Asian Racist Hammer Attack

It has been pouring down with rain in Calne from first light to dusk and any physical election activity has had to be postponed for the day. Wet leaflets through letterboxes and opening doors to canvassers allowing the cold into houses is not the best way to win over the electorate. No matter, there are enough days and enough bodies available to complete the plans we have drawn up.

One of the most horrific crimes to have taken place in recent times here in North Wiltshire is what has become known as The Hammer Attack. Back in January 2007, Henry Webster, a 16 year old schoolboy, was viciously attacked by a gang of Asian youths on his school tennis court and was repeatedly punched, kicked and battered about the head with a claw hammer. Henry who attended the Ridgeway School in Wroughton suffered three skull fractures which needed surgery, and the violent blows have left him with permanent brain damage.

Four teenagers - Wasif Khan, 18, Amjad Qazi, 19, and two boys aged 15 and 16, who cannot be named - are charged with wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. Many questions will hopefully be asked and answered at this trial including what the first two of these teenagers were doing at the school in the first place. It is also interesting that they are referred to as teenagers and not youths or men. If a British soldier aged 19 was killed in Iraq, he would have been referred to as a man, not a teenager or a youth. It is interesting how people of the same age can be referred to in different ways depending on how a report wants to portray them. Obviously here by using the word teenagers, the intention is to make those on trial appear younger and therefore perhaps not as responsible for their behaviour as they would have been if called men. The other interesting point is that the crime they are on trial for is "intent to inflict grievous bodily harm". Hitting someone about the head repeatedly with a claw hammer, surely that has to be attempted murder. If the races of those involved were reversed I am sure it would have been. It's not as if there were no witnesses, the attack took place in a busy tennis court with tens if not hundreds of school children as witnesses. The attack was also filmed on at least one mobile phone. What more evidence do they need?

Bizarrely, yesterday's report in the Swindon Advertiser mentioned the events in Bristol Crown Court which included the questioning of Henry over whether there was a racist angle to the attacks. Robin Shellard, representing Qazi said: "I am suggesting that it was shouted to the group - where are your P*** mates?" and Henry denied this.

What is absolutely astounding is the implication that if this had been said there might have been some justification for the attack!

In today's paper a 16-year-old witness of the attack described when one of the group pulled the claw hammer out of their sleeve. The witness statements included the following - "One guy pulled the hammer out of his sleeve and just smacked him. As soon as he hit Henry, he fell to the ground. As he lay there bleeding, people kept kicking him. I picked up my phone and started filming. Looking on the phone screen I saw a silver object flashing. It looked like a hammer. One of them was hitting Henry in the back of the head with it. The guy with the hammer's hands kept going back and forwards, connecting with the back of Henry's head. Henry was on the floor trying to cover his head. You could hear all the girls screaming."

The witness said that he saw five Asian men and two Asian boys running away shortly afterwards.If anyone wants to read more about this trial the usual media outlets are probably not going to be where it is reported.

Back in the Spring of 2007 the BNP thought they would go to the school to see the fence that was being erected in the aftermath of the attack in an attempt to prevent this sort of thing happening again. We were there no more than five minutes before the Headmaster approached us and the police arrived. Perhaps if they were a little more on the ball back in January this incident would never have occurred. For more details on the court case, go to the BNP website and look at the Regional Voices section.

Finally last night I thought I would tune in to watch the first in the new Sky documentary series called "Wives". It's a documentary series looking at various groups of wives. The first in the series was "Transvestite Wives". I watched it for a few minutes and then had to turn it off. It's not the sort of world that has ever come into my thoughts and I fail to understand why grown men would wish to dress up as women, let alone go out of the house like it.

The reason for watching was that I wanted to see how the programme came across, whether it was serious or whether it was mocking as the second in the series is called "BNP Wives" and according to the Sky web-site portrays "A startling picture of the lives of women who married into and work for the British National Party. Wives meets women across the country with strong political beliefs". More often than not the media attempt to distort the true picture of what the BNP are all about and attempt to portray us in the darkest light possible. If last nights programme is anything to go by it should be a fair documentary, I certainly hope so having signed a disclaimer myself after being filmed during my Master of Ceremonies role at the party's annual Red, White and Blue (RWB) family festival. This time next week I will be able to make comment as appropriate.

Strangely the subsequent programmes are about "Gangster Wives" and "Polygamist Wives" so there is no surprise that I might be a touch sceptical about it.

And still the rain falls......