BNP fails to declare donations

The British National Party has failed to include at least one donation in its quarterly donation report to the Electoral Commission, an offence for which the party’s treasurer could be imprisoned for up to 12 months.

In September the BNP launched its campaign for next year’s London elections with three meetings on successive nights featuring Nick Griffin, the party leader, Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s candidate for Mayor of London, and Nick Erikson, the London regional organiser.

Writing in his chairman’s blog, Griffin boasted that the meetings raised £12,000 including “a magnificent donation of more than £5,000 by BNP old hand and recent council candidate Steve Johnson”. Video footage on BNP television shows Johnson handing over a cheque for £5,315.

Under the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 all parties have to deliver quarterly reports of donations over £5,000 made to the party’s central organisation and over £1,000 given to other party accounting units. Johnson’s donation and any others over £1,000 – local BNP units fall under the party’s regional accounting unit – should have appeared on the latest report covering July to September 2007.

Yet the only donation shown is £5,000 on 10 September from Charles Wentworth, the BNP’s only reported donor of the past two years, who has now given £33,263 to the fascist party’s head office.

The omission has been brought to the attention of the Electoral Commission, which will no doubt demand an explanation of John Walker, the BNP treasurer. It comes at a time when the BNP’s accounts are more than four months overdue and the party is suffering renewed problems over branches not submitting their petty cash books to head office.

BNP in crisis