Many travellers are grateful to the Foreign Office for providing intelligence on conditions overseas. However, the Independent newspaper has spotted an instance of the Foreign Office rather over-estimating the reach of Britain’s far right extremists.
On 15th January, there was a hartal in Bangladesh – a sort of political general strike – and, unfortunately but as expected, there were violent clashes between rival groups in the run up to the day. The Foreign Office website solemnly announced that the day’s strike action was being enforced by the British National Party (BNP).
This announcement probably came as news to both the British National Party (which has been in the process of disintegrating since its MEPs were voted out of office at the last Euro-elections) and to Bangladesh’s official opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which thought that it had called the hartal.
Within hours, however, the Foreign Office had reconsidered. Gone was the reference to the British National Party, replaced by reference to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
At least Bangladeshis don’t need to worry about waking up to find Nick Griffin on their doorstep.