November 01, 2008

Scraping the barrel

You always know when the BNP is scraping the barrel for good news: the BNP website begins reporting on the speeches of the likes of David Hannam, the elementary activity of a local branch pushing leaflets through doors is given a prominence way beyond its importance, and the reporting of BNP by-election results is suspended.

David Hannam is the BNP's deputy treasurer and owner of Great White Records. Accused by the Decembrist rebels of financial incompetence and - some years ago - by former Hull BNP organiser Dr David Michael of theft, Hannam (along with Mark Collett) survived serious allegations of improprietry involving under-age girls made by a former member of the BNP security team.

Given his dubious record, Hannam is hardly the first person you'd invite along to give an opinion on the economic crisis currently engulfing the world, and so at a meeting of the BNP's Scarborough and Ryedale branch Hannam failed to provide any cutting insights into the issue that might have escaped the minds of our better known economic commentators, one of his more acute (if slightly tortured) observations, as retold on the BNP website, being, "The truth is that in an economically declining society, the worker is hit, but even in a so-called economically growing society, it is the worker who also gets hit."

According to the syntactically inelegant Hannam, the oncoming recession will "cause people to start looking around for political alternatives", and therefore "the BNP must be ready to take advantage of the mess all of the other parties have made of the economy". Unfortunately for Hannam, as we shall see, "people" just don't seem to see the BNP as one of those "political alternatives".

Having brought our attention to the weighty thoughts of David Hannam, a desperate BNP website editor then casts about for more morale-boosting stories with which to eke out the thin gruel served up on his gadget-strewn browser-scrambling pages, and comes up with the breathtaking news that the BNP has delivered 1000 leaflets (allegedly) in the suburbs of Norwich - located, apparently, in the "region" of Norfolk.

Regular leaflet delivery being the unremarkable staple activity of fascist organisations since the year dot, we were wondering why the fact that six people delivering a small number of leaflets to a small area of Norwich should warrant the attention paid to it. Perhaps the BNP webmaster was as astonished as ourselves to learn that there had been any activity at all on the behalf of Norfolk BNP, a group which notoriously, while the rest of the BNP went to the 2007 local election polls, thought it a far better idea to go out to dinner.

If there is one notable thing those of us who live in the "region" can tell you about Norfolk BNP, it is of the fact of its almost complete invisibility combined with a penchant on the part of some of its tiny band of members for throwing out wildly inaccurate statements (lies, to you and me) on the extent of their activities and intentions. I could add that at least two of its number have a liking for both online and real-world impersonation, but that's a matter for another time.

The long and short of it is that Norfolk BNP has always been pretty useless, not much interested in the bread and butter of political work while there's a pint to be downed or a steak to be chewed on, and until recently anti-fascists in the county were obliged to challenge the threat of the far smaller but much more active National Front. Only in west Norfolk, back in May 2007, did the local BNP - rather despite its own laziness - come close to pulling off an unexpected (and certainly undeserved) success, when it came within an ace of winning the North Lynn ward (King's Lynn) of West Norfolk County Council.

That near-miss most definitely surprised the BNP's King's Lynn activists, who you can count on four of the fingers of one hand, they bringing it about with little, if any, help from the rest of the local BNP organisation.

And that, until Nick Griffin's sneaking visit to Norfolk a few months ago, was all anybody in the "region" ever heard of the BNP.

News, then, that Norfolk BNP has finally got around to doing something is, we suppose, worthy - but worthy of what isn't readily obvious. Perhaps the BNP's web editor felt that the surprise value inherent in Norfolk BNP doing anything at all was enough to propel a tale of six racists taking to the leaflet trail ("one sunny morning") into the party headlines.

Not making the party headlines, naturally, is the recent slew of mostly dire BNP local by-election results, which rather tend to negate David Hannam's belief (if he really believes it) that the BNP is one of the "political alternatives" to which the people will turn.

