Operation Lieback

On Tuesday we carried the Mirror's report of "BNP mum" Helen Forster's conviction for intimidation, earned after she and a mob of children besieged the home of terrified neighbour Mrs Meherjan Miah. Single mother and benefits claimant Forster, who has prior convictions for dishonesty and drug possession, was let off with a 10 month suspended sentence.

The Mirror reported that after her conviction Forster demanded that the local council "move on" Mrs Miah to prevent further incidents and confirmed her membership of the BNP - "And yes, I'm still in the BNP."

The BNP, stung and clearly rattled by a succession of negative press reports, immediately mobilised its farcical (and largely fictitious) "Operation Fightback" to search for holes in the Mirror's story, and was soon claiming to have found the biggest hole of all - that Helen Forster, given address XX Xxxx Place, Gravesend, Kent, was not and never had been a member of the BNP!

Very quickly the party's Operation Fightback dispatched a hysterical email entitled "Fight back against Mirror lies!", saying

BNP South East regional organiser Andy McBride has dismissed the story as nonsense saying that the person in question is NOT a BNP member, either current or in the archives. This has been confirmed by our Membership Department.

This latest smear job is a complete fabrication. We need all our online supporters to take a few minutes to lodge a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission...

Somebody, then, was lying. Was it the Mirror? Was it Helen Forster? Was it the BNP?

This was quickly followed by an email from Nick Griffin, who said:

Today the leftwing Mirror newspaper published an outrageous and vile smear attack on the BNP claiming that a certain Helen Forster was a "BNP mum" and that she incited youngsters into a racial attack.

Operation Fightback immediately hit back with press releases and e-bulletins holding the Mirror to account for one little inaccuracy: Helen Forster is NOT a member of the BNP and NEVER has been!

Operation Fightback has produced a video detailing the whole saga..

And indeed, in suspiciously double-quick time, the BNP had produced a video, in which an indignant Paul Golding allegedly "tracked down" and doorstepped Helen Forster. According to the BNP's website, Golding "tracked down the person named in the Mirror story, Helen Forster" - note the semantic difference made by the qualification "the person named".

That struck a number of BNP watchers as odd, as did the despatch with which Golding arrived on Miss Forster's doorstep.

A post accompanying Golding's video, both appearing ON THE SAME DAY as the Mirror's report, had this to say:

She [Helen Forster] told BNPtv that the Mirror story was a pack of lies, that her family’s safety had been endangered by the story and that she was going to take legal action against that newspaper.

Ms Foster said she was not a member of the BNP, and that the only reason why the Mirror had invented this pack of lies was to try and damage the BNP’s campaign.

Cllr Golding told BNP News that the Press Complaints Commission had been formally notified of this latest set of lies.

“We are not going to sit idly by while the controlled media lie about our party,” Cllr Golding said. “The Mirror can rest assured that we will be proceeding with all legal channels to make sure that they are punished for this outrageous fabrication. They will learn the hard way that we now have the capability to expose their lies.

“This latest story utterly discredits these media rats, and the public will now be able to soberly assess the veracity of all future anti-BNP smears against this background,” he said.

Indeed the public will "be able to soberly assess the veracity of all future anti-BNP smears against this background", since there is now little doubt that both the BNP and "Helen Forster" were lying through their teeth.

Last night an interesting post appeared on UKIP's British Democracy Forum, here reproduced in full:

Posted by Mark Croucher - Another BNP Councillor caught lying

Just thought this little illustration of the depths the BNP are prepared to sink to would be of interest in this section.

This morning, the Daily Mirror reported on a BNP activist convicted of waging a campaign of racial hatred against a neighbour in Gravesend, Kent.

The BNP promptly despatched their 'Rapid Response Unit' to interview her. The unit, headed by Councillor Golding of Sevenoaks District Council, said that the woman named, Helen Forster, had never been a BNP member and was not known to the party. They then interviewed her on her doorstep saying how disgraceful it was that the Mirror was attempting to 'set up' the BNP.

Living locally, seeing the front door rang a bell: I live in Dartford, about 7 miles from Gravesend. It just so happens that that particular front door is just around the corner from where I used to work, and I have friends who live very close. So, on the way home this evening, I took a spin down to Gravesend and, sure enough, the house was the correct one: Snipped, Gravesend. So, I popped into my friends house and asked if they knew who lived there, and imagine my surprise (not) to be told that it was a Helen Colclough, who also calls herself Helen Forster. Naturally, I was even more surprised (not) to discover that she was known locally as a BNP activist and member who - wait for it - likes to tell people that she designs leaflets for the BNP.

So, not only did Cllr Golding lie twice - once about her not being a member, and once about the Mirror story not being true - but Ms Forster/Colclough was also in on the lying act by claiming to have never been a member of the BNP.

Given the amount of copies of the BNPs membership lists which are floating around, I'm sure someone can confirm this.

Now it just so happens that the leaked BNP membership list is freely available at numerous locations which can be accessed by anybody with an internet connection - and guess what?

There, listed as living at XX Xxxx Place, Gravesend, Kent is one Helen Colclough, Activist, who gives her email address as the clearly racist nig5@msn.com.

And so we have an explanation as to how Paul Golding came to arrive on "Forster's" doorstep with such speed, and for that curious qualification "the person named... as Helen Forster".

It's because the BNP knew all along that "Helen Forster" was "Helen Colclough", but - as ever - intent on pulling the wool over the eyes of the public, the Press Complaints Commission, and its own gullible membership, the upper echelons of the BNP decided to concoct a cock-and-bull story and in so doing yet again pointed their own gun firmly at their own temple and smirkingly pulled the trigger.

By what defect of his vision Regional Organiser Andy McBride allegedly failed to notice that the much published Mirror photograph of "Helen Forster" bore an uncannily striking resemblance to his own activist, Helen Colclough, is something we'll have to get back to you on.