March 01, 2008

The Muppet Show

One night, idly modding the comments on here, I came upon ten successive posts all plainly from the same individual, whose burblings grew increasingly more deranged the further up the list I worked.

"Am I getting to you yet?" demanded this idiot at one point (well, no, because I can hit "reject" quicker than - say - a mad BNP legal eagle can bash out insults).

The final comment ended with the epithet "Muppets!", a plural noun coincidentally much beloved of one Lee John Barnes, the man who managed (belatedly) to join the BNP for a fiver less than anybody else, if we are to believe his Walk Towards The Light postings on Stormfront (regular Stormfronters were a little surprised that Mr Barnes did not seem to know the cost of the BNP membership he had apparently just paid).

It may be remembered that Barnes, known by many on his side of the fence as "Bagel" or "Bonkers", made a threat to sue Lancaster UAF (as was) and me personally to force us to hand over the details of friends and supporters here making comments not to his liking:

What I found most disgusting about these comments was the allegation that I have been making death threats ... I do not have any money to defend myself over any allegations like these by hiring a solicitor, but I am prepared to sue Denise Garside personally and Lancaster UAF and order their ISP provider to hand over the details of anyone making such an allegation on their site ... I suggest that the Lancaster UAF now remove that posting before I issue a writ for it.

(I had better point out here that all Barnes's words as republished in this article have been copied and pasted "as is", and apologise in advance to those who are offended by bad language.)

Barnes made his threat on December 24th. We're still waiting for the writ - in fact, we're desperate to receive it!

Over the years Barnes has been a great source of amusement for anti-fascist Stormfront watchers as he stalked the threads in his various guises, fooling almost nobody (least of all the resident Nazis) as he puffed and preened and polished whatever reputation he imagined himself to possess.

As Walk Towards The Light, a nom-de-guerre Barnes has retained longer than is normal for him, the 21st Century British Nationalist appears to function as Nick Griffin's attack dog, disrupting threads and posting insults whenever the bona fides of the BNP's leader are called into question, as they are with monotonous frequency.

Barnes also functions as moderator on the BNP's own dissent-free internal forum, and in his Stormfront persona as Walk Towards The Light recently appeared to confirm to suspicious fellow posters that the IP addresses of BNP dissenters posting on Stormfront were passed over to the moderators of the BNP forum. The supposition of the suspicious Stormfonters was that since BNP members need to supply their membership numbers to join the BNP forum, dissenters could be easily identified if their logged Stormfront and BNP forum IP addresses matched.

We couldn't possibly confirm such an outrageous allegation, and therefore won't be repeating it here...

We can, however, confirm that notoriously pro-Griffin Stormfront moderator John Joy Tree, aka Andy Robertson, this week openly celebrated renewing his BNP membership. Of course, the fact that Stormfront is allegedly proscribed to BNP members under pain of expulsion (step forward founder member Keith Axon) is of little consequence to the likes of Robertson and Barnes - at least, while they are in Griffin's good books.

Those who can be bothered to plough through the primary-school grammar, foul language and execrable spelling of Barnes's 21st Century British Nationalism blog will have found themselves periodically confronted by his side-splitting attempts at poetry. As these are close relatives of Monty Python's Funniest Joke in the World, and as our readers may not survive the experience of their repetition here, we elect to publish only the visitor comments to Barnes's "Cry Africa":

"You're a shite poet, crap lawyer...why do you bother to wake up in the morning?"

"Do try to learn to spell and use apostrophes."

And:

"We've just been in touch with Fergal Keane. He was really interested in what you had to say about him. All that libel and lies in one post. And he wasn't happy at all. Not at all ... No point in taking the post down. Copies off it stored at many locations ... Hehehe."

Which interjection brings us to the fact that while Lee John Barnes is famously thin-skinned when insults and (alleged) libels are heading in his direction, he is just as famously unrestrained when it comes to handing them out.

