December 15, 2007

Too little, too late. Griffin’s position weakens further

Nick Griffin’s belated attempts to save his own skin appears to be too little too late. The BNP website today announced a reorganisation in staff and jobs. In an attempt to appease his critics Griffin has sacked and demoted Hannam and Collett respectively, but also abolished the Group Development job, held until last weekend by Sadie Graham.

Dave Hannam has lost his job by virtue of it being phased out, which Griffin claims is in accordance with a previously announced policy. Collett's job is also abolished, he is demoted to graphic design artist and people wanting leaflets will not have to deal with him directly but through Jeremy Wutherspoon.Interestingly there is no mention of Arthur Kemp or the other South Africans, whose presence is causing major disquiet within the party, though Simon Darby, Griffin’s chief sidekick, appears to have taken on a greater internal role.

This reorganisation is clearly a major climb down by Griffin though if he hoped that it would appease his detractors then he seems to have failed. Nothing less than Mark Collett’s immediate sacking will pacify his critics and even that may not now be enough. Griffin’s appalling handling of the crisis has turned the spotlight onto his own leadership. Bugging members phones or laptops, ordering the removal of private property from his staff’s houses and his blind support to Collett is leading an growing number of party activists to call for his own removal. If anything, Griffin’s desperate attempts to pacify his critics whilst not apologising or accepting he has made any mistakes will actually make the situation worse.

Time is running out for Griffin. Unless he removes Collett from the party within the next few days and opens a dialogue with his critics to democratise the party then his own future has to be in doubt. However, Collett clearly has a hold over the BNP leader and so to sack him could have quite different and possibly legal consequences.

Stop The BNP

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you have it wrong. Griffin is much cleverer than all of the others put together - he knows he has the public image and perception, and the others have no public image or perception at all.

I predict he will send them all to the wall, where they will squirm on the Internet for a while, maybe even start a new party, but then will vanish like all the dissenters before them.

Who ever even actually heard of, or remember, the Freedom Party (the Edwards's); the NNP (Sharon eBanks) or even the BPP?

The public? Not on your life. They exist only on the internet and in the minds of a few people who know about them, and have no public projection at all.

Griffin has the all the aces, and he will not hesitate to get rid of the dissenters, because, in truth, he does not need them.

What you, and all of my fellow antifa people are missing, is the fact that Griffin is quite prepared to allow a trimming down of the number of activists and councillors, if it means a united party.

For in reality, the critical areas -- the ones which will really determine if the party continues to exist or not -- are still there - the GLA and Euro election bids.

The BNP hopes for a breakthrough in the London Assembly elections, and thereafter in the Euro elections.

If that happens, the people who have left the BNP will be mighty sorry -- and it certainly looks like that is how it is going to turn out.

Maybe us antifa activists need to reassess where the true threat lies, and not be distracted from the bigger picture by focussing on what is bound to be a local and limited disintegration.

Anonymous said...

Seasoned antifa (whether friend or foe) is correct. Griffin has said that he would be prepared to trim the BNP membership by two-thirds in return for a more disciplined, less awkward party which doesn't ask difficult questions.

The BNP could finish tomorrow but Griffin would still be around and he would still have a substantial following. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the survival of the BNP as is means everything to him.

Anonymous said...

Foe I think.

Nutzi trolls are getting good at saying they're onside then bulling up Griffin and chucking doubt on your analysis.

Give 'em the elbow now or there won't be an end to it.

Anonymous said...

Griffin has completely blown it this time, as the others stated, he'll survive, and live to run a much weakened entity, but he's destroyed any chance he had of sorting the problem out.

I sat patiently watching this, knowing there was a way out, but not wanting to reveal it to prying eyes, but he's lost that chance now, he's played his rather arrogant hand, and played it badly, now if he capitulates he'll look weak, and his loyal members will always see him as a lesser man than they saw him as before, on the other hand if he doesn't capitulate then people are right, he will survive, but in control of a much weaker party.

He had one chance, he had to play his hand well, but he didn't, he played it badly.

He lost, he may remain as king, but he lost, and a whole generation of nazis will remember that for a long time.

Anonymous said...

Following his ramblings on Shitefront he's still giving it the big 'un, telling the the "wreckers" that he is prepared to forgive them but only if they come crawling soon. He seems to be completely unaware of the position he's in. Even I've started to feel sorry for the nazi scumbag (well almost). When's someone finally going to put him out of his misery for once and for all?

Anonymous said...

Nutzi trolls are getting good at saying they're onside then bulling up Griffin and chucking doubt on your analysis.

Totally agree with you, the amount of comments that start off with lines like "I hate the BNP, but Nick Griffin is totally amazing and the greatest thing to ever walk the planet, and I'd have his babies..." is growing all the time, and quite clearly being posted by his sycophants, the few he has left.

How stupid do they think people are?

Griffin is much cleverer? Griffin has all the aces? Griffin is quite prepared to allow a trimming down?

Griffin is not very clever at all, if he was he wouldn't be in this mess. Griffin holds no aces, which is why he's in this mess, and as for trimming down, it's a bloody split!

Talk about denial, it's like the black knight in Monty Pythons Holy Grail "It's only a flesh wound!"

Yes, Griffin will survive in one form or another, and the rebels may well fade into the night, but he lost this round, and next round he's fighting from a much weaker position.