The people of Dewsbury turned away from the BNP in droves on October 16th, when, in a by-election caused by the resignation of BNP rebel Colin Auty, the party's vote fell by 50% and the BNP lost Dewsbury East. A week later, in East Wittering ward, Chichester, the people signally failed to turn to the BNP, which was breaking new territory and expecting to take 15% of the vote - it took 12.3%, despite the helpful demographic of the ward.

A week later on October 23rd, the gloom continued. In the East Midlands - prime electoral territory for the BNP and a matter of deep concern for anti-fascists - a BNP candidate standing in the (Loughborough) Dishley and Hathern ward of Charnwood Borough Council managed a 3.6% vote loss, while the party's troubles in the West Midlands gathered pace. In Wolverhampton Wednesfield North, which saw the BNP peak at 26% in 2006, the BNP vote fell from May's 15.37% to 11.78%. In Wednesfield South, which the BNP did not contest in May, the BNP vote was 14.4% - but that does represent a 1.2% increase over an outing in 2007, when the party obtained 13.2%. Hardly the stuff of even the quietest revolutions.

On October 30th the BNP obtained its best recent result - and its worst.

In St. John's ward, Workington, the BNP took 20.22%, and beforehand gave every impression that it could win. In the event it came third. Though nobody can afford to ignore the fact that one in five of those voting gave their support to the BNP, the extent of the party's failure can be judged by this posting made on our associated forum:
According to info on the Cumbria BNP site [and I'm certainly not accepting that as gospel!] the BNP threw the kitchen sink at this, along with the fridge/freezer, washing machine and everything else!!
  • multiple leaflets
  • last election leaflet delivered in a single afternoon with 14 deliverers
  • three canvass rounds
  • a personally addressed mail-merge letter
  • Dicky Barnbrook visited [which might not be exactly a bonus - but does indicate that it was being taken seriously]
They also claim that the other parties ran low-key campaigns.

If the above is even nearly true then 20% is very disappointing for them - if I had that amount of literature and manpower to throw at a council byelection in a small district ward I would be expecting to win - not come third!! [And I've fought umpteen council elections.]
If we can deem the St. John's ward result to be a relative failure on account of the resources poured in and the expectations raised, for pure disaster we need to visit Camden's Kentish Town, where in a six-cornered contest BNP candidate Edith Crowther managed to come 5th, with 62 votes and a miserable 2.4% share, the only crumb of freezing comfort being that the UKIP came last.

All this sobering election news, and more besides, never appeared on the BNP website, showcase of the "serious" political party that thinks the unintelligable musings of its incompetent deputy-treasurer deserving of a wider audience, and which is stunned that something - anything at all, really - happened in Norfolk.

Enjoy the weekend, folks.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

So the "Quiet Revolution" gathers in pace :-)

Which presumeably means they should be in Downing Street by a week on Thursday and will have left the EU and England will be as it was in the 1950's by Christmas!

Methinks, as the world is more just at times than we think, that the one eyed pig farmer will be stacking supermarket shelves in Newtown before long.

BTW, hasn't he done that before?

:-)

Anonymous said...

Here's a nutty letter BNP candidate Edith Crowther wrote to the Camden New Journal in Spring 2006:

High price of the King's Cross loss

IT is sad that the campaigners for more affordable housing at King's Cross have lost out to Argent. But the saddest people of all are, in fact, the apparent victors, in the devastatingly accurate street meaning of "sad".

Development in Britain became unsustainable when Henry VIII was forced to start conquering Ireland for wood for his ships, because he had chopped down most of England's forests. During the next five centuries the process snowballed, and now we are indirectly logging Indonesia for biofuel, having overdosed on carbon fuels.

We will overdose on biofuels too.History has a long and dismal record of civilisations which have used up their own resources, expanded colonially, used up those, and collapsed in a welter of "natural" disasters. The most familiar account of the process is the Old Testament, but other times and other zones have similar journals.

Babylonian texts record that Babylon was denuded of trees (still is) and salinised by over-irrigation so nothing would grow (still won't in what is now a semi-desertified northern Iraq and the southern Iraq desert that was once Ur of the Chaldees). Rome outgrew all its breadbaskets and collapsed. Hadrian refused to invade Scotland on the grounds that the Empire had overstretched itself – he was no fool, but it was too late.

