December 31, 2009

Neo-Nazi bomb plot linked to Auschwitz sign theft

3 Comment (s)
The Auschwitz sign before it was stolen
Thieves contracted by a neo-Nazi group that planned to sell sign to fund attacks in Sweden, Danish newspaper claims

It sounds like the plot of a Steig Larsson thriller: a band of eastern European criminals is contracted to steal an iconic piece of Nazi memorabilia, which is then sold to a mysterious collector to finance a neofascist bomb attack on the Swedish parliament. But today it emerged that Swedish investigators are helping Polish detectives investigate the theft of the sign from Auschwitz, amid reports that the robbery was linked to a rightwing terror plot.

The wrought iron plaque reading Arbeit Macht Frei (work sets you free) which spanned the entrance at the former Nazi death camp was wrenched from the gate on 18 December, and recovered three days later, cut into three pieces, in a forest in northern Poland. The robbery prompted Poland to declare a state of emergency, and provoked impassioned calls for the sign's return from concentration camp survivors and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

The five men being held in police custody in Krakow in connection with the theft have been described by Polish prosecutors as common criminals who had apparently acted for financial gain. But according to the Danish daily Aftonbladet, the men were contracted by a neo-Nazi group which planned to sell it on to a third party, a foreign rightwing extremist or collector of Nazi memorabilia, with the aim of using the funds to finance a string of attacks in Stockholm.

Boguslawa Marcinkowska, the spokeswoman for the public prosecutor's office in krakow, said: "The evidence that we have so far points to there being links with Sweden". Polish state television TVP1 quoted official sources saying that Swedish neo-Nazis were behind the theft.

Poland's justice minister, Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, said: "The investigations have taken on a much broader dimension than we had initially thought".

The Swedish justice ministry has confirmed that it is helping the Polish police with investigations after the state prosecutor's office in Krakow lodged an official application asking for its help.

Separately, the Swedish security service Säpo, confirmed that it was investigating an alleged neo-Nazi plot to blow up the Riksdagen, the parliament building in Stockholm, as well as the foreign ministry and the home of the president, Fredrik Reinfeldt. The aim of the plot, according to Säpo, was to create as much disruption as possible ahead of the 2010 parliamentary elections. It would not confirm or deny reports of a possible connection between the plot and the Auschwitz sign theft.

Polish investigators, who said from the start of the inquiry that they suspected the mastermind of the robbery operated outside Poland, would only say today that he or she "came from a European country".

The five suspected robbers, aged between 25 and 39, all have criminal records but none is suspected of having a neo-Nazi background. They were reportedly set to receive a total of 20,000 zlotys (£4,320) to share between them for the theft. The police told the Polish press agency PAP that they believe a foreign national, possibly the person who ordered the theft, visited the former death camp prior to the robbery in order to be able to plan it in detail.

The theft was carried out without attracting the attention of nightwatchmen or being caught on CCTV cameras. But in their haste to make off with the sign, the thieves dropped the letter i from the word Frei. It was found in the snow nearby.

The wider plot has the whiff of a thriller by the late Swedish writer Larsson, not least because he was an expert on right-wing extremism, a subject which he wove into many of his books. Larsson sought to expose neo-Nazi activity in Sweden, forming in 1995 the group Expo-foundation, following eight murders for which neo-Nazis were held responsible. For several years the scene was considered small but particularly brutal.

There are plans next month to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in which around 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, died. Blacksmiths are meanwhile working on repairing the sign, which stands as a cynical commentary on the Holocaust, in time for the event.

Concern about the safety of the Auschwitz site, which is now a memorial and museum, has prompted local authorities to promise to install more close circuit television cameras and to review its security procedures. Publicity surrounding the robbery has attracted financial donations from around the world.

Guardian

December 30, 2009

Auschwitz hero Denis Avey in line for Israeli honour

2 Comment (s)
A former British prisoner of war who helped a Jewish inmate survive Auschwitz is being considered for a major honour, the BBC has learned

Denis Avey, 91, who lives in Derbyshire, helped save Ernst Lobethall, a German Jew from Breslau. He is being considered for the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. The story emerged following a recent BBC investigation.

Mr Avey said it would be "marvellous" if he were chosen for the title, which is awarded to those who helped save Jewish people. It is an accolade previously awarded to the likes of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who is thought to have saved more than a thousand Jews from the Holocaust and whose story was immortalised in the Hollywood film Schindler's List.

