BNP race row with Dr John Sentamu over 'spear-thrower' comments

May 3 2009 by Adam Aspinall, Sunday Mercury

Outraged by the suggestion, Uganda-born Dr Sentamu said it was not up to the BNP to define Englishness.

“You don’t have to be a member of the BNP to be clearly English,” he said. “It is quite a mistake to suggest that everybody who wants to affirm Englishness affirms that narrow thinking. This ‘bloodless genocide’? I think that is just language which is beyond belief.”

Writing on the internet, BNP spokesman Simon Darby then made the savage attack on the Archbishop.

Under the headline ‘And the Lord said, arise though art all English’ Darby stated: “Our old friend John Sentamu, or to give him his full name John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu, has been up to his old tricks once again.

“As if the responsibilities of being the Archbishop of York were not enough, the ambitious African has apparently used his power and influence to kindly bestow upon the world the right to be English.”

Adding criticism of Labour MP Shahid Malik, Darby wrote: “I somewhat doubt whether or not this collection of professional anti-British zealots, who try oh so very hard to disguise their true motivations, have thought about the consequences of BNP success in spite of their very public interference.

“However, what is certain is that should the BNP triumph in Yorkshire or elsewhere, the likes of Malik and Sentamu will be able to wallow in their newly acclaimed marginalisation, obscurity and irrelevance for years.”