The British National Party leadership election results are in at last and, according to a post on the nazi Stormfront forum (and eventually the BNP web site), the results are as follows:Griffin: 3363 (91%)
Jackson: 337 (9%)
Turnout: 43%
No great surprise there except that a large number of people chose to deliberately abstain.
The numbers are all important in this contest. The BNP has (it claims) a total voting membership of 8604, which means 4904 chose not to vote, leaving 3700 who did. 337 BNP members voted for Chris Jackson - substantially more than the 100 signatures he had to gather simply to be allowed to stand in this patently rigged contest.
For a virtual unknown - or at least unknown outside the North-West of England - Jackson did remarkably well, particularly when one considers the short period between announcement and election and the many limitations placed on him regarding anything to do with having direct access to the membership. Had it been a fair fight, we would have expected Jackson to easily double his votes. In fact, in our opinion he could have done a lot better had he actively campaiged. We wonder why he didn't.
Griffin is now in the peculiar and uncomfortable position that has affected every real party leader for decades - he's a minority leader, chosen to lead the BNP by a minority of the available votes in his party. In fact, working on the percentages alone, he only has a mandate from 39% of the party - hardly 'a resounding mandate', as one idiotic Stormfronter put it.
It's pretty clear from the immediate reactions to the result that we can expect something of an old-fashioned purge in the BNP in the near future - a clear-out of those undesirables who don't seem to appreciate either Nick Griffin's dictatorial style of leadership, the numerous dodgy deals he has on the go at any given time or the energetic expansion of the BNP into an apparently limitless number of bizarre and disparate business ventures. The Night of the Long Knives beckons and the supporters of Chris Jackson had better watch the shadows for a few months. Despite having absolutely no loyalty to the BNP membership himself, Griffin demands absolute loyalty from his subordinates and the leadership challenge has already been labelled an act of treachery a number of times.
Griffin staggers into a new year as leader with none of the spring in his step that he should be feeling after a failed leadership challenge. The result - or rather, the turnout - was lacklustre, reflecting the party's performance at the council elections back in May. The troops are demoralised, the income, we are assured by people who certainly know, is drying up and the membership is stagnating as it waits for triumphs that never arrive and holiday camps that will never materialise.
In fact this leadership challenge seems only to have left bitterness and recrimination behind it. Possibly the next one will be better - it's rumoured that pornmeister Dickie Barnbrook has his eye on Griffin's seat (so to speak), which might explain why he's recently been pushed out to challenge the unbeatable Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London. A challenge from Barnbrook might just be a challenge worth watching.
14 comments:
Jackson knew he had no chance, to me this all seems like a fix for whatever reason. There was no main stream media coverage of it that I saw anyway, maybe they were hoping for such?
Perhaps your readers will be as surprised and shocked at the statement made by Cllr R Bailey Dep Leader of the BNP group on Barking & Dagenham Council at its Assembly on Wednesday he stated that "he would welcome the flying of the red flag with hammer and sickle over the town hall and the civic centre" perhaps Bailey had advanced warning of the result of his partys leadership election and has decided to jump ship.
flowers
'Jackson knew he had no chance, to me this all seems like a fix for whatever reason. There was no main stream media coverage of it that I saw anyway, maybe they were hoping for such?'
Very low key, all the way through. Not the BNP's style at all.
'...perhaps Bailey had advanced warning of the result of his partys leadership election and has decided to jump ship.'
He's probably sick of Barnbrook playing the fool.
Great post from Stormfront
1. According to the BNP website the result "came through in the early hours of the morning". Isn't that rather odd? Why count at night? This wasn't like a parliamentary/ council election with polls closing at 10pm and a legal requirement to count "as soon as practicable". It was a postal ballot, so why not count in the afternoon, with a declaration by early evening? Which prompts questions like "who carried out the count"?
2. Interesting that exactly 3,700 ballots were counted. Not 3,712 or 3,698. No, exactly 3,700. Can happen, of course, but a 100-1 chance!
3. Turnout 43%. Very low for any party leadership election, especially in a party which adopts the fuhrerprinzip approach i.e. the party leader is all-powerful.
4. Party membership 8,600. Mmmm, not good. That's an average of about 13 per parliamentary constituency. Given the news reports on the BNP website of packed members meetings - 50 here, 100 there, 70-80 somewhere else - there must be an awful lot of Britain where the party literally has a membership of .... null points!
Gary W
Except, there wasn't a low turn out at all. The BNP has fewer than 5000 members and many of those never recieved a British Nationalist bulletin or a ballot paper. Nothing was mentioned in the BNP, Voice of Freedom, so the wider membership knew nothing of this contest.
It is alleged that John Walker posted fake ballots while delivering the party newspaper up and down the country in order to show different franking marks on the ballot envelopes.
BNP members should be demanding to see the envelopes and ballot papers but we know they're to stupid for that and Griffin knows it.
"Very low key, all the way through. Not the BNP's style at all."
It was done to keep it from the armchair members with no Internet access and who rarely attend meetings. Griffin now knows that 10% of the REAL membership hates his fucking guts but had this challenge been above board I reckon it would have been closer to 18%.
The powers that be don't give a shit what the BNP gets up to. Some members have enough evidence to put Griffin away for years but the police demand any action should be civil and members are skint.
Looked in especially for this.
No surpise. How long before Griffin moves against Jackson and his friends now - after all, just short of ten percent of those even aware of the contest is a base for anti-Griffinites to build on.
"It was done to keep it from the armchair members with no Internet access and who rarely attend meetings. Griffin now knows that 10% of the REAL membership hates his fucking guts but had this challenge been above board I reckon it would have been closer to 18%".
If true i would have thought that the armchair supporters would have been even more pro-Griffin i.e. no dealings with him/his leadership? I think youv'e go the wrong end of the stick.
To Denise i ask who cares what support the anti-Griffin lot has. Surely we're not going to support/be nice to them if they somehow took over? I think they are even more extreme than Griffin!
That wasn't you, Ketlan (Gary W)?
'That wasn't you, Ketlan (Gary W)?'
It certainly wasn't. I wouldn't post on Stormfront even if MI5 paid me. They were all very good points though.
Is it true Bowdens resigned form the BNP
Griffin has already started to move against some of Jackson's supporters.
A Sheffield drug dealer called Tommy Williams, who is regularly used as a Griffin stooge, has published libellous attacks on Jonathan Bowden, one of two BNP Advisory Council members who signed Jackson's nomination paper.
Bowden resigned from the AC, and from the party, late last night.
More on Bowden here http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/2007/07/bnps-cultural-officer-resigns-after.html
@anonymous
Far from it - I can't wait for the fun to begin.
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