Some 22,000 individuals, mostly from central and eastern Europe, have received the treasured title so far, but if he is successful Mr Avey will become only the 15th British citizen to be honoured in Jerusalem's Garden of the Righteous. The standard is high, the conditions are rigorous and their research is only now beginning. In the end a commission headed by a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel has to make the decision.

The authorities at Yad Vashem took up the case after BBC viewers and listeners contacted them directly on hearing his moving story.

Mr Avey described the news that he was being considered for the award as "fantastic". He was no ordinary British soldier and he became an extraordinary prisoner of war. He had fought with special forces against General Rommel's Africa Korps behind enemy lines in the desert. He was wounded and captured by the Germans, and the ship transporting to him to captivity was sunk. He escaped into the sea and survived the explosion of depth charges close by.

After 20 hours in the water he made it to land in southern Greece. He then hiked the length of the Peloponnese before being recaptured and sent to Germany as a POW. After two spells in a punishment camp and being sent to work down a mine, he was transported to a compound for British prisoners connected to a sprawling concentration camp. Its name - then unremarkable - was Auschwitz.

There the "fiery" soldier with red hair and a Van Dyck beard saw at first hand the suffering of the Jewish victims of Hitler's slave labour programmes. Although in the British camp they enjoyed better conditions, by day they worked alongside the Jewish prisoners.

He told the BBC how he had hatched an audacious plan to swap clothes with a Jewish inmate to smuggle himself into their sector of the camp. He fully intended to get as far as Birkenau, where the gas chambers and crematoria were constantly in operation, belching acrid fumes. He only made it as far as Auschwitz III, where he spent the night on two occasions. Detection, he said, would have meant death.

"They'd have shot me out of hand", he said. "I took a hell of a chance."

He was determined to bear witness with the intention of telling the world after the war. He recalled the camp as being "evil" like "Hell on earth". But it is for his part in helping Mr Lobethall, later Ernie Lobet, that he could yet be honoured. Through letters to his mother, Mr Avey succeeded in contacting Ernst's sister Susana, who had escaped to England before the war.

He arranged for cigarettes - as valuable as gold in the camps - to be sent to him, which he then smuggled in to Ernst in the Jewish camp. But he had always assumed that his erstwhile friend had died in the icy death march when the camps were cleared by the SS as the Russians advanced. Only after the BBC investigation did Mr Avey learn that Mr Lobethall had survived and that it was his smuggled cigarettes that had given him his chance.

The evidence corroborating Mr Avey's story appeared in a video interview that Mr Lobethall had given to the Shoah Foundation, which gathers the testimonies of the camp survivors. He had recorded it towards the end of his life in 1995. In it he described the soldier he knew only as "Ginger" who smuggled cigarettes, chocolate and even a letter from his sister in England into the Jewish camp for him. He said it was like being given the "Rockefeller Centre".

Trading the cigarettes for favours, Mr Lobethall had heavy soles put on his boots, and that saved his life during the death march in 1945 when tens of thousands had died. Anyone who stumbled had been shot.

"They fell like flies," he recalled in the video.

A special commission in Jerusalem will determine on the basis of the evidence whether Mr Avey receives the honour and becomes one of the "righteous". Successful or not, his remarkable story is now getting the attention it deserves.

"This title is really a very high honour," says Irena Steinfeldt of Yad Vashem. "Apparently this story touched people. Denis Avey never knew this (Mr) Lobethall. He could just as well have said 'I am a prisoner of war, I don't know when I will see my family, I am in no position to help anyone else.'. It is a noble and extraordinary act."

After the war Mr Lobethall made it to the United States, and enjoyed a successful and prosperous life. And despite being drafted into the Korean War, he remained a man of "unfailing good cheer" until the end of his days, according to a life-long friend who also heard the original broadcast and contacted the BBC. He died in 2002 and never found out the real name of the soldier he called "Ginger" whose buccaneering spirit gave him a chance to live.

BBC

Eugene Zinn dies at 85; survivor of Nazi death camps lectured on Holocaust

1 Comment (s)
He was sent to Auschwitz in 1942. Three years later Zinn escaped,
served in the Czech army, then moved to Israel. Later, living in Los Angeles,
he spoke to students about the atrocities he witnessed

Eugene Zinn, who spent three years in Nazi death camps and regularly lectured about the horror of the Holocaust after The Times profiled him in a 2005 front-page story, died of pneumonia Sunday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, his family said. He was 85.

