BARBARA PACKER, ROT IN HELL!

If you celebrate Christmas, here’s an early Christmas present. If you celebrate Hannakuah, here’s something for Day 3. If you celebrate anything else this Holiday season, or nothing at all, there’s still a reason to be festive this day. That’s because a Nazi in the UK has gone home to her reward in Hell. Barbara Packer was a former member of the National Front who went on to join the NF offshoot, the British National Party, even running for office under their banner. She was also convicted of conspiring to assault members of the Socialist Workers Party back in 1981, but got a suspended six-month sentence for that. This was not a nice woman in the least bit and if it is true only the good die young…well, she was 82.

Swindon Advertiser

WELL-KNOWN former National Front activist and British National Party Parliamentary candidate Barbara Packer died last week.

The pensioner, who lived in Croft Road, in Old Town, for much of her life, died suddenly at the age of 82 at Prospect Hospice on Wednesday, November 24.

Miss Packer died after getting gall stones and contracting septicaemia, or blood poisoning. She was admitted to Great Western Hospital’s intensive care a month before her death and was given one day to live.

Her daughter-in-law Lesley-Ann Packer, 56, who lives in Dorset, said she was not aware of her previous work for the NF and BNP but knew she liked to write about her political views in the Adver.

She said: “She was a very strong lady because when she was in intensive care they gave her one day to live and she held on for another three to four weeks. It’s such a shame and for me and my son, her grandson, it’s very sad.”

Miss Packer’s only child, a son, Alex, died eight years ago.

Her brother Noel and sister-in-law Elaine, who live in Cumbria, and Lesley were with her at the Prospect Hospice when she died.

Miss Packer had been a carer for her mother Amy, who died of cancer not long after Barbara left school.

She was a regular contributor to the Adver letters pages and an activist for the Swindon branch of far right organisation the National Front.

In the late 1970s and early 80s, Miss Packer often courted controversy.

In July 1981 she received a six-month suspended jail term after admitting conspiring to assault members of the Socialist Workers’ Party in the town centre.

Earlier the same year her house was covered with anti-fascist slogans and swastikas. She claimed to have caught the young white man in the act but he escaped.

In 1996 she came under attack again after vandals sprayed an unknown substance through her letterbox.

While in her late 60s she stood in the 1997 General Election for the British National Party for Reading East but failed to get enough votes to win the seat.

Her family have arranged her cremation service for next week.