The person claiming that journalist Fergal Keane had been contacted was referring to an earlier boggle-eyed Barnes rant, "Fergal Keane and the blood on his hands", which contained the following observations:

"Keane was one of the main propagandists for the ANC during his years as a BBC journalist in South Africa... Like the rest of the verminous journalist sub species ( Homo Ratus ) Keane was one of the first to jump the sinking ship once he had finished gnawing away at its foundations sufficently to ensure it sunk... It was journalists like Keane with their biased, political pro-ANC propaganda that ensured the world had a distorted and one sided view of South Africa under apartheid... It was people like Keane who supported the ANC and who propagandised the ANC who now bear the shame and guilt of the way that South Africa has descended into a corrupt and criminal ochlocracy under the control of ANC thugs and killers."

Several thousand quids in compo for Fergal there already, methinks, but Lee was on a roll:

"The youth brigades that Keane propagandised to the world as the liberators of South Africa, were nothing more than insane criminals and murderers... It was Keane and his ilk who sought to portray those animals as heroes, who destroyed South Africa and who know bear the blood guilt of the 50 murders a day that afflict that tortured nation."

Why stop there?

"It is white liberal wankers like Fergal Keane who propagandised and demonised white rule who are the agents of this crisis."

Any more?

"The white boss man Keane made sure the natives did as he demanded and got their ANC government and then fucked off out of the country and left them to rot whilst the legacy of his liberal delusions destroyed the country and their lives."

Finished yet?

"If idiots like Keane hadnt propagandised the ANC and acted as its recruiters and got innocent Africans to join the ANC movement, then the thousands of deaths caused by the ANC waging wars against its enemies during aparheid would not have happened and nor would South Africa be in the crisis it is in today It was white scum like Keane who beat the drum for the killers in the ANC that bear the guilt of the killings today."

That it?

"It was you Keane who glorified ANC crimes and killings... It was you Keane who created the culture of death and violence in South Africa that was the resut of the ANC existing and coming into power... It is you Keane who has the blood of the thousands upon thousands of innocent people on your hands."

Even more?

"You beat the drum for the ANC, you propagandised the ANC, you glorified the children dragged from their schools by the ANC and turned into killers and criminals... It is you Keane and all those liberal filth with their propaganda and lies that bear the guilt and shame of South Africa today."

I think we can see where Lee is going with this so we'll leave it there.

Curiously, that post attracted no comments at all until the person who was allegedly party to the contacting of Fergal Keane made his remarks. Barnes retorted to him: "As for you, you leftist pond slime, crawl back into the arsehole that you crawled out of. Degenerate scum."

Suddenly, and in the same few hours, several supportive comments appeared on the Keane post, replete with Barnsian terminology ("murder-enabling scum") and spelling ("hipocrisy"). Was Barnes getting worried?

If he was, he quickly blew any defence to the four winds.

Dear Fergal,

If you are reading this please sue me.

That way I can declare myself bankrupt after the trial and cost the BBC hundreds of thousands of pounds when I opt to fight the court case all the way in open court.

Please, please sue me. This blog could do with the publicity.

Taking on the BBC would give me a publicity boost equivalent to a viagra.

To be honest I have only managed to get one libel case into the Royal Court of Justice as a Mackenzie friend and need the experience of fighting one involving myself.

If anyone else wants to sue me for libel please feel free.

I shall check the email on a regular basis for any legal letters etc.

P.S Fergal how did it feel watching the Black African guy say that he wanted the National Party back in power because the ANC was such a nightmare.

Instead of listening to the man you just dismissed him with a ' you must be joking'.

No Fergal he wasnt joking - and the fact you even suggested he was in order to 'shame' him for telling you how he felt was evidence of your liberal bias, contempt for him as a real person (other than as a black who should act as you as white liberal demand he should )and your adherence to the beliefs of liberal bullshit.

He told the truth as he saw it, and you ridiculed him for it. It is you as a white liberal journalist in South Africa at the time of the ANC war who is responsible for much of the carnage that has resulted from the takeover of power by the ANC. But you could not accept that truth, as to do so would mean you would have to accept your role in creating the nightmare.

You and the BBC are the agents of the demise of South Africa as you propagandised and eulogised the ANC, and as such are complict in the murders committed by the ANC and also the social collapse of African society.

Now scuttle along to your lawyers and get your writ typed up.