All this doom makes the efforts of the King's Cross campaigners and millions of good-hearted people like them across the world all the more soul-saving as opposed to soul-destroying. If you are on a sinking ship you want to see around you the altruistic and their concern and compassion, however futile these might be. There is some point in trying to make the last hours as comfortable as possible for everyone and going down fighting; no point at all in skulking in the ships galleys scoffing all available food for storage like snakes and looting the cabins.

EDITH CROWTHER Belsize Park Gardens, NW3

http://regentsparklabour.blogspot.com/2008/10/bnp-stands-barking-candidate-in-arizona.html

Anonymous said...

Why has John Walker been expelled from the BNP?

Anonymous said...

Here's a nutty BNP candidate Edith Crowth telling us what a good thing fascism is!:

"At 11:48 PM on 14 Dec 2007,edith crowther wrote:

hello again brossen 99 - I now understand better what you mean by eco-fascists. I think the problem is the word fascist - to me it means simply a banding together of poor people under a strong leader to defeat rich bankers and "the devouring trades of usury", "the inclosure of pasture" etc.

But you are using it to mean rich hypocrites who pretend to be "green" and don't really give up anything, meanwhile their "green" restrictions make poor people suffer, when they are already living an extremely green life anyway due to not having much.

So I definitely absolutely agree with you.

I do think the word fascist is unclear though - surely it is usually used by wealthy people to desbribe poor people getting mad and militant - I think history bears this out, fascist movements have toppled wealthy elites, not supported them. They seem to be more effective than communism, for some reason.

A lot of posh journalists say the nationalist movements in Palestine, Iran, Iraq and Arabia are "fascist" - to me they are desperate, extremely poor, tramped underfoot by foreigners as well as their own elites, and have decided to get scary or they will die. I think if the unions stopped using "fascist" as a criticism, the poor would get somewhere because all the poor would unite. Fascism doesn't really mean anything more sinister than "bunch of arrows", stronger than a single arrow. (I looked it up in Wikipedia).

Any more quotes from Uriah Heep? - I was a Doors fan mainly, don't remember Uriah Heep but they sound as if they have lasted better, like The Who - I missed out on them too, I was too posh. I have repented now though and seen the error of my ways.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/12/friday_14_december_2007.html

Anonymous said...

Classic statment from nutty BNP candidate Edith Crowther:

"Therefore the main threat is from moderate Muslims happily working for the "yankee dollar" or its latter-day equivalent (which may be the rouble or the yuan one day soon). These moderate Muslims are the real threat, either to their host country if they are abroad, or more importantly to Islam itself in their own countries."

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2008/09/its-the-creepy.html

Anonymous said...

This sly anti-Jewish swipe by nutty BNP candidate Edith Crowther:

"This is a permanent holocaust by one per cent of the human race on the other 99 per cent. I do not deny the one that took place in Germany in the 1940s, or any other, but they are statistically not significant, and it is high time their victims got a grip and moved on to the statistically significant ones."

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2007/11/free-speech-is.html

Unknown said...

Why has John Walker been expelled from the BNP?

You tell us.

We simply allowed a comment in which that allegation was made.

Anonymous said...

Dave Hannam is the only answer to the global economic crisis. His masterly skill of cocking up every bank account of every BNP unit in the country and his ignorance of basic accounts submission to the Companies House of accounts for GWR shows he has the talents needed to avert a global meltdown.

There is only one "singer" in GWR worse than that talentless midget that is Hannam and thats the gormless Joey Smith - there is no "qu" in Christmas Joey you talentless gorp.

Anonymous said...

BNP appeals to youth with a brand new BNP site............not!

http://youth.bnp.org.uk/

Another achievement from the useless Kemp web factory. You have to wonder if the stories about Kemp being on the payroll of the SA government post-apartheid are true. A lot of BNP members question his background and motives.

Anonymous said...

Methinks, as the world is more just at times than we think, that the one eyed pig farmer will be stacking supermarket shelves in Newtown before long.