Born in 1924 in the Czechoslovakian village of Huncovce, he was one of four children of Heinrich and Helen Zinn. Sent to Auschwitz with four male cousins in 1942, Eugene was the only one to survive. He soon learned that his parents and two younger sisters had been sent to the gas chamber upon arriving at a Polish death camp, and his older brother had been beaten to death. More than 80 of his close relatives would be killed by the Nazis.

"What I keep asking myself," Zinn told The Times in 2005, "is how come I'm the only one who survived?"

While at Auschwitz, Zinn laid brick to build crematoriums and worked in the stables. "Through luck and cunning," his family said, he dodged three sentences to the gas chamber. In early 1945, he escaped from the Nazis by jumping from a train that was transporting prisoners. He then served in the Czech army and moved to Israel, where he fought for the new state. One cousin, Ernest, had managed to survive, and Zinn eventually followed him to Los Angeles.

He worked as a cabinetmaker and attended Los Angeles City College at night. Over 34 years, he worked his way from junior draftsman to manager of engineering at Everest and Jennings, a wheelchair manufacturer.

Through his cousin, Zinn met his future wife, Sarah Haim, a Greek Jew who survived the Holocaust by hiding in Athens. For decades, they lived in what is now West Hills. She died two months ago at 80. In 1992, Zinn took his wife and two children to visit his birthplace and the remains of Auschwitz. After he videotaped his recollections of the Holocaust for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute archives, Zinn was moved to search for his Auschwitz comrades.

While viewing a PBS Holocaust documentary, he saw Otto Pressburger, his "Soul Mate in Years of Horror," according to the headline on the 2005 Times article. The article led Zinn to connect and reconnect with Holocaust survivors around the world. After decades of near-silence, he also began speaking in classrooms about the Nazi atrocities that he had witnessed.

Zinn is survived by his son, Harry; and daughter, Helene. Services will be held at 11 a.m. today at Mount Sinai Memorial Park, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles.

LA Times

December 29, 2009

BNP Legal Director praises arson attack

5 Comment (s)
A French centre for immigrants has been attacked by arsonists. Proving yet again that the BNP are nothing more than thugs in suits, the party’s Legal Director, Lee Barnes, has praised this criminal act in a post entitled ‘The French Rise Up‘. Barnes writes:
'When governments do not listen to the people, then the people will rise up against the government.

This is not a crime, this is an act of National Liberation.'
Not only does the Legal Director of the BNP praise the actions of criminals, he also issues a veiled threat (and not for the first time) of an uprising against the Government. This comes very close to sedition. So much for the BNP as a ‘mainstream’ party of Law and Order.

Another well known far-right group in the UK uses the slogan ‘Whatever it takes’. No doubt they’ll be pleased to see there are still ‘no nonsense’ men like Barnes in the BNP; men who have no respect for the law and justify the actions of terrorists in the name of ‘nationalism’.

Edmund Standing

Poland to ask Sweden for help over theft of Auschwitz sign

0 Comment (s)
Polish investigators yet to confirm that formal request to Stockholm suggests Swedish link to crime

Poland will formally seek Sweden's help in investigating the theft of the Arbeit Macht Frei sign from Auschwitz, confirming that Polish authorities suspect a Swedish link in the crime. Boguslawa Marcinkowska, a spokeswoman for Krakow prosecutors, said a formal request for help would be sent tomorrow to the Swedish justice ministry in Stockholm.

Polish media have been reporting that the theft was commissioned by a collector living in Sweden, but investigators have yet to confirm that.

The sign, which means "work sets you free," was stolen earlier this month and was found two days later cut into three pieces. Police have arrested five men whom they described as common criminals who likely stole the sign on a commission from abroad.

Guardian

US Neo-Nazi Lure Youth with Free Music Downloads

9 Comment (s)
Another con-trick to promote anti-Semitism and white supremacy
American neo-Nazis are using deceptive free music downloads to lure youth and college students into anti-Semitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of the B’Nai Brith organization. It said the new tactics specifically target high school and college students through advertisements in school newspapers.

“While the hate mongers have used stealth tactics before, now they are taking it to the next level by attempting to trick unsuspecting students into logging onto sites that appear harmless, but in reality are promoting music with a white supremacist message,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.

A scheme for free music downloads was advertised in newspapers by Montana resident Kevin McGuire, who operates the Victory Forever racist website. McGuire tricked the school papers by changing his site when he placed ads offering music by independent artists, but after the ads were published, he returned the site to its usual white supremacist format.

