How the BNP shamefully tried to create a 'white martyr' for their own grubby ends

A film about the death of Keith Brown was posted on YouTube this week. It begins with a hearse arriving at St Batholomew's church in Stoke.

On one side of the coffin is a wreath which spells KEITH, on the other DADDY. Mr Brown was a father of seven. He was 52 when he was fatally stabbed outside his home last year. It would be difficult to imagine more emotional footage.

Among the mourners at his funeral is a middle-aged man in black suit and tie. When he begins to speak to the camera his eyes well-up: 'It's a very sad day, almost unbearable being there with the little kids,' he says, his eyes full of tears.

The tears - crocodile tears, some might think - belong to Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, who barely knew Keith Brown, if indeed they met at all.

Mr Griffin and his cronies have been accused of hijacking Mr Brown's funeral - and his death. BNP members were pallbearers. They laid a floral tribute depicting the flag of St George (something else they have hijacked).

They were also responsible for the internet broadcast courtesy of 'BNPtv'; the party now has its own specialist camera crews precisely for such occasions.

Standing outside the church, moments after the service has ended, Mr Griffin tells his online audience: 'I loathe not so much his killers as the police and authorities in this city who let down his family. They knew something like this was going to happen.

'His family, and Keith himself, was subjected to a reign of terror by the racist neighbours and their gang friends and the authorities did nothing about it. These people I loathe . . . when it's English, white victims, they simply don't care.'

Spin, even political spin, is one thing, outright lies quite another. Anyone - aside from the BNP - who was at Stafford Crown Court for the trial of Keith Brown's killer this week would be in little doubt into which category Mr Griffin's comments fell.

Keith Brown, the court heard, was not a 'white martyr,' but had a history of violence. The man in the dock, on the other hand, was a community leader who had never been in trouble before. He also happened to be Mr Brown's next-door neighbour and a Muslim.

The long-running dispute which finally ended in Mr Brown's death, however, was about property boundaries and building work, not race and politics. And Habib Khan, 50, was convicted of manslaughter, not racially motivated murder.

The truth is shocking only if you view the BNP in the same way as you might other political parties, that is, constrained by basic decency, and forget that it was founded in the early Eighties following splits in the far-Right National Front.

Many remain convinced that the BNP has the same relationship with the shaven-headed thugs who made up the NF, as Sinn Fein did with the bombers of the IRA.

It's easy to forget about the skinheads (lurking in the shadows or in the background at funerals) in Cambridge-educated Nick Griffin's besuited BNP.

And in a Britain plagued with knife and gun crime, and legitimate concerns over immigration, there has been an increasingly receptive audience for the BNP's message, not just in predominantly poor, white, working-class areas of the North, but also in the more affluent South-East.

Today the BNP has 56 local councillors, a net gain of ten in the recent local elections (with parish and community councils, it claims 100 elected representatives across the country) including Richard Barnbrook, the first BNP member to win a seat on the London Assembly.

In Stoke-on-Trent where the tragedy - and travesty - of Keith Brown was played out, the BNP now has nine councillors, perhaps the strongest single party in the city. On May 1, Labour polled 14,000 votes in 20 seats, the BNP polled almost 8,000, standing in just ten seats.

A minority Labour administration struggles on with the support of the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats (both smaller than the BNP) and independents. But senior local politicians believe the BNP could be running the Town Hall within three years.

To put that deeply disturbing prospect into perspective, just 12 years ago, Labour won all 60 seats on this new unitary authority.

Around 8 per cent of Stoke's 240,000 population is from the Asian and black community, but some believe the city's white working class has become an underclass.

The statistics are alarming. Officially, of course, unemployment has fallen, but more residents claim incapacity and disability benefits which has resulted in Stoke having one of the lowest proportions of people in work in England and Wales.

This is the economic background to the rise of the BNP in the city.

Michael Tappin, the former Labour group leader and ex-Stoke MEP, was one of those who lost his council seat a few weeks ago.

'The men and women of the BNP look like your neighbours,' he says. 'They are not 25st men with bodypiercings and tattoos as portrayed by anti-fascist demonstrators. They are respectable. It's hard to demonise them. The wear suits. They look tidy. They pick up old ladies when they fall over in the street, shop for the elderly and cut people's lawns.

'It's like that old saying about Mussolini - "At least he made the trains run on time." Here, it's "At least they get your grass cut.'' '

Alby Walker, the BNP group leader on the council, turns up for regular bingo sessions at a local community centre, where he helps put the tables out and take the money.

And, yes, he says he gets 'birthday cards off 80-year-old ladies'.

Mr Walker is a businessman who runs a small joinery firm and whose wife, Ellie, a school governor, has also been elected as a BNP councillor. Mr Walker wears pinstripe suits and fat ties.

