No campaign accuses opponents of pandering to extremist opinions by replacing black poet in literature outside London
Voting reform campaigners have been accused by their opponents of removing Benjamin Zephaniah from literature distributed outside London.
In London, the campaign Yes to Fairer Votes sent out leaflets that featured the black poet alongside five white celebrities. However, on otherwise identical leaflets sent out to Sussex, Cornwall and elsewhere, Zephaniah was replaced by Blackadder star Tony Robinson.
AV opponents accused the yes campaign of being "ashamed" to have Zephaniah on their literature in certain parts of the country. However, the yes campaign hit back on Sunday, criticising what it called "increasingly desperate smears".
The yes campaign, backed by Liberal Democrats and Labour leader Ed Miliband, is said to have used a picture of Zephaniah on leaflets in the capital, along with a quote demanding a new electoral system that "makes everyone's vote count".
Zephaniah, 52, who was born and raised in Birmingham, reportedly appears on the London leaflets alongside Joanna Lumley, Eddie Izzard, Colin Firth, Honor Blackman and Stephen Fry. However, while his fellow five AV supporters show up on literature across the country, Zephaniah seems to have been dropped.
Tony Robinson, a longtime Labour supporter, best known for portraying Baldrick in Blackadder, replaces Zephaniah, who was in a 2008 Times list of the 50 greatest postwar writers.
Terry Paul, a spokesman for the no campaign, said: "Why are Yes to AV ashamed to have the support of Benjamin Zephaniah in places like Cornwall and Hampshire?
"The yes campaign's leaflet offers a chilling preview of politics under the alternative vote. We have warned that AV would encourage parties to pander to extremist opinions in a chase for second and third preference votes, but we never imagined the first example of such outdated views would come from the yes campaign itself."
The yes campaign, which will launch its first nationwide posters today in response to no campaign posters claiming that AV will cost �250m and lead to the closure of NHS hospitals, dismissed its opponents' claims.
"These allegations mark a new low for the no campaign and [its] increasingly desperate smears," a spokesman for the yes campaign said.
"Let's put it this way: Operation Black Vote, the Muslim Council of Britain and a host of similar groups are backing the yes campaign. The BNP is backing the no campaign. People can draw their own conclusions."
Asked why only Zephaniah was removed from the leaflets outside London, a spokesman said: "We have a number of endorsers and we vary the endorsers we use on our leaflets."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/03/zephaniah-dropped-av-leaflets-outside-london
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