The BNP and UKIP expenses scandals

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Roddy Newman. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

"Punish the pigs" screamed the BNP's expenses scandal European election leaflets, but those leaflets did not point out that Nick Griffin himself is extremely corrupt...

"The party's treasurer, Michael Newland, resigned in disgust after Griffin used party funds to add an extension to his house. West Midlands fascists who complained that calling in interior designers was not the most effective way to create a new fatherland were purged." ("Fist in the kid glove", "The Observer", July 1, 2001)

"The row first broke out in June as Newland received details of Griffin's recent expenditure. Unbeknown to him Griffin had been freely helping himself to the Trafalgar Club fund, the party's slush fund that had replaced the [original BNP leader John] Tyndall-controlled Welling Club. [The Trafalgar Club is bankrolled by the BNP's wealthier members, who currently pay £15 a month into it, as a recent Kirklees Unity / Lancaster Unity article, "Hate comes to Herefordshire" (October 23) revealed]. While Griffin was later to explain this was in lieu of party expenses, Newland had not been consulted. As much as £8,000 was taken from this fund, including a large loan to extend Griffin's house. Although Griffin later said that the extension provided the party with a conference and dining room, Newland was not impressed." ("BNP gripped by cash scandal", "Searchlight", September 2000)

Although UKIP is not a fascist party like the BNP, and although the BNP is of course a much more racist party than UKIP (as my September 13th Lancaster Unity article, "Do the BNP and EFP leadership still believe in the mass slaughter of billions?" explained, Nick Griffin was allegedly a "close ally" of the late American fascist party leader William Pierce, who openly advocated killing all of the world's billions of non-white and Jewish people), I want to talk about both parties' expenses scandals, because Alan Sked, UKIP's now disillusioned founder, who has described the party he started in 1993 as a group of "ageing xenophobes", was reported in the "Mail on Sunday" of June 6, 2004 to have alleged that UKIP leader Nigel Farage had said to him: "We will never win the nigger vote. The nig-nogs will never vote for us."

Moreover, on the same day, Alan Sked was quoted in "The People" as having said: "They [UKIP] are racist and have been infected by the far right", and the day before, the "Daily Mail" quoted Ashok Viswanathan of Operation Black Vote as having said: "We know that a number of candidates who have stood for UKIP have British National Party links - there's no question there are links."

Of course, there is nothing new about links between the essentially right wing of the Conservative Party politics which UKIP is an example of, and fascist politics. Then Conservative politician Enoch Powell's 1968 "Rivers of blood" speech had a lot to do with the subsequent rise of the National Front, a January 30, 1984 "BBC "Panorama" documentary, "Maggie's Militant Tendency", alleged that several Conservative MPs had far right links, and Nick Toczek's pamphlet, "The Bigger Tory Vote: The Covert Sequestration of the Bigotry Vote" (AK Press, Stirling and San Francisco, 1992), discussed similar alleged links between people on the right wing of the Conservative Party and fascists.

More recently, Nick Griffin's father, Edgar, was sacked from the Conservative leadership campaign of Iain Duncan-Smith, who is very much on the right wing of his party, after the "Sunday Express" exposed his dual BNP and Conservative membership.

So as the expenses scandal will no doubt overshadow the next general election, in which the BNP hope to win its first MP(s), anti-fascists ought to use their leaflets and articles to expose the expenses scandals of both the BNP and UKIP, which I will now explain.

They also ought to expose the alleged close alliance between Nick Griffin and the late William Pierce, because of Pierce's kill billions of people views, which were far worse than Hitler's, but the expenses scandal has damaged the mainstream parties, so exposing the expenses scandals of the BNP and UKIP can only have a negative effect on support for those 2 racist parties.

Nick Griffin using his party members' donations to extend his home is not the only example of BNP expenses scandal type financial impropriety. The September 2008 online "Searchlight" article, "BNP accounts don't add up", discusses BNP income tax and national insurance evasion, which is no different to corrupt MPs evading capital gains tax: "...the BNP continued to get away with paying half of its staffing bill in the form of "professional fees" to avoid national insurance and income tax. Staff paid gross include Simon Darby the party's deputy leader, [BNP chief fundraiser Ged] Munns, [regional treasurer Dave] Hannam, Arthur Kemp who runs the party's educational and training department, and a number of the BNP rebels who complained about the policy."

