Dave Hannam and Mark Collett - the Little and Large of the BNP

In his latest and possibly dreariest-ever blog posting, Nick Griffin mentions the BNP's dream team, Mark Collett and Dave Hannam, peering out of one of the windows of the New Kimberley Hotel at Blackpool during the demonstration we had there while the party's 'annual conference' was taking place.

Despite being ordered not to by the police and the party itself, these two morons chose to stare out at the demonstrators, laughing inanely, rather in the manner of a couple of small children being naughty. According to Griffin, this infantile behaviour earned them 'a verbal wigging', which I presume to mean a pat on the head and a mild demand for them to behave themselves in future or they wouldn't get any pocket money.

In fact, Griffin goes to great lengths to defend their behaviour, claiming that they are both 'very valuable members of our central team', which may come as something of a surprise to the vast number of BNP members who have watched their careers with a growing sense of unreality. The implication is, of course, that they are so essential to the BNP that their misdemeanours can be largely ignored - which should be little comfort to the likes of Geoffrey Wallace.

Mark Collett is in a class of his own, even in a party packed to the rafters with incompetent buffoons, so we'll leave him for a moment and just take a quick look at Dave Hannam.

Hannam runs the disastrous Great White Records (GWR), the alleged musical wing of the BNP, which features such timeless classics as Paul Cromie on the mandolin (comparable, so we've been told, to George Formby on the banjo), and Colin Auty singing rubbishy racist songs about how much he likes to annoy MPs. Most of the songs on GWR's mercifully short list seem to have been penned by Griffin himself, who would do better to stop writing talentless crap and start hassling the party's treasurer to get the accounts in to the Electoral Commission, which has been waiting for them for over six months beyond the due date.

Rumour has it that GWR cost around £50,000 to set up and consumes around £1000/1200 per month in running costs. As it produces hardly any recordings, we can only assume that most of those costs cover rent and wages - something of a sinecure for Hannam at the expense of the membership.

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that the accounts for Great White Records are long overdue - in fact as far as we can see from a quick search of records at Companies House, no accounts have ever been submitted (in two years). Hannam is also deputy-treasurer of the BNP, so no real surprise there. For a party that purports to want to run the country, it doesn't seem to be doing a good job of managing itself at the moment.

Dave Hannam is regarded as something of a joke to fascists and anti-fascists alike but it should be remembered that he was convicted a few years back of 'publishing or distributing racially inflammatory material'.

Our low opinion of Hannam is reflected by those members of the BNP who have had to work with him, particularly Ian Dawson, former head of group support. Dawson, in his resignation letter, was scathing about Hannam, describing him variously as completely incompetent and a liar.

Dawson was even more scathing about Collett, who he describes as deceitful, devious, arrogant, spiteful, greedy and a moron. According to the Dawson letter, Collett was directly guilty of causing the resignation of Andrew Spence, which itself led to the resignation of Scott McLean, Griffin's Deputy Chairman. Even without these two high-profile resignations, Collett has caused havoc, repeatedly upsetting Sadie Graham at Advisory Council meetings, deliberately sabotaging Chris Beverley's Excalibur business (which sells overpriced tat to gullible BNP members) and calling Kenny Smith a liar on several occasions.

Collett leads a charmed life - or he has so far. The appalling film Young, Nazi and Proud should have seen him kicked out of the BNP, which has spent the past decade attempting to hide its Nazi leanings. If that didn't do it, his anti-gay comments in Russell Brand's Naziboy (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) should have done it, but sadly didn't.

Not even Ian Dawson's revelation that Collett has said on several occasions and in front of witnesses that 'if I don't get my way I will go Queen's evidence on Nick' has had the desired effect of having this idiot booted out of the party.

Now, however, things might be changing.

Yesterday saw the opening of a new blog entitled 'Enough is enough'. According to its statement, 'it's time to eject Collett and Hannam from the BNP before their arrogance, lies and incompetence brings [sic] us all down. So come on Nick, enough is enough!'

Clearly, there are some members of the party who have reached the end of their tether. A fuller statement on the site says;

'This site is not meant as attack on the BNP. It has come about because of the widespread damage being inflicted by this due on the Party and the shocking lack of action taken by the BNP (or more accurately Nick Griffin) to sort the problem out.

Morale is at an all-time low despite an all-time high number of members and councillors.

EIE believes it is time to start publicly exposing the pair in the hope that action will finally be taken to rid the BNP of these sleazy, lying, incompetent scumbags.

The BNP has lost enough good people already and we don't want to lose any more. It's time they went instead!'

Hannam and Collett have avoided censure for a long time though word has it that they both received written warnings after the 2006 conference when it was alleged by an awful lot of people both inside and out of the BNP that they got a couple of schoolgirls (variously claimed to be between thirteen and fifteen) into the hotel. Since this event, there has been a campaign by disgruntled BNP members to get rid of them, though it has been slow to grind into action.

Whether this event actually happened in the way it is suggested, is debatable. Certainly Hannam and Collett were in a hotel room with a couple of young females - that much is clear from a snippet of film we were sent a few weeks ago, though it's probably best if we say nothing more about that for the moment just in case any criminal charges are in the offing.

Suffice to say that Hannam and Collett, the would-be Little and Large of the BNP, are in for a rough ride over the next few weeks. We look forward to any future revelations about their behaviour with eager anticipation.