One of the BNP leaflets he is most proud of features Hanley - one of the Five Towns which originally made up Stoke-on-Trent. 'Hanley 70 years ago,' it reads above nostalgic photographs of the church tower and smiling housewives.

Below, next to silhouettes of mosques and women with their faces shrouded in niqabs, is the question: 'Is this what you want for our city centre?'

He insists the BNP is not guilty of 'exploiting the situation,' neither in Hanley nor in the Longton South ward where Keith Brown lived and died. How, then, did a row between two neighbours become a cause celebre for the glib-tongued bigots of the BNP?

Neither of the families involved in the bitter feud were at home when the Mail called on them last night.

In fact, neighbours believe both the Browns and the Khans have now moved out of the street and are not sure if, or when, they will return. Contrary to what the BNP might want you to believe, Keith Brown and Habib Khan were not always mortal enemies.

The two, we have learned, once worked alongside each other - without any problems - for the same tiling company.

The former colleagues were reacquainted with each other in 2001 when Mr Khan expressed an interest in buying two semi-detached houses next door to Mr Brown. Mr Brown told Mr Khan to give him his details and he would pass them on to the owner.

He did so, and the transaction went through. Race never seemed to be an issue between the two men - at least not until the BNP got involved. By now, Mr Khan was a successful businessman in his own right (he ran a kebab shop) and was a Muslim elder.

Mr Brown was unemployed with a record of violence stretching back to his 20s. In 2000, the year before Mr Khan entered his life again, he was convicted of punching a man in the face.

The dispute which would eventually prove fatal started, as such rows often do, when Mr Khan applied for planning permission to carry out home improvements - in this case to convert his newly acquired properties into a single grand villa.

Mr Brown tried everything he could to stop him. During construction work, after the plans were approved, Mr Brown and his 20-year-old son Ashley took sledgehammers to the newly-built property next door.

Mr Brown was convicted of criminal damage, but appealed. When the prosecution failed to tell witnesses about the appeal hearing, a judge overturned the conviction. If he hadn't, Mr Brown might still be alive today. Instead, he went back on the offensive.

On one occasion, Mr Brown blocked the access road between their houses with vehicles and tyres. Eventually, he turned to the local authority for assistance and was introduced to Steve Batkin, then the sole BNP member on Stoke Council.

Did 'race' begin to rear its head in the dispute after this meeting?

The Khans, in statements made to the police, claimed they were called 'Pakis' by the Browns and that their windows were smashed every other day. They were also, it is alleged, subjected to death threats.

'The past four years I've been living in hell,' Mr Khan told the court.

Relations reached breaking point on July 6 last year. Mr Khan was in the kitchen when his daughter shouted to him that Mr Brown was trying to kill her brother, Azir. Mr Khan grabbed a knife and went outside to find Mr Brown holding his son in a headlock. He tapped him on the shoulder. Mr Brown, the jury was told, turned and mouthed: 'I'll kill him.'

Mr Khan said that he pressed the knife against Mr Brown's back so he could feel the blade, intending to scare him. But Mr Brown fell, pushing the blade in further.

As his neighbour struggled to his knees, Mr Khan removed the knife from his back. 'I have never seen blood like that in my life,' he said. But he insisted: 'I swear on my life had no intention of killing him.'

The jury believed him. Mr Khan was unanimously cleared of murder, but convicted of manslaughter. Sentencing has been adjourned.

Clearly Mr Khan's actions were entirely wrong and cannot be condoned for a moment. Mr Brown's killing was a shocking and criminal waste of life. Nevertheless, the BNP is now using the incident in its campaign literature with a cynicism that beggars belief.

An article posted on the official BNP website is called: Racist Murder in Britain - The Shocking Truth. 'An epidemic of anti-white racist violence and murder is being covered up by the government, the police and the media,' it claims.

The fate of Mr Brown, it alleges, was a prime example of this.

'So convinced were Mr Brown's family that the murder was racially motivated that they invited six of Stoke's BNP councillors to be pallbearers at Keith's funeral.'

No mention here of how a nonracial dispute seemed to have escalated only after Mr Brown's contact with the BNP.

But the party's Alby Walker is unrepentant. 'The system has let Keith down and justice has not been served. Justice in this country depends solely on the colour of your skin - if you are white you don't get justice.

'If Keith had killed Khan in the same circumstances I believe he would be facing years behind bars for murder and would not have got away with manslaughter. There seems a reluctance among the police to upset the Muslim community.

'They are terrified of a race riot in Stoke, but I don't think we are on the verge of that.' Despite, many feel, the best efforts of the BNP.

What was it Nick Griffin said at Keith Brown's funeral? Ah yes: 'It's a very sad day, almost unbearable' . . . but not, it might be argued, for the BNP, which so cynically turned the event into a party political broadcast.

Daily Mail