The Victory Forever site claims to disseminate “white resistance” music as widely as possible and to “recruit vast minions of white youth to become soldiers in the war for white racial survival.” Its current site features a video of a diatribe against alleged Jewish control of mass media. McGuire also maintains a related website called “Fetch the Rope” that makes available racist CDs, swastika stickers and T-shirts for purchase at prices “cheap enough to hand out to the neighborhood kids.”

Last month, another neo-Nazi placed an advertisement in the student newspaper of Northern Kentucky University promoting Resistance Records, the group’s racist music label, and the music of white power bands.

Arutz Sheva

December 28, 2009

Party leaders must tackle BNP head-on, says Michael Howard

13 Comment (s)
The main political parties have not done enough to prevent the British National Party gaining strength, former Tory leader Michael Howard said yesterday

Mr Howard insisted it was necessary to confront the "appalling evil" of the far right head-on.

The Folkestone and Hythe MP told BBC Radio 4's World This Weekend: "I think I am still the only party leader who went to Burnley and devoted an entire speech to confronting the BNP and saying we have really got to take them on and we have got to take their arguments on. I do not think we can afford to be complacent. There are one or two constituencies where they are said to be a potent threat."

Asked whether the current party leaders were trying hard enough to tackle the danger, Mr Howard replied: "I'm not sure that they have to the real extent that needs to be done. I think you have got to take them on, you have got to confront them and you have got to expose the appalling evil of their arguments."

Last month, BNP candidate Charlie Baillie polled 1,013 votes in the Springburn by-election, in Glasgow, taking fourth place and narrowly forfeiting his deposit.

Scotsman

December 27, 2009

2009 in review - Nick Griffin appears on Question Time

2 Comment (s)
Police hold people back outside Television Centre
protesting BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time


Baroness Warsi recalls the most controversial TV show of the year

Normally before a television appearance you're all in the same green room and you mingle in the make-up rooms, too, but this time we all had our own rooms and our make-up was done separately. It wouldn't have been fair just to isolate him.

The only time I felt nervous was when I saw the piles of paper Jack [Straw] and Chris [Huhne] had. I felt like a student who hasn't done enough revision for an exam.

David Cameron felt that everything Nick Griffin finds repulsive about today's Britain is embodied in me. I'm a Yorkshire-born, Muslim daughter of hard-working, working-class parents. It was quite a brave decision. It was a high-profile, high-risk programme, politically. Once we got started, I enjoyed it. I find Nick Griffin an unpleasant and manipulative man, and intellectually shallow. He's part of the "anti" brigade. Always anti-someone: first Jews, then Blacks and now Muslims. But I think the BBC should have him on. As long as you're not beyond the pale – violent and beyond rational debate – you should be engaged, and exposed.

I was hoping the programme would follow the usual format, with questions on the economy, the Royal Mail, etc. Instead there was an obsessive concentration on race and what Nick Griffin had said in the past. I would have been intrigued with the BNP's policy on getting Britain out of the economic recession.

Nick Griffin was both extremely nervous and trying extremely hard to please. This was his big chance to seem a nice, reasonable guy. It looked very forced. David Dimbleby pulled him up, asking, "What are you smiling about?" At times it was like a comedy – especially when he talked about "non-violent versions of the Ku Klux Klan".

Later, Jack was waffling on that immigration was not an issue in Britain today. It was a difficult moment because I had to acknowledge that there was an element of legitimacy to what Nick Griffin was saying. I said, "I don't agree with the guy on the end, but you, Jack, aren't being honest on this."

Afterwards, my phone was jammed with texts and I had hundreds of emails. I read each and every one. There were some nasty ones saying, "Go back home," but 95% of them were positive. I also got a lot of emails from British Muslims, saying they were proud to see someone comfortably British and Muslim and able to articulate a sensible view – rather than the hotheads the BBC usually have on.

I don't think the BNP have had a poll boost. The poll questions are couched so wide that almost everyone would fall into them. Academics from the University of Manchester told me if there was a rise it was from about two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half per cent. I've also been told that on fascist and racist websites Griffin has been pilloried: things like: "He was trying so hard to hug the black woman and be nice to the Asian woman." So he's upset his core vote.

I'd happily share a platform with Nick Griffin again, but I'd much rather do it in a format where you can really debate the issues. I wanted to get behind and below the BNP beliefs; Question Time is more about point scoring.

