming out as a candidate. We can only hope his campaign is a wash out, but whatevrr the real Keith Standring is, his far-Right views are too deep died to pass for temporary.

For earlier posting on Keith Standring, click on label link.