KEVIN Rowan, TUC Northern secretary, claims the BNP’s “membership rules have been held to be unlawful” (Echo, October 22).

This is nonsense.

The BNP’s membership rules are perfectly legal under existing law.

However, they won’t be legal under the Equality Bill when it comes into force. Moreover, the BNP has undertaken to abide by the latter.

Also, the BNP’s lawyers do not even accept that its membership rules would have been unlawful under this new law. What they do accept is that the court case needed to resolve this issue would have been expensive. And we all know who wins expensive court cases: those with the most money. In this case that would be the Equalities Commission, backed by a limitless pot of money, namely taxpayers’ money, and the Labour Party, backed by millionaires.

As for Kevin Rowan’s claim that the BNP is racist, well the BNP can’t hold a candle to Kevin Rowan’s Labour Party. That’s the lot who invaded Iraq on the basis of doctored intelligence reports and a pack of lies. A million Kurds and Muslims died as a result.

And Kevin Rowan tries to parade his anti-racist credentials!

Ralph Musgrave, Durham.