Observer

Archbishop warning as BNP target Christians for support

4 Comment (s)
Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan has led a scathing attack on the British National Party over its claims to represent Christian values

Party leader Nick Griffin has previously said the BNP stands in the tradition of the Crusader knights who fought Muslim armies. He claims the BNP are fighting the “Islamification” of Britain. Writing in the BNP newspaper Voice of Freedom, Mr Griffin said: “The British National Party will never allow our children to become a minority in their own homeland. Just like our Crusader ancestors, we will fight to preserve our Christian culture and heritage.”

But Dr Morgan, together with fellow Welsh faith leaders, said the right-wing party’s vision ran counter to a Christian understanding of humanity. In an interview with the Western Mail to coincide with his annual Christmas address, Dr Morgan said: “I really do object to their claim to represent Christian cultural values. Unless you’re white and Anglo-Saxon you don’t seem to count for very much. That runs totally against any Christian understanding of humanity where we believe each person is made in the image of God.”

In November senior BNP members voted “overwhelmingly” in favour of holding a ballot on whether to allow non-white people to join. This followed court action brought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The case is adjourned until January 28.

Dr Morgan was confident the BNP would not make inroads, saying: “I certainly don’t think it’s much of an issue in Wales.”

The party responded furiously to Dr Morgan’s comments. BNP deputy leader Simon Darby said: “If these church leaders are not prepared to defend Christianity themselves, they should not complain when someone else does just that. It’s all very well people like the Archbishop talking about defending Christian values but at the end of the day they are not prepared to do anything about it. He should probably be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act.

“Whole swathes of London, for example, are no longer Christian, and people like the Archbishop have been quite happy to stand by and see churches turned into mosques. If someone doesn’t stand up for real Christian values, it won’t be a Christian country for very much longer, but an Islamic republic.”

Guto Prys ap Gwynfor, president of the Union of Welsh Independent Churches, urged people not to support parties which promote division in the upcoming Westminster elections. He said: “We are firmly opposed to any kind of incitement to hatred, fear of the other, or suspicion of our neighbour – whoever he or she may be. We would urge people to vote according to their conscience and support politicians and policies which best reflect and uphold the values of the Christian Gospel.”

Denying that a respect for other cultures threatened Welsh culture, he added: “In Wales, we have a long tradition of neighbourly respect and concern for other cultures and beliefs. This need not conflict with our desire to uphold our own faith and culture.”

Jim Stewart, a spokesman for Evangelical Alliance Wales – which represents churches from 30 denominations – also condemned the attempt to portray the BNP as defenders of Christianity. He said: “Christians need to do their homework in the run-up to the General Election so that they are informed and vote responsibly. Of particular concern at the moment are attempts being made by the BNP to ingratiate themselves with the church and to claim to speak on behalf of Christians. Although we recognise that Christians will vote for a number of different parties in the General Election – including a number of minor parties as well as the four main ones – the case of the BNP is different.”

Mr Stewart said the BNP’s beliefs were “anti-Christian” and had “no place in a civilised, welcoming Welsh society.” He said: “The BNP categorically does not speak on behalf of Christians in Wales.”

Meanwhile, in a wide-ranging interview, Dr Morgan set out the challenges he sees facing Wales in 2010. He believes the Church in Wales has a vital role to play in a modern nation where families fear for loved ones in Afghanistan. The Anglican leader is further convinced that an overhaul of mental health services is urgently needed.

Supporting the families of members of the armed forces has become an important pastoral task in churches throughout Wales. He said: “Whatever one thinks of whether we ought to be in [Afghanistan], the fact is these decisions have been made whether they were right or wrong. That’s not the fault of soldiers.

“They go because that’s what they are required to do. The families left behind are at times worried sick. If you are in the middle of a conflict you get on with the job and you don’t always think about the dangers whereas families at home are just dreading the knock on the door or the ring of the telephone.”

Arguing that Wales must confront crises on its own doorstep, he said: “I think the nation is beginning to realise we need to rediscover fundamental values to build a better world and we can’t just leave it to economists.”

Congregations may have shrunk but he is convinced the network of more than 1,000 places of worship gives the church a unique insight into the realities of Wales at the start of a new decade. He said: “There are still a lot of children who live in poverty and we don’t realise just how much poverty there is in Wales. It is not just overseas.”

The archbishop is also alarmed by the “chasm” between the wealthiest and poorest and contends there is a direct link between deprivation and mental illness.

“A lot of that has been caused by problems such as poverty and loneliness,” he said.

Concerned by research which suggests a quarter of children and young people may suffer from some form of disorder, he said: “That’s incredible. It seems to me mental health is still very much a taboo subject.”

