DaveI don't think you are being pompous and I do welcome your advice. However I do not use a word like "liar" lightly. As you know I have a chequered political history, and one that I am deeply ashamed of. People are always going to refer to my past activities and I am happy for them to do so. I am also happy to discuss my past activities as, discussed sensibly, to do so helps those with a genuine interest to achieve a better understanding of these events and, hopefully, will also help prevent others from making the same mistakes.What I am not prepared to accept is gratuitous embellishment. When, in 1986, I was convicted of an assault on a police officer the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight reported that I had committed a racist assault on a black police officer, simply because it sounded better. I didn't take action against Searchlight, firstly because I didn't have the means and secondly because, as a leading National Front officer, I didn't really have much of a good name to defame. As a consequence of my inaction several others, including the loathsome Andrew Gilligan, have subsequently repeated the lie, presumably in the belief that I am somebody who doesn't sue and am therefore an easy target for this kind of thing.The comments from Dan Filson need to be considered in the same light. His allegation was that I met leading BNP members Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons after 1991. The date is significant as it was in 1991 that I decided I wanted no more to do with the far-right. It wasn't, and I've never claimed it to be, an overnight Damascene conversion, it was in fact a process which began long before 1991 and probably wasn't entirely complete until after 1991 (prediction - this is the bit that will now be seized upon and quoted in isolation by Robin and Dan). But the allegation Dan was making was that my public rejection of the far-right in 1991 was bogus, and therein lies the defamation.At the time when Dan made his comments the possibility naturally suggested itself to me that he had made a genuine error in his interpretation of some comments that I had made earlier (although nowhere in those comments had there been any suggestion whatsoever that my meeting with Brons and Griffin had been post-1991). In such an event, the obvious thing for him to have done would have been to retract and apologise. This is what I would have done had the boot been on the other foot, and I know from experience it is what you would have done also. Instead he became aggressive and abusive, to me the actions of a guilty man. As a consequence of this I made the decision that I wouldn't engage with him further, as there was no point in debating with somebody who did not consider himself subject to the restraints of truth and basic decency.Now that you have given me the opportunity to state my side of the story I am content to desist henceforth from making my point about Dan's dishonesty in the childish but effective manner that I have employed up until now. I actually agree with Alan that the quality of this debate lends no credit to any of us, least of all those of us in public office.All I ask my critics for is some basic honesty in debate. In the cause of openness I am happy to give them all the ammunition they need in the form of real factual information, much of which is every bit as damning as the manufactured stuff. Fascism is a brutal, inhuman and evil ideology. It needs no embellishment and to resort to it simply surrenders the moral high ground which anti-fascism would otherwise occupy by default.
Phil Andrews ● 6167d