BTW, hasn't he done that before?

No it was Welshpool's branch of Safeway's (pre Morrison days) that saw the only useful activity this one eyed Mummy's boy has ever done in his entire life.

Anonymous said...

"His masterly skill of cocking up every bank account of every BNP unit in the country"

That's true. As a former fund holder myself I can vouch for that. Hardly a month would go by without some blunder made by Hannam. I dont know why he has lasted so long in his role as deputy treasurer, he is completely useless and it would take days for him to respond to emails and phone calls. His common excuse was "we are in the middle of an audit", which would go on for months. He is a cretin, the BNP is doomed anyway so they are welcome to him and the other cretins who believe Griffin will charm his way into the European Parliament next year, - god forbid!

Anonymous said...

Denise you are not wrong about the crap BNP web site. Even according to Alexa the BNP site is one of the slowest web sites on the planet! That takes some achievement, its one of the slowest 8% of all websites. Kemp should stick to writing his nasty white supremacist tomes.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/bnp.org.uk

Anonymous said...

BNP appeals to youth with a brand new BNP site............not!

http://youth.bnp.org.uk/

Another achievement from the useless Kemp web factory. You have to wonder if the stories about Kemp being on the payroll of the SA government post-apartheid are true. A lot of BNP members question his background and motives.

----
You are underestimating the worrying reach of the BNP's web operations -- look at their rankings on Alexa.

http://bnp.org.uk/2008/10/bnp-web-site-increases-its-lead-over-all-other-uk-parties/

We should rather be looking at ways in which we anti-fascists can extend our web presence to counter this.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the UK will be lucky after all and SA will take Kemp back - rumour has it in SA that with the parole application of Mr Kemp's associates in the murder of the communist party leader, Chris Hani, the SA authorities are considering re-opening the case to see just what Kemp's role was - there is sill a strong belief that the governement of the day had a hand in the matter and it is a matter of proving the link - Mr Kemp is definitely such link.

Anonymous said...

BNP appeals to youth with a brand new BNP site............not!

http://youth.bnp.org.uk/

Another achievement from the useless Kemp web factory.

I really love this one - Mr Kemp is such a tosser he does not even pay maintenance for his own kids - rest assured he has little appeal for young people and when his rubbish views were rejected by his own kids his persuasive powers were such he just stopped talking to them!

Anonymous said...

You tell us.

We simply allowed a comment in which that allegation was made.

Its true, he has been dumped and plans to spend the rest of his days before the cirossis takes its toll as an entertainer and kaoroke operator.

"Available for Christmas socials at special rates"!

Green Gordon said...

Does anyone know where those photos from the YBNP website are sourced from? At least a couple of those kids look a little unpale to be BNP members..

Green Gordon said...

Here we go!:
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-9163435-big-group-young-people.html


PART II
RESTRICTIONS
YOU MAY NOT:
Use an Image in a way that places any person depicted in the Image in a bad light or in a way that they may find offensive - this includes, but is not limited to the use of Images: a) in pornography, "adult videos" or the like; b) in ads for tobacco products; c) in ads or promotional materials for adult entertainment clubs or similar venues, or for escort, dating or similar services; d) in connection with political endorsements;

edith crowther said...

You all sound terribly arrogant, like Pharisees. You seem to think some people are riff-raff, just because they are uneducated. I think everyone is aggrieved and really quite heartbroken by this deep lack of kindness by so-called educated people. We want politicians who will stand at the back of the temple and simply ask god to forgive THEIR sins because they are miserable sinners. Not stand at the front thanking God for making them such a wonderful and superior human being.

We are all disappointed by Socialism too. It said it had the Answer to the eternal Question, why do the wicked prosper? But, not only does it not have the Answer, it doesn't even understand the Question any more - if it ever did. In the 1840s the Chartists warned that mass education would merely create a new elite which would oppress all the usual people and have all the usual slaves - and so it has proved. I don't say I have the Answer, neither does the BNP. But at least we are looking for it, and at least we understand the Question.