The Times carried a story today concerning a donation of £5000 to the Solidarity Trade Union from Nick Griffin. Nick Griffin is the Leader of the British National Party.

Solidarity is an established Trade Union that has been in existence for the last three years and active within the last two. As with all Unions we offer advice and guidance and represent members. We attend investigatory, disciplinary and grievance meetings/hearings and take issues forward to Employment tribunals.

We take a strong stand in favour of British workers over cheap non-unionised migrant labour and do not discriminate over who can or cannot be members i.e. over race, creed or politics. We believe the majority of our members are not members of any political party. We don't donate to any Political Party (unlike many other Unions) and have no block votes within any Party (again unlike other Unions). We don't have a 'Political Fund'.

In February of this year Mr Griffin contacted us and offered us a donation of £5,000. At this time there had been a number of 'wildcat' strikes by British workers over the issue of companies using foreign over local labour. Mr Griffin stated that he had received a donation from a member to use as he thought best - in other words at his absolute discretion. He had decided to offer this donation to the Trade Union Solidarity. He supported our stance on British jobs for British workers and respected our non-political approach to membership which includied protecting the rights of our Union members to be members of any party, including the BNP. Mr Griffin has also said that he suspected that there was an attempt to set him up in a 'Sting' operation - those involved hoped he would personally take the money or re-direct it to the BNP (in contravention of Electoral Law. He did neither.

We accepted the donation and thanked him for his generosity.

Solidarity General Secretary Patrick Harrington said:- "We are grateful to anyone that wishes to help us operate a Trade Union that is independent from the TUC and Bosses. In these dark political days it certainly makes a change to hear that a politician is prepared to donate money to a good cause rather than pocket it for themselves."

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