Muppet.


There's that word "Muppet" again!

Before moving on, let's just take a quick tour of the towering legal intellect's blog to see who else has recently been in line for a syntactically tortured mauling.

There's Jeremy Paxman: "Jeremy Paxman, BBC journalist on a million quid a year and hypocritical liberal arsehole... Paxman your a fucking arsehole mate."

The RMT's Bob Crow: "...retarded Marxist thug... The RMT is run by a clique of political dinosaurs around their own little tin pot Stalin, Comrade Bob."

BBC producer Nasreen Suleaman: "Stupid lieing Taqqiya bitch."

The Home Office: "(for members of the press / government / police reading this I have copyrighted the words THE MYSTERONS to describe the non-Muslim Islamist terrorists who are not motived by Islam/ Islamism. Therefore if any overpaid fifthwit in the Home Office uses my copyrighted phrase to describe Al Qaeda / THE MYSTERONS then I will sue your ass )."

Fifthwit? (Answers on a postcard to Lancaster Unity.)

Jon Cruddas: "Labour goon and hypocrite."

Billy Brag: "...twat..."

Miscellaneous verbatim:

The Hag Ebanks ( a delusional and hideous freak who lies even about her own ethnicity )

Adrian Davis ( The Mekon - sad, inadequate dwarf who has had a decade long sulk about the BNP not understanding his 'genius')

Kenny Smith ( Thief )

Steve Blake ( Data Thief )

John Brayshaw ( idiot )

Sadie Graham ( ringleader of the thieves )


That's enough of that, I think.

We could at this point move on to Barnes the Scientist's Mirror Neurone Theory: "For a while I have been working on a theory that links the Cro-Magnons, Western Culture and altruism. It is my theory that the basis of human altruism and our capacity for creating complex and advanced social structures and cultures is due to the increase in the numbers of mirror neurones in the human brain and the increased connections between the mirror neurones and the neo-cortex."

Or we could discuss Barnes and UFO's: "It was about six foot long and about six foot wide and rose up into the sky then disappeared back below the skyline as soon as I sighted it. The movement was deliberate and controlled. The object had been lifting itself above the woods from the ground and when it came into eyesight recoiled to the right with incredible speed. As soon it realised it was being observed it dropped back below the trees. This suggests to me that not only was it under conscious direction but that it was aware it was being observed and took direct action to ensure that it could not be observed."

As ever, Barnes has a Theory: "... as some the witnesses at some UFO sightings state that US military insignia are seen on the crafts, but if the latter is true then we have to start dealing with this in a serious way. That means getting the US to admit it has these craft, what technology they are using, what the capacity is of these craft, what threat they pose to our national security if the Chinese get hold of the technology and also what the bloody hell have they been doing not giving their closest allies access to this technology."

My theory is that Barnes really did see a UFO which silently scanned his brain and was so traumatised that it couldn't get back to Alpha Centauri fast enough.

Let's leave the last word to the "sad, inadequate dwarf" and barrister Adrian Davies, posting as Insurgent on Stormfront:

You've been smoking too much pot again, Bagel . . . Let me put that another way. You are a malicious liar, and have made that story up out of envy and resentment of your betters. If you don't like that comment, well, you know that I am rich enough to be well worth suing, so go ahead and make my day.

Now the Eddas tell us not to bandy words with ill bred oafs, and the moderators tell us not to get off topic, but since you have sorely provoked me, let me tell you a story about an incompetent saddo wannabe lawyer, who has been a failure all his life. Unlike your mendacious inventions, it has the merit of being true.

There is a train driver who lives in the South of England, in one of the Medway towns. He is a gutsy nationalist, and stood as a BNP candidate in a local election. His union, ASLEF, decided to expel him for being a BNP member, which was illegal under the law as it stood at the time (one of Maggie Thatcher’s better laws).

The train driver asked Wannabe to help him take on the union in the Employment Tribunal. Let’s be fair to Wannabe. He did a pretty good job at first, but then conceit or devilry or smoking too much weed got to him, and he began to play very silly buggers indeed.

