Crisis engulfs the BNP

The BNP is today in deep crisis after the expulsion from the party of two of its national officers. According to a notice posted on Sunday 9 December on the revamped BNP website, Sadie Graham, the party’s hard-working group development officer, and Kenny Smith, in charge of administration, have been “removed from their posts with immediate effect on the grounds of gross misconduct and now face disciplinary charges over alleged offences against the BNP Constitution and Code of Conduct”.

It appears that a number of other people, including several organisers and councillors, have also left the party. As this site goes live it seems that five of the party’s regional organisers have resigned, four BNP councillors have withdrawn the whip and are now Independent Nationalist councillors, five Advisory Council members are backing the rebellion as are several other local branch organisers. There further resignations in the pipeline.

This crisis, which Searchlight has predicted for several months, is the result of an increasingly bitter feud between rival factions in the BNP. On one side are the younger and more able organisers and officers. They are led by Sadie Graham and Kenny Smith and include Leeds councillor Chris Beverley and the party’s former website creator Steve Blake.

On the other side is the brat pack, made up of Mark Collett, head of publicity, party treasurer John Walker, his deputy David Hannam, head of security Martin Reynolds and Bradford councillor Paul Cromie. They have formed a laddish sect within the party but many others consider them not particularly able.

As tensions have grown between the two camps it is clear that Griffin has sided with the brats and now taken action against the former group, party apparatchiks, who run the party operation.

Increasingly frustrated at the leadership’s refusal to act against the amateurish performance and general incompetence of Hannan, Walker and Collett, Smith and Graham set up a blog site to build a campaign against the three men, whom they dismiss as “these sleazy, lying, incompetent scumbags”. Unfortunately for them, the BNP leadership obtained a recording of a telephone conversation in which Smith explained to Graham how she could help with the blog site.

But if Griffin thought the strength of his case against the pair would overshadow any fallout, he was wrong. Within hours of the sackings several other prominent BNP members had walked out in sympathy. Among them are Nina Brown, the Boxtowe organiser and a local parish councillor, Danny Lake, the leader of the Young BNP, and Ian Dawson.

Lake was actually sacked by Walker. When Lake enquired under whose authority Walker had sacked him the text message response was “Me. You stupid c**t. F**k off into oblivion.”

In mid-October Searchlight produced a four-page supplement on the crisis in the party and circulated it to over 1,000 BNP members. The party leadership immediately dismissed our claims as fictitious, but events in the past 48 hours prove that we were correct. In fact, if we did make a mistake it was to underplay the seriousness of the dispute engulfing the BNP.

The January edition of Searchlight will carry a special report on the BNP crisis. It will contain damaging material that has so far not emerged in the public domain and it will show just how deep the split has become. However, if readers cannot wait that long for more news then please return to this site as we will post regular updates.

Stop the BNP