Nick Griffin reminds me of those idiot villains in cartoons, he always loses, and embarrasses himself, but he's always back the following weak to wreak more havoc.

Anonymous said...

Griffin always said if challenged he would take a 3rd of the membership and start again. Start what again is the question...

Anonymous said...

I have spoken to several hardworking, loyal activists over the past couple of days who urge the leadership not to do any deals whatsoever with the plotters and even imply that their loyalty would be stretched by our so doing. ~ Purging the Droid

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showpost.php?p=4923999&postcount=704

It seems a little slip up has confirmed that PTD is Griffin.

In a strange way it's a bit of a shame, seeing as half the lightweights on that forum seem able to run rings around him.

It seems somewhat of an anti-climax when the boogie man turns out to be THAT pathetic.

Anonymous said...

The legal action thingy is a red hering. What he holds against him would expose Nick Griffin 100% as a MI5 agent.

Allegedly, scrawny Hitler worshipper Collett has pictures of Griffin shaking hands with known secret service officials, plus the knows where the MI5 cash source ends up.

Forget Blur's "Parklife". If he is sacked, nasty nazi though he is, Collett will come clean about Nck Griffin's "narklife".

Anonymous said...

Griffin would start another state-sponsored narkish "catch-all" far right operation, which would probably become active if the Labour Party win another election some time in the next thirty years.

Anonymous said...

"Counterrevolutionary" state-sponsored far right groups are most active when a left of centre government is elected.

Why?

Anonymous said...

Seasoned Antifa has a point, but has made one big error.

The BNP (well, NG, but it's the same thing at the moment, near as makes no odds) is relying 100% on receiving a massive cash injection. Otherwise, they are done and buried. Unless a surprise big donor turns up (someone dying and leaving a couple of large London houses to the BNP to sell is about the only way this might happen now) then the BNP nees to win some well-paid elections - GLA or (even better) Euro ones.

London has stayed pretty firm behind NG, but mainly because the anti-NG elements there are not friends of SG - Richard Edmonds, Derek Beacon, the East London and the Croydon branches, all strong against Griffin, but all very much pro-Tyndal and pro-NS. SG wouldn't touch them with a bargepole, but whether they will help NG in the GLA elections is another thing. With Barking and Thurrock facing possible splits as well, and an increasing NF presence in SE London drawing off activists, the BNP may well struggle to run anything other than a basic paper campaign now.

And what of the Euro elections? Only in three areas does the BNP have any real chance of sneaking an MEP. Yorkshiore & Humberside (so far, about 75%, and counting, of the party has defected in the region); North West England (East Lancs and Oldham, the party's two strongest areas before, have collapsed, what is left in East Lancs seems about to jump ship to the EFP, Merseyside is in disarray over the Solidarity fiasco and Joey Owens, and Lancaster & Preston is at least wobbling towards SG - so upwards of 50% of the BNp has gone from here); and, finally, Eaatern England, which has gone lock, stock and barrel to SG. With the loss of Scotland and Ulster (both just about 100% lost to NG) and major inroads into NG support in East Anglia, West Midlands and SE England, it seems almost impossible for the BNP to win a MEP now.

Without the cash injections from victories in these elections, the BNP is finished and NG faces a hefty prison sentance for serious fraud over a number of years. Regardless of any splits.

His obsession with expelling anyone who is more articulate, a better organiser, more popular or more active than he is (say, 80% of the party), simply seems to have brought everything out into the open before he could make his last desperate roll of the dice.

Anonymous said...

word on the street in B & D there are only 2 out of the 12 remaining loyal to Griffin.

Now that could just be Dicky talking to the bottom of his glass.

Anonymous said...

If I may offer a few observations:

I think "seasoned antifa" makes a number of relevant points.

NG DOES hold a crucial card - the name BNP. There are people out there, including some quite reasonable folk (even nice folk), who just have a "gut" feeling that the political class is failing to represent them on a whole range of issues. The BNP has had some success in portraying itself as a way of giving the establishment parties a bloody nose.

UKIP benefitted from this feeling in the last Euro Elections; the Greens did it in a previous Euro Election.

To that type of voter "BNP" is just a label with which they associate a vague feeling of discontent. Griffin can use that to TRY to climb aboard a travy train.

As to the Euro elections, EU enlargement has meant that some regions have fewer seats this time and therefore the "hurdle" to be cleared is raised. That should diminish the BNP's chances of success - but bear in mind that UKIP may be a much less potent force this time. Where will their 2004 vote go?

Anonymous said...

"NG DOES hold a crucial card - the name BNP."

Actually NO

The owner of the BNP name is the original registraint, John Tyndall, as Tyndall is dead the name would have been inherited by his next of kin, Valerie Tyndall. She could if she chooses to, call the name in and tell Griffin to cease using it.

Jeffrey Marshall said...

'Nutzi trolls are getting good at saying they're onside then bulling up Griffin and chucking doubt on your analysis.'

Never mind who's saying it - the only thing that matters is: is it true, or not? You people spend so much time worrying about which brand of propaganda you're being asked to swallow, as though it mattered at all.

Will Griffin survive this crisis? Of course he will - seasoned antifa is absolutely right. But for goodness sake, don't take my word for it!