Wannabe had the use of the train driver’s computer to help him to prepare the case. He used it to post grossly libellous attacks on several ASLEF officials on a website called trueaslef.com. These libels were complete inventions of Wannabe’s, but he used the train driver's name when posting, because after all, Wannabe is in his own estimation (though no-one else’s) a very important person indeed, and working class nobodies such as train drivers are expendable.

Not surprisingly, the union officials who had been falsely accused of stealing its funds and using them to pay for holidays with prostitutes in five star hotels in Cuba were not best pleased with the train driver whom they believed had posted the libels. Their belief was not unreasonable, considering that the e-mails were signed off with the train driver's name, and came from his e-mail address. So they sued the train driver.

When the case came to Court, Wannabe went on holiday to Cornwall because he is a coward and a liar, and was afraid to give evidence. The train driver went down for a huge amount despite his barrister's best efforts. The trouble was, the jury wanted to know why Wannabe wasn't there to 'fess up and dig the train driver out of the hole into which he had dropped him. Luckily for the train driver, his barrister was able to sort the mess that Wannabe had made out a few months down the line, but in the meanwhile, the train driver had to live with the prospect of losing his home, where he lives with his partner and their sick child. Wannabe however had a good holiday in Cornwall. Now he blames the train driver's barrister for not winning that case . . .

How would you like Wannabe to represent you?


How would you indeed!

All together now:

It's time to play the music
It's time to light the lights
It's time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight!

26 comments:

No Platform said...

Look into his eyes, not around them, look in to his eyes.

3-2-1 you're under.

No, you're right; He's still a cnut.

Anonymous said...

Lee Barnes, doesn't have a spell checker since, Steve Blake, was axed. Poor Steve used to pour through all his drivel, and even then struggled to find anything coherent.

Barnes bleating on about dishwashers will always be my favourite written piece. The man is quite clearly insane, but Griffin likes them like that, and anyway, without Barnes, Griffin, couldn't claim all those false legal expenses that Barnes allegedly charges.

Anonymous said...

KEITH AXON was expelled from the bnp on the grounds that he had posted on stormfront and yes, I did post on stormfront with the words,
It has gone down that black hole called HQ expenses, and if any one wants proof, of my expulsion I will produce the expulsion letter from Tina wingfield to me expelling me because I had posted on stormfront and stormfront is an illegal forum and this is a banned forum to all BNP members .
Keith axon BNP founder member.

Anonymous said...

Darby loves Bagel's blog, "Lee always has an interesting take on matters and runs a most splendid blog."

What a prat.

Anonymous said...

What's this twat on?

Looks more devious than a seriously pissed Bumbrook after receiving his tube of KJ Jelly, when his "stooge wife" ballet dancer pops out to the shops.

Anonymous said...

lee john barnes a bloody great bloke

Anonymous said...

That's the beauty of being a benefit scrounging loafer - bad back Barnes can say what he likes because he has no money and never likely to have any money because he is a work shy scrounger (allegedly). He doles out legal advice to ghullible BNP members and supporters and claims to be a lawyer. Isnt it illegal to impersonate a lawyer? Perhaps the best we can hope for is that Disney the copyright holders of The Muppets will sue Barmy Barnes for criminal breach of their copyright.

Antifascist said...

'lee john barnes a bloody great bloke'

I think you meant to write 'joke', not 'bloke'.

Anonymous said...

WTTL isn't Lee Barnes, btw.

It is Lesley Dathan, formerly of Sunderland BNP, hence the absence from Stormfront recently.

Anonymous said...

Which ones Lee Barnes?

Anonymous said...

A Muppet for every BNP cnut

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/3108/puppets.html

Lee Barnes = Animal?

Anonymous said...

If WTTL isn't Barnes he does a bloody good impression of him.

Anonymous said...

A marvellous write up, as we have all come to expect.

BUT

He is not the only nutter in the packet, i have just checked out the BNP website this morning and there it is their report of Diva Dickys night of drunken fame in Barking & Dagenham last Wednesday at the Assembly when he tried to deliver their "Alternative" budget. I have not stopped laughing since Wednesday and after reading that this morning the tears of laughter are rolling down my cheeks as i type this.

