Jackson's challenge to Griffin - Webster weighs in

Nick Griffin's long-time enemy, Martin Webster, has commented on Chris Jackson's pending BNP leadership challenge, saying that "[Griffin] has used [his] position to transform the BNP from being a vehicle designed to advance British nationalism into a vehicle designed to promote Nick Griffin's personal career and income."

Webster - who, as the National Front's National Activities Organiser in the 1970's promised that the NF would "kick" its way into the headlines - has nursed grievances against Griffin for more than two decades, since his expulsion from the National Front.

In an email to the dissident Northwest Nationalists blog, Webster, who worked closely with Griffin in the NF, warns: "...the BNP 'constitution' provides Griffin with the means to dismiss Mr. Jackson from any office he may hold in the party and/or to trump up disciplinary charges against him so that he could be expelled from membership, thereby removing his qualifications to stand nominated as a candidate for the leadership. Similar action could be taken against any persons signing his nomination paper or campaigning on his behalf."

Self-preservation expert Griffin has demonstrated his ruthless streak on several occasions, most recently in the internal convulsions that saw Sharon Ebanks and her supporters ousted from the BNP. The fiery Ebanks is now caricatured remorselessly as a "half-caste" (one of the more pleasant terms) by BNP members, with the tacit approval - and more likely at the instigation of - the BNP leadership clique. BNP members posting on the Nazi Stormfront website have warned Jackson to "watch your back", while a BNP leadership sock-puppet stated in blunt gangland style: "Chris Jackson's days are numbered."

Webster, like most BNP-watchers, does not believe a challenge mounted by Jackson has any real chance of success - even if Jackson is allowed to remain in the party long enough to launch it. He comments: "BNP members feel that the party is 'on a roll' not only in the run-up to this May's local election, but onwards to the next General Election. They link this with Griffin's leadership of the party -- thanks to the assiduous promotion of him by the media, which always links this 'success' to his role in 'modernising' and 'moderating' the party."

As Webster also notes, "Griffin has his hands on the levers of power and publicity within the party... No outsider is going to be able to change that situation in the forseeable future."

And those who try do so at their peril.

The looming Jackson challenge will be exercising the minds of the BNP's ruling clique every bit as much as their local election push. The clique can be expected to move quickly as soon as the ballots have been counted - the only question is, in which direction?

Griffin's long record of isolating and expelling BNP members he sees as a threat to his own leadership is well known, and after the Ebanks shenanigans an attempt to perform the same service on Jackson and his supporters may prove a step too far even for some Griffinites. It may be that Griffin elects to allow Jackson to stand against him certain in the knowledge that Jackson will lose (or be made to lose), thus cementing his own position as party chief for many years to come and freeing him to deal with the dissidents in his usual hole and corner manner.

Chris Jackson's days in the BNP really are numbered.