But Dr Morgan remains convinced that the Anglican church can make a unique contribution in contemporary society. He said: “It’s the only organisation in every community where people from one-day-old to 100-years-old come together. It doesn’t matter what social strata you come from – you’re welcome.”

Wales Online

December 25, 2009

Happy Christmas to all our supporters!

13 Comment (s)
An extremely Happy Christmas to all of our supporters who celebrate it and our very best wishes to those who don't. Whichever you are, let's all look forward to a great (and peaceful) 2010 for everyone. Special thanks from us here at Lancaster Unity to all our friends, fellow writers and readers who have contributed to our success and our phenomenal growth during 2009. Your help and support has been very much appreciated.

We've got a busy and boisterous 2010 ahead of us what with a pile of local council elections coming up - to say nothing of a General Election - so we're taking a couple of days off.

Enjoy the holiday! We'll see you again on the 27th!

Love to all (except the BNP)
All at Lancaster Unity

December 24, 2009

Nick Griffin's letter to Santa

29 Comment (s)
Dear Santa

I don't see why adults - even those who are destined to become future Emperors of the Universe - should be precluded from presenting their list of Christmassy desires to Santa in the run-up to the festive season (which should be celebrated by ALL true Brits everywhere, by legal fiat, if necessary). If you're a Christian, you SHOULD be celebrating Christmas, and if you are NOT a Christian, you bloody well SHOULD be!

Here's my Christmas list for me and my friends in the BNP:
  • A real legal qualification for the idiotic Lee Barnes, who thinks he's a barrister but is actually a madman who has only escaped the strait jacket because the BNP has given him a home (shouldn't we be paid for providing a public service?).
  • An inflatable doll for Mark, whose inflated ego is too much for ALL his girlfriends (except particularly dim schoolies and Joey).
  • I'd like a million pounds.
  • A real MA (Hons) to go with the one I claim I've got but that I actually paid a few quid for on the quiet to upgrade my third-rate BA in fuck all of any interest. How come that traitor in Lancaster, Chris Hill, has a PhD, while I've only got a BA? That's not fair.
  • Singing lessons for Joey Smith (who frankly sounds like a cat trapped under a washing machine).
  • Continued DLA for my mate Clive Jefferson who is the hardest working disabled person I know. It's amazing how he claimed benefits for years yet was a bouncer - sorry, one of my excellent security team - and organised the well-oiled machine that is the NW region today despite pretending to need a swordstick - I mean, a walking stick - all the time. It's a shame they keep losing every by-election, or they'd be an example to all of us.
  • I'd like to see Martin Reynolds, my fat and cuddly pervert of a security boss, lose a bit of weight so that he could stay with me when I'm rushing away from a hail of eggs.
  • Talking of losing weight, I wish I could lose a bit. If I get much fatter, they'll be calling me and Martin Tweedledum and the other one.
  • I'd like five million pounds.
  • I'd like to see Arthur and whatever her name is fuck off to America. His book 'March of the Titans' is frankly crap and I'd be glad to see the back of him (and her, whatever her name is). Hang on a minute - didn't she post on her blog to say they were divorcing?
  • I'd like to see the Very Reverend Pope Lord Sir Robert West begin to embrace Odinism. I'm sure he could fiddle it so that the Bible encouraged the worship of long-defunct Norse gods. This would please many of our followers (particularly that loony, Lee).
  • I want to win in Barking. Dicky is an idiot and while he got to shag that rancid old clapped-out ballet dancer, that doesn't entitle him to be more popular than me. If I don't win, I'm going to be REALLY pissed off and I might very well encourage Bob Bailey to kill Barnbrook during one of his regular temper tantrums.
  • I'd like Jimmy Dowson to teach me how to write a begging letter that works. The last one only earned us £4.85 so I suspect I'm not doing it right. Jimmy has told me he'll sell me the secrets of fund-raising for a mere £100,000 per year. Personally, I think that's a bargain and the members can afford it, the idiots.
  • I'd like to know who Martin Wingfield is. People talk about him as if I should know him but I can't put a face to the name.
  • I'd like to be a billionaire (and NOT in bloody euros).
  • I'd like everyone in the party to pay me a million pounds for membership. I would then, because I am known to be generous, give them a FREE lifetime membership card and a tie-clip or tatty old watch in exchange. Paul Cromie could afford it - why doesn't HE give me a million, the fat bastard?
  • I want to win in Barking because I haven't the foggiest idea where the North-West of England is. I went up to Newcastle and they'd never heard of me - they just kept saying 'why-aye' or something. Bloody foreigners. What's the matter with these people? Have they never heard of Agincourt?
  • I want Simon Darby to go away and never come near me again. He frightens me. I think it's the eyebrows - they seem to lead a separate life from him - and I swear he records everything I say.
  • And that reminds me. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE creeps and sycophants - but Paul Golding...he's just a little too much. He gets a bit creepy sometimes. It's like having a growth somewhere - you don't want to acknowledge it but it's always there and everyone knows it. And it smells funny...
  • I'd like the British media to be kinder to me. After all, I am the head of a major compan - party, and I think I deserve respect, even if I am massively overweight and have started looking more like my pigs than is good for me. If the media starts dissing me, bro, I might has to pay back when I is in power, innit. Sorry, don't know what came over me then...
  • I'd like those bastards at Lancaster Unity to pay for their insults - they described me as a fat, swivel-eyed loon once and it hurt me deeply. When I'm God, I shall have them all hung - or is it hanged, I can never remember? Anyway, ZOG and LU will pay for their many crimes. By the way, what the fuck is ZOG?
  • I'd like to be richer than Warren Buffet and Bill Gates combined. And I will be if those moro - members will continue to subsid - support the party. What the hell kind of a name is Buffet anyway? Sounds foreign to me. French, I bet. God I'm hungry. Wonder if we've got any pork pies in the fridge?
  • I'd like to wish for peace and a brain for David Hannam, who (much to my surprise) has a wife. It's not his fault that despite that, he's still attracted to a succession of old tarts (so am I - look at Martin Webster) and schoolgirls - just let him be a man. Although, don't let him near your accounts because he's fucking useless at cooking the books.
  • Please don't anybody buy me anything from Great White Records this year. It's all shit - even the crap I wrote - and it's just getting worse. If I have to hear Joey Smith again, I swear I'll die, and Vera Lynn is driving me up the bloody wall. Fucking white cliffs of Dover...I hate them.
  • I'd like to introduce Joey Owens to Tony Lecomber and Lee Barnes and then run away. I think there could be a critical mass if they all met and tried to talk bollocks at each other. It might give us all a laugh though.
  • I want to be the richest man in the world. And I'm not leaving any sherry or mince pies out either. Mince pies are at least 14p each and the sherry has to be worth at least 40p. I'm not made of money (though I will be soon, if the sucke - membership keeps coughing up).
  • I'd like a Rolls Royce. And a Maserati. And a Lamborghini. Though I'll only buy British, which could be a problem. Fuck it, I'll have a Mercedes instead. To hell with buying British.
  • Andrew Brons told me once that his name was French. Is that allowed within the rules of our glorious party? Or have the EHRCRFHC forced us into changing our names now? Will I have to become Nicholas deGryff? Actually, I quite like the sound of that...
  • And I want world peace. Did I say that already?
  • And I have been a good boy. I think...
Signed
Nick Griffin