I am trying to put together a report for you all so that you too can share some of the pantomime.

Anonymous said...

"I am trying to put together a report for you all so that you too can share some of the pantomime."

That'd make a great separate report. Look forward to it.

Anonymous said...

Bagel IS Walk Toward The Light, no question. I know that because I know one of the mods in the real word.

Good you let him dam himself with his own words just like he does on SFB. I'm one of the so called Nazis you hate so much so I know you won't pass this but this is a good post that could have appeared on any antiGri££in website.

Anonymous said...

He needs introducing to, Nurse Ratched :)Cuckoo Cuckoo...

Medication time, medication time

Anonymous said...

If that story which Adrian Davis relates is true and I have more reason to believe him than any Griffinite then Barnes should be dealt with by the Law Society or whatever the governing body is called. That is terrible behaviour. Clear evidence that Herr Griffin surrounds hmself with some unsavoury, dishonourable and untrsutworthy characters.

Anonymous said...

How can Barmy Barnes be reported to the Law Society when that prat isnt a registered lawyer and member of said Society?

Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to encounter Barnes knows what a complete idiot he is - stuffed full of his own self importance and no idea of what "justice" really means. Cyclops Griffin likes Barmy Barnes because he is easily dispensible and costs the BNP next to nothing....well apart from a cheap laptop, a few return tickets every month from his squalid council flat in Kent to his bird's place in Brum and a modest mobile phone bill. Griffin likes things cheap, even if they turn out to be complete crap!

Has anyone calculated that by sacking the full or part time paid staff like the husband and wife Smiths, Dawson, Blake and Graham and not replacing them with competent and experienced personnel the cash strapped Griffin is saving the BNP at least £6k a month?

Now he (Gri££in) gets his legal "advice" for free, pays some gormless Belgian friend of the Klan a hundred quid a month to keep the crap website updated and has another bad back loafer running the Excalibur merchandise outfit in North Wales.

Griffin loves a bargain - rumour has it he will soon be flying over to Russia to get an offshore HQ established in some god-forsaken town outside Moscow at a fraction of the cost to run a political party in Britain. The BNP crap paper "Freedom" is printed in Poland because it costs less than 25% to get it printed in Britain. A Russian web designer can be bought for much less than the Belgian based nazi and the Russians dont much care for the Jews or give a damn about copyright laws.

If you are a teenage male living in Croatia, Russia or anywhere outside the EU and can be bought for a song, watch out for a one eyed, racist carpet bagger coming up your way. Rumour has it that the good looking young raven headed youths had better beware of bending over to pick up a wallet which may have been deliberately left on the ground up a dark alleyway!

Anonymous said...

This Lee John Barnes is a misogynist fucker. I just read one of his rantings entitled ‘2007 Stupid Bitch Award’. In his posting, this monster twat calls Gillian Gibbons a “dumb bitch” and an “idiot”. This BNP keyboard monkey goes on to state: “To be honest I think they should have given the dumb bitch to the screaming mob”. Barnes should shut the fuck up. For an unemployed, 42 yr old benefit scrounger Barnes has neither achieved nor contributed anything.

Given that Gillian Gibbons has done nothing to Lee John Barnes, I can only guess that his enmity towards her is derived from (like many BNP members I’ve unfortunately met) his misanthropy.

Anonymous said...

What I don’t get is this: it is claimed that BNP Scrounger Barnes is on benefits because he can’t work due to an injury (is it a brain injury?). But, why is the Utterly Sane Barnes listed as the head of the BNP’s legal unit, represents BNP members at their (numerous) tribunal cases and dispenses (as an unqualified and unregulated solicitor) legal advice to BNP members? Further, he has/had a BNP column alongside his own personal blog.

So, it seems the Barnes is fully capable of work but, studiously avoids doing a REAL job, with REAL pressures, which requires REAL qualifications and experience, working REAL hours, and paying REAL taxes. I don’t work hard and pay my taxes to subsidise and fund a BNP neo-nazi hate-monger like Barnes to pollute society with his demented and embarrassingly pseudo-intellectual views. Barnes is just another BNP spiv scratching the dust for a few pennies to fund his parochial lifestyle. It’s all leisure and pleasure down at the BNP.