It says a lot about the kind of extremely selfish, and not at all idealistic people who are drawn to mean-minded fascist parties like the BNP, that once those "rebels" who complained about the BNP's tax and national insurance evasion policy were put on the BNP "gravy train", they shut their mouths and took BNP members' cash.

In a March 2008 "Searchlight" online story, "The [Electoral Commission] watchdog that did not bark", you can read about "...a number of irregularities..." in the BNP's annual accounts, to quote the words of former BNP treasurer John Brayshaw, and as the Norfolk Unity site pointed out in its July 31, 2009 article, "Electoral Commission to fine BNP - again", the Electoral Commission has since fined the BNP £500, and its Regional Accounting Unit £100 for sending their annual accounts in late.

Furthermore, in its October 22, 2009 article, "Party faces fine for filing accounts late", "The Independent" revealed that the BNP was facing a fine of between £600 and £5000 for once more sending its accounts in late.

Moreover, on February 12, 2008, BBC Radio 4's "File on 4" programme, which was discussed in the "Tonight 8 pm, Radio 4 - File on 4 investigates the BNP's finances" Norfolk Unity article of the same day, John Brayshaw alleged that the BNP's finances were run in an illegal way: "In his [2005] letter [to the Electoral Commission], Mr Brayshaw said current party treasurer John Walker and his deputy David Hannam visited his home for a week to complete the accounts.

• "He said he did not help them but claimed he witnessed some unusual activities, namely the shredding of a large number of documents and invoices.
• "Mr Brayshaw said he was told to burn the shredded documents, but kept them because he felt something improper had taken place.
• "A black bin bag containing the shredded documents has been handed to File on 4.
• "It contains fragments of cheques, train tickets, receipts and invoices.
• "Some of the fragments carry the names of Nick Griffin, his parents and even the Trafalgar Club.
• "One unshredded item is a petrol receipt with the name Excalibur - the title of the party's merchandising arm.
• "Under tax regulations all financial records should be kept for six years."

Finally, in a May 29, 2009 "Times" story, "British National Party begs for money in desperate memos", you can read that, "Further questions were raised about the party's funding after Mr Griffin admitted that he paid a £5,000 political donation into his personal bank account without declaring it."

So anyone who voted for the BNP in 2009 because they thought that they were a "clean hands" alternative to the mainstream parties, was as poorly informed as anyone who voted UKIP for the same reason, because, "A close friend of Mr Farage says the Ukip leader uses his [European Parliament] expenses to fund the party..." to quote the "Daily Telegraph" of May 26, 2009; because "The Guardian" reported on June 24, 2009, that Nigel Farage had openly said that he intended to use his European Parliament expenses, "to further the objectives of UKIP back in Britain"; and because in 2000, the European Parliament told UKIP to repay £11,500 of travel expenses which it had used to fund the court cases of the "metric martyrs", who were opposed to Britain being told by the European Union to change its weights and measures system.

Furthermore, in 2007 Ashley Mote, a UKIP MEP in South East England, was jailed for falsely claiming £65,000 in benefits, and UKIP East Anglia MEP Tom Wise was accused of misusing £40,000 of expenses and false accounting, which is why Wise starred in the "Times" articles "UKIP MEP in embezzlement scandal" (February 25, 2007), "MEP 'bought car with taxpayers' funds'" (February 28, 2007), and "UKIP covered up embezzler's trail" (March 4, 2007), which stated: "The UK Independence party deliberately covered up the fact that one of its MEPs embezzled tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money by pretending to be someone else."

Like the BNP, UKIP, whose twelve 2004-2009 MEPs incuded three who have behaved corruptly, has hypocritically moralised about other parties' corruption, as the just cited "Times" article pointed out: "The party has frequently accused the EU of being rife with corruption and criticised other parties' MEPs for enjoying the "gravy train"."

As an already mentioned online "Searchlight" article, "BNP gripped by cash scandal" (September 2000), discussed the then BNP treasurer's opposition to Nick Griffin not keeping receipts for a used car business which he was running, supposedly partly to boost BNP funds, perhaps Tom Wise should in future buy his cars from the BNP's "Arthur Daley" leader, who calls corrupt mainstream politicians "pigs", despite the fact that he appears to be one of the biggest "pigs" in today's British political class.