Image courtesy of this great thread on b3ta.

BNP man rapped for 'murder' claim

1 Comment (s)
A British National Party politician has been ordered to apologise in writing to every other council member for accusing ruling Tories of "murdering" a constituent by forcing her to move.

Mark Logan, member for Gooshays ward, was hauled before the council's standards committee for the allegation he made at a Harold Hill Area Committee meeting in October last year. There, he blamed Havering Council for causing the death of 92-year-old Anne O'Kane because of the stress of a council-enforced eviction - her second in four years.

She had to move from her bungalow in Chippenham Gardens - part of a group of homes being demolished to make way for developments under the council's multi-million pound Harold Hill Ambitions project.

The outburst angered people at the meeting, including Deputy Council Leader Cllr Steven Kelly, who was not on the committee but sitting among residents, and committee member Cllr Keith Darvill (Lab, Heaton). They both made official complaints because they thought Cllr Logan had breached council conduct.

Following a lengthy investigation, a standards consideration sub-committee made up of two councillors - Wendy Brice-Thompson (Con, Rom) and Michael Deon-Burton (ILRG, Rain) - and independent chairman Jack Knowles decided in a closed meeting that Cllr Logan had brought the council into disrepute by making his accusation of murder. They also said he showed no respect for the family of the deceased constituent by naming her.

Cllr Logan was told to make a written apology to the relatives of Ms O'Kane and to write to all other councillors for disrespecting the council. Cllr Logan said: "It cost thousands of pounds to carry out this investigation. If they'd asked me to write a letter of apology in the first place I would have done anyway."

