NATIONAL LOTTERY

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Travellers have claimed almost £5million in government funding to help them get around planning laws. Money from the Big Lottery Fund, which is supposed to be used to help good causes, has gone on advising gipsy and Roma groups how to set up illegal camps and get services there. The projects funded from the public purse include a programme to help traveller groups in the East Midlands 'to better understand and have a meaningful input into planning policies'.

The money paid for a project worker to 'organise seminars and forum meetings' at which travellers were able to 'engage with the planners and policy makers'. Gipsies elsewhere in the country received advice on how to claim accommodation and benefits, and were given media training to win over residents in rural areas. And those who find travelling groups intimidating will be astonished to learn those in one London borough were even given assertiveness training.

In total, £4.7million has been handed out by the Big Lottery Fund to 26 pro-traveller causes since 2004. Parliamentary answers provided by culture minister Barbara Follett show that even apparently legitimate projects to help traveller children, such as a Hertfordshire play bus, meant public money was spent on 'unauthorised sites'. It was also revealed a Gipsy and Traveller Support Project in East Sussex received taxpayers' money to help ensure 'they are fully represented in community action planning processes'.

The Ormiston Children and Families Trust Advocacy service got funding to help gipsy communities 'understand, access and benefit from the services to which they are entitled', including advocacy on planning applications and appeals. The growing pace of approvals of sites follows instructions sent out by John Prescott in 2006 that force councils into using compulsory purchase powers to meet new regional targets for traveller camps. In March it emerged that thousands of protesters against one new site in Bedfordshire were ignored by council officials on the grounds that they were 'racist'.

A spokesman said, "The Big Lottery Fund does not exclude any minority groups from applying for funding. From June 2004 to February 2009, Big has made awards totalling £4.76million to initiatives that have benefited gipsies and travellers. This is equivalent to 0.2% of the fund's good cause funding. Recent research has shown that only an estimated 20% of 11 to 16-year-olds from the gipsy and traveller population attend secondary school and 68% had experienced racism or prejudice because they were a traveller." (Source: Daily Mail, Aug/09)

National Lottery funding is dished out to African dance troupes, prisoners’ painting classes and equipment for Peruvian guinea pig farmers, but not a single penny is available for any organisation which pledges to promote and protect English culture. This fact has emerged after South Wales BNP activist Roger Philips asked the National Lottery Commission under a Freedom of Information request about grants made to “good causes.” The commission was “unable to assist” Mr Phillips, but they did provide a web link to the lottery grants database, which records all payments made since 1995, and reveals some peculiar Labour government pet projects as the recipients of funding.

A search established that 153 grants amounting to £7,366,692 have been made to Muslim organisations, in comparison with 106 grants worth £3,366,924 made to Christian organisations, amounting to less than half of the total donated to Islamic causes. There have been 2365 grants awarded to organisations which promote multicultural ideology, amounting to £184,278,549. Schemes operating out of the heavily Islamified and Labour-controlled Tower Hamlets, with its 15,000 council staff and £1.1 billion budget, have received £207,563,446 in lottery grants since 1995. The more unusual grants include:

£6,035,976 granted to the Black Photographers’ Association in 2002.

£5,078,472 granted to the British Refugee Council in 2007.

£2,000,000 granted to Pathe Productions for their Bollywood project in 2003.

£1,011,104 granted to Health Unlimited for a radio service broadcasting “in the vicinity of the African Great Lakes.”

£7,040,000 (2003) and £5,050,000 (2000) granted to ‘Rich Mix’ Cultural Foundation “for the promotion of ethnic minorities’ impact on the London economy and culture.”

The commission was keen to stress that they do not distribute the funds directly, responsibility is delegated to outside bodies who are selected by parliament, including arts, sports and films councils, and the Big Lottery Fund: the body responsible for distributing 670 million a year, of which 70 million goes to international projects. The Big Lottery Fund receives around 14p of every pound paid into the lottery.

It has been heavily criticised in the past, once being compared to a Stealth Tax because the grants from this fund contribute towards projects that are usually, or should be, state-funded. Labour ministers have been accused of using lottery funding to meet ministerial targets, or to meet Labour’s culturally Marxist ‘social objectives’. The only indigenous English species the funding bodies seem concerned with are water invertebrates and plants. (Source: BNP, Mar/10)

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