BNP Ballerina

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'BNP Ballerina' Returns
Updated: 15:22, Friday January 12, 2007

Anti-fascist protesters have demonstrated over "BNP ballerina" Simone Clarke dancing with the English National Ballet. She will be performing in public today for the first time since being exposed as a member of far right organisation the British National Party. Clarke, 36, has the lead role in a matinee performance of Giselle at the London Coliseum. Around 50 members of Unite Against Fascism stood in front of the Covent Garden building waving placards which declared: "Ballet Not Bigotry." They want Clarke sacked and chanted "Ballet should be Nazi-free" and "The BNP has got to go".

The protesters cited the example of Rene Blum, choreographer and founder of the Ballet de l'Opera in Monte Carlo, who died at Auschwitz in 1943. Clarke was outed by a newspaper last month as a card-carrying BNP member and went on to give an interview defending her political beliefs. She supports a crackdown on immigration despite the fact that her dance partner and boyfriend is a Cuban of Chinese descent. She said: "Sometimes it feels as though the BNP are the only ones willing to take a stand. I have been labelled a racist and a fascist because I have a view on immigration, and I mean mass immigration, but isn't that something that a lot of people worry about?"

Richard Barnbrook, BNP councillor for Barking and Dagenham, said: "I don't normally go to the ballet but I'm going to support Simone Clarke. I'm supporting her freedom of expression." He said of the demonstrators: "I find it really rather crude of them to take somebody who is a professional ballet dancer and say `You haven't got the right to do the job you're doing'."

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There's nobody complaining that she has a political opinion - it's the fact she's joined the bastard nazi BNP that's the problem! And what is it about immigration that could possibly affect someone like her in the position of wealth and cultural high-ranking that she's in? It's not like some Bulgarian immigrant is going to come along and take her job is it? Well, not unless they're better at it - in which case they have every right if you ask me.

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