Anonymous said...

Ok, so Barmy Barnes has laid the challenge to the people who he has libelled in his numerous postings on the net: that they can sue him, but will get nothing because he has nothing or will have nothing due to bankruptcy.

Interesting: he is willing to go bankrupt (for what, only God knows – I guess it only makes sense if one permanently inhabits the BNP parallel universe). But, what the idiot (to use a Barnes catchphrase for the many people he abuses) hasn’t contemplated is this: if he goes bankrupt (due to his own stupidity and impulsiveness) his credit rating will go for ever (if he has one that is): that means no decent mortgage, no credit card, no loan etc. It’s off to pawnbrokers and the local loan shark for Barnes. Alas, racism and fascism dosen't pay that well.

On another point I’m curious: he’s 42 yrs old, but has no savings or pension plan due to having not worked. What is he going to do when he’s a pensioner? I don’t think the BNP will be around to help him when he’s an incontinent poor old pauper living at the top of his council tower block struggling to pay his heating bill and TV licence. But, then again Barnes has made his choice in life and he can keep it.

Anonymous said...

BNP HQ, is loaded with benefit scroungers. The BNP accounts are always false.

What do the police do about it? Nothing!

Anonymous said...

"Now he (Gri££in) gets his legal "advice" for free, pays some gormless Belgian friend of the Klan a hundred quid a month to keep the crap website"

Actually, Griffin rarely pays him. He used to beg me via messenger to ask Griffin for money for the website work he did. He's also a fucking pervert.

And, Griffin does get his legal advice free, but always marks it down as costs which he pockets. Look at the BNP accounts. Unless, he's charging the party last year for his personal libel case against, Steve Edwards?

Anonymous said...

“Lee Barnes is a problem!”

Extract from Searchlight article:

http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=188

Many BNP members writing on Stormfront, an international nazi internet forum, were furious that Ebanks was being left to fend for herself and blamed Lee Barnes, the BNP “legal officer”, for his poor advice to contest the Labour candidate’s case in the first place, an allegation that Barnes denies. Others accused Barnes of being instrumental in withholding the promised funds because of a personal feud over control of the BNP’s internet forum from which Ebanks resigned in a fit of pique in late August after Barnes was appointed a moderator together with Kenny Smith, a decision that rankled with many members not least because Barnes is not a BNP member.

Why make such a move? The deci-sion of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, to foist the unpopular Barnes upon the forum was undoubtedly a reaction to the arrests of former BNP member Simon Sheppard and Luke O’Farrell on ten charges of “inciting racial hatred” arising from material that appeared on Sheppard’s website. This signalled to Griffin that individuals who post information on forums, bulletin boards and websites, wherever they were hosted, were not immune to prosecution “for incitement to racial hatred, incitement to violence and glorification of terrorism in the United Kingdom”. Worried perhaps that the BNP forum was guilty of promoting all three Griffin parachuted Barnes, with his supposed legal knowledge, to ensure it did not.

As the feud over Ebanks’s legal costs deepened, Barnes was accused of having “set up a renegade branch in Birmingham without the permission of NG [Griffin] to destroy Birmingham because he hates Sharon”. Her sup-porters were incensed by claims that Simon Darby, the BNP’s deputy leader, had told Ebanks the party had raised £1,000 and she should “get a credit card and pay the rest herself”.

The prospect of Ebanks being deserted in her hour of need severely shook the faith of many BNP members on Stormfront. Many pointed out that that raising money in Ebanks’s name and then withholding it from her was nothing short of an act of criminal deception.

Luckily for her Ebanks avoided bankruptcy when a donor stepped forward with £4,000 on 19 October. Searchlight understands that the payment was facilitated by the BNP. The other £1,000 was handed over by a member of the party leadership. Ebanks’s relief was short-lived. She was booted out of the party the following day.

Why had the party had “betrayed” her, Ebanks asked Darby. “What do you expect, you’ve upset Lee Barnes,” Darby apparently replied. He had previously warned Ebanks not to push her luck because, “if the chairman has to choose it will be Barnes”. According to Ebanks’s version of events she was sacked for daring to stand her ground over Barnes and for criticising the lack of transparency in the BNP accounts.

