Updated: BNP's Press Officer resigns...

According to a post on the BNP's own website, Phil Edwards, the party's former National Press Officer has voluntarily retired to 'devote more time to his passion of playing the piano' and 'continuing to delight thousands...with his acclaimed and popular firework display business'. His own website, Doc's Diary, states that 'I resign my position of National Press Officer for the BNP', and a rather tired-sounding poster on the Stormfront nazi forum says 'The Doc gets the boot'. Take your pick.

The confusion around Edward's relinquishing of his post extends into other areas of his story. For instance, precisely how long has he been a member of the BNP? Seven years ago he told one of our colleagues he was a former Tory and that he had been in the party for around eight years, a total of fifteen years to now. But in May he was telling callers he had been in the BNP for only eight years. There are also various claims that he has a PhD, two degrees or a single degree (all usually claimed to be in chemistry or something closely allied to it) though those who have taken the time to dig have found no hard evidence of any of these.

What is beyond doubt is that he has been responsible for a couple of nice little PR disasters, not the least of which was the bizarre libel in which he accused an East Midlands GP and former Mayor of selling drugs for sex to woman patients. Whilst all the facts about the real culprit had been well covered in the press he bad-mouthed the wrong man and was forced to make a grovelling apology.

Last year it was revealed that in a recording of a conversation with a student, he stated 'When you go to work and you pay taxes, imagine paying all that tax to give money to single parents in London who have got three or four black kids. The black kids are going to grow up dysfunctional, low IQ, low-achievers that drain our welfare benefits and the prison system and probably go and mug you.'

Not content with that stupidity, he followed it up as news emerged back at the end of July that former BNP council candidate Robert Cottage had been jailed for two and a half years for stockpiling explosives at his house in Colne, with this little gem, 'We never have anyone in the party with criminal convictions'. Obviously it had escaped his notice that the leader of the BNP Nick Griffin has a criminal record of his own.

Edwards has something of a reputation with journalists. One, who met up with him once at a pub sometime before midday, said he was already mildly sloshed and had three or four mobiles which he was answering in turn. When he got sick of the calls, he called the journalist ringing him a cunt and cut him off. He also had a run in with an editor of an East Anglian newspaper. When the editor addressed him as Dr Russell (his real name's Stuart Russell) instead of his alias, he went bananas and told him 'wait until we are in power we will sort you, cunt'.

Whenever there is controversy or a dodgy 'resignation' in the BNP, there is a back-story that the party always tries desperately to conceal, knowing that its revelation would be yet another embarrassment to the party but the comments to this post may hold a clue to the real story. One of our commentors states: 'Doc Edwards left because he had enough of the endless stream of abuse from two Yorkshire based spiteful individuals towards his wife Wendy. Its got a 2 year history...the 'Doc' was a strong supporter of Griffin but even Griffin's (half hearted) intervention was not enough to quell the troublesome stirrer. Anyone getting on the wrong side of you know who and his tiny clique always end up falling on their sword or getting the chop.' Griffin's 'clique' was identified as Mark Collett, Dave Hannam, John Walker and Martin Reynolds, all of whom, it is claimed, are regular contributors to the appalling Covert blog, run by thuggish Griffin-supporter and known drug-dealer Tommy Williams. More information on this aspect of the story would certainly be appreciated.

We'll leave the last word with one of our anti-fascist colleagues, who said last night; 'I for one will miss him. He is such a real example of the BNP's extremism.'