Ebanks also alleged that when she told Walker that if the party could not meet her costs it would be guilty of “serious financial mismanagement”, he had responded by threatening to “pull the ****ing rug from underneath me and leave me high and dry”. Ebanks also claimed the BNP was using her antisemitism as an excuse. “Freedom of speech? Having a joke aren’t they,” she fumed. Indeed. Funnily enough the BNP was quite happy to tolerate her antisemitic outbursts until she started questioning its accounting.

Save the BNP?

On 23 October, three days after Ebanks’s expulsion, the veteran fascist Keith Axon registered a new domain name. Axon had joined the BNP in 1982 but was expelled because of his dual membership with the British Peoples’ Party, a tiny extreme white supremacist group. Although savethebnp.org.uk has yet to become active its announcement was swiftly followed by a list of demands for greater internal democracy, financial transparency, greater liberty to ask awkward questions about the accounts without fear of being sacked and a demand that Griffin step down “NOW”.

In case that wasn’t enough to have Griffin quaking in his boots a statement posted on the internet on 27 October read: “What will be uploaded to www.savethebnp.org.uk will be so explosive that a leadership challenge will not be needed. Griffin will soon be forced to step down.” As a former national fundraiser for the BNP Ebanks might have some interesting things to say on BNP finances. Nothing has materialised to date, however.

As the row over the BNP’s treatment of Ebanks rumbled on Barnes became increasingly irritated by the latitude Storm-front moderators were giving her and her supporters, and appealed to them to censor her, a concern echoed by a growing number of BNP supporters alarmed at the increasingly divisive tone of the argument.

Although the threads were not removed Ebanks’s account was disabled, at her own request, on 6 November with an announcement that she was going to launch her own party, the New Nationalist Party. As a parting shot she accused the BNP leadership of having “stolen thousands from the membership, thousands from the regional accounts, conned and ripped off Trafalgar members who are now fully aware of it, and are laundering cheques through company accounts for companies that don’t exist.”

If she was hoping to win support Ebanks appears to have woefully underestimated the loyalty of most party members, if not to Griffin then certainly to the party itself. Shunned by almost every other fringe outfit Ebanks looks an increasingly isolated figure on the far right. She has succeeded in frittering away a wellspring of goodwill towards her from within the party through her disruptive feud with Barnes, only succeeding, in the words of one disillusioned supporter, in “transforming herself from wronged heroine to embittered witch in the space of a single week”.

The row was clearly having a destabilising effect forcing the BNP to issue a statement on 27 October fancifully blaming a wave of govern-ment-sponsored “dirty tricks” for the party’s current strife. More importantly the statement countered Ebanks’s claims that she and Axon were denied access to a disciplinary tribunal, saying this was “just one of a host of bare-faced lies”. This may or may not be true, as elsewhere Ebanks has stated, “if they think I’m attending a tribunal on lies drawn up by Barnes who has a clear obsession they can think again”.

Hell hath no fury …

Ebanks’s feud with Barnes prompted her to post details of what appears to be an even more damaging row simmering beneath the surface of the BNP. On 5 November Ebanks, writing under the pseudonym Dickens, leaked an angry exchange of emails purportedly between her nemesis and the BNP’s webmaster Steve Blake which shed light on the collapse of the BNP forum, the party’s principal means of internal communication, which was taken offline the same day.

Blake, after conferring with Darby, pulled the plug on the forum posting a notice that read: “Sorry, but due to essential security issues the Forum is now closed. A further announcement will be forthcoming once all security and admin issues have been resolved.”

As the email exchange between Barnes and Blake reveals – and it appears genuine – the collapse of the BNP forum was less about “essential security” and more about the fractious personality of the party’s legal officer.

According to the emails Barnes had attacked Blake for doing a “disappearing act” and not returning his calls and emails about the security of the BNP forum. “The forum is your failure – not anyone elses [sic],” Barnes carped.

Blake was beside himself with rage. So much so that he forwarded Barnes’s email and his own scathing response to the rest of the BNP Advisory Council pointing out that Barnes not only had gone too far but in doing so had “demonstrated he has out-lived his usefulness to the Party as a whole”. He added conspiratorially that given the timing of Griffin’s and Collett’s trial the dissension he had sown by banning over 60 members from the forum “might have an alternative explanation”. Blake was unequivocal in his estimation, however, that “Lee Barnes is a problem!”

It is easy to understand Blake’s anger. Barnes’s decision to ban “scores” of BNP activists from the forum, including branch organisers “on the flimsiest of excuses” had indeed caused “major disruption” to the BNP’s own internal communication channels. The timing of its collapse “could not have been worse”: a Saturday evening when BNP activists should have been using the forum to discuss arrangements ahead of Griffin’s first day back in court.

Blake was furious with Barnes’s semi-literate and intemperate email, seeing all his hard work undone by a non party member whose heavy-handed administration had made the forum a “laughing stock” and who then proceeded to lecture him about his responsibilities. It was time for “a few home truths”.

Livid that Barnes had had the temerity to tell him what his job was Blake let rip! “You are the outsider, the pariah who some are prepared to tolerate and ask for advice but you are outside the rest of us,” he admonished Barnes. Blake also had to pull Barnes up on the matter of responsibility for the forum, pointing out that he had handed over the domain name to the party and so was “NOT personally legally responsible for the contents of the Forum” but only for certain technical administration tasks. “Did you check that fact? Of course not!” fumed Blake. His attempt to pass on even this limited role had failed, moaned Blake, and thus “I am lumbered with this thankless task and lumbered with a raging bull of a Moderator (i.e. you) who bullies, hectors and screws things up big time”.

Blake also attacked Barnes’s constant “**** ups” which occurred, conveniently for Barnes, “at bank holidays and weekends” when Blake was away allowing Barnes to blame him. He was equally cross that Barnes had not checked his facts before attacking other members – “some **** ing legal advisor you are” – and compounded the offence by never apologising. “You are not one of us as far as I am concerned,” seethed Blake. “Nationalists, at least the Nationalists I have worked with over the years are in most cases honourable men and women who do their very best, to the best of their abilities, treat one another with respect and decency and admit their errors – you do not act like a Nationalist as you are clearly not one of us.”

Blake was no less scathing about Barnes’s complete lack of technical competence, which had led Barnes to claim that forum security had been breached. “You blithering idiot,” railed Blake, who accused him of lying to Griffin, “not because you were being malicious, that much I will concede, but because you know sod all about the technical issues, you claimed that certain people were making posts when they never have done so.”

Blake also gave vent to the opinion of many BNP members that Barnes was only able to continue to operate within the BNP because of Griffin’s largesse and promised to lobby the Advisory Committee for his removal as “Legal Advisor”, a position for which he has no authority, “as a matter of urgency”. Blake is clearly as dubious of Barnes’s ability’s as is Searchlight, informing him bluntly: “I will remortgage my house several times over if need be just to pay for the services of a genuine practicing lawyer, not some jumped up idiot with a law degree. Good god I know of 20’somethings with law degrees who are stacking shelves in Tesco, how the hell did the BNP membership end up with you?” Answers on a postcard please.

Blake’s high dudgeon was increased by the fact that the collapse of the forum over the August bank holiday and again only days before the verdict in Griffin’s and Collett’s retrial had caused immense amounts of confusion and anger “driving dozens of our decent people to alternative forums just so they could find some hint as to what was going on!”

Blake concluded his tirade with a demand for an apology, which, if it was forthcoming, was made privately. It would have to be suitably contrite one would imagine!

Anonymous said...

Who the fuck is Blake? he's too full of his own self importance. always was even when he had a 'role' within the bnp..what was that? oh yes ...web editor WOW!! such importance, and the problem with ebanks? funnily enough exactly the same!! thinks she know everything about everyone, does she Hell!!

Anonymous said...

BNP leader Nick Griffin has called people who live on housing estates "scum". The BNP's unqualified legal officer Lee Barnes lives on a council estate. This must mean, according to Griffin, that Lee Barnes is, well, scum.