He added: "It was their decision (Conservatives) that decided to sell off those bungalows to a private investor. I should have used a different rhetoric, but I'm still convinced it was the actions of the Conservative administration that caused the death of this constituent because if she hadn't been forced to move she may not have had a heart attack and passed away. She'd been really upset she had to move."

Cllr Logan is awaiting a second standards committee hearing, planned for January, in relation to allegations of misconduct surrounding a dispute with Cllr Mark Gadd over where he lives and whether he has a right to stand as a councillor.

Romford Recorder

Fake BNP “reverend” doesn’t speak for us, say churches

0 Comment (s)
The FIEC (Fellowship of Independent Churches) issued the folowing statement concerning the British National Party on 23 December 2009.

To all FIEC churches

We would wish you to be aware of a statement being made on a website in the public domain by the Rev Robert West, a parliamentary candidate representing the British National Party (BNP).

Mr West states the following: “I doubt very much that the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches oppose my views or the views of any genuine Christian and patriot, backed-up as they are by the holy Scriptures”.

Mr West has not contacted the FIEC office to find out what the views of the FIEC might be about this issue, and the FIEC regrets that Mr West has seen fit to make public reference to the supposed views of the FIEC without getting in touch with the office.

In fact, the FIEC strongly believes that the churches that make up the Fellowship would repudiate any idea that the Scriptures support the published policies of the BNP. There are elements within the policies of all political parties which are contrary to the Scriptures. In the case of the BNP, it appears to us that its policies seek to create an attitude of racial hierarchy which values people of some ethnic origins more than others. The Scriptures do not support any such policies, and we greatly regret that Mr West has asserted that they do, and in so doing, that he has linked the name of The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches with his own erroneous views. Mr West is not in any way accredited by or associated with the FIEC.

Richard Underwood General Secretary The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches

See also BNP Rev Robert West “Doubts” Fellowship of Independent Churches “Would Oppose My Views”

Norfolk Unity

December 23, 2009

Grim polling news for the BNP...how sad, how very sad

28 Comment (s)
This article was submitted by one of our readers, Iliacus. 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.

A major opinion poll by Ipsos MORI was published at the weekend. Polls, of course, need to be treated with caution, and it's never wise to read too much into a single set of figures, but MORI is a reputable pollster and there is some interesting information to be found - especially in the detailed figures. And the news is pretty grim for the BNP!

The base polling figures for the minor parties run UKIP 4%, Greens 3% and BNP 2%. Of course, when you get down to figures like this there is a significant margin of error. The number of people responding is low, and the risk of sampling error is high, but the basic message is simple. None of these parties have any sort of widespread, national support in the context of a general election.

Regional breakdowns are even more subject to sampling error, since the numbers involved are smaller still. For the BNP their 'best' region is the Midlands (4%), with 1% recorded in the South and the North. Support shown in London was so low that it failed to register - technically it was 0%, though obviously that doesn't mean that nobody will vote BNP in London at the general election. But what it does suggest is that, in the context of a general election, the BNP will struggle to poll above 2-3% across London as a whole. It certainly isn't encouraging news, for example, if you were a prominent BNP member who had decided to look for a London seat in which to stand ... thinking perhaps that the party's best chance was in that area ...

MORI also breaks down responses by age group. The BNP polls 4% in the 18-34 age group, 2% among the 35-54 age group. For over-55s their share is less than 1%. Their apologists might claim this as evidence that the BNP was "the party of the future", but there are two flaws to such an argument.

Firstly, the under-35s are far less likely to turn out to vote; turnout is highest among over-55s, the very group where BNP support is weakest. Secondly party loyalty is weakest among young voters; strongest in older voters. So the BNP is strongest among voters who are less likely to vote, and most likely to change their minds and perhaps drift away. The BNP is weakest among voters who are most likely to vote, and who are less likely to switch (e.g. to the BNP).

There are some further interesting findings:
  • Social Group : BNP support is 1% in Social Groups A, B and C1 - professional, managerial and skilled; 3% in Social Groups C2, D and E - unskilled, unemployed, economically inactive.
  • Housing Type: In social rented housing BNP support reaches 5%; it's 3% in the private rented sector, 1% in owner-occupation.
There is no categorisation for educational achievement, but there is a breakdown by newspaper readership. I've not noticed such a breakdown previously and it's worth listing in full:
  • Amongst tabloid readers: Con 41%, Lab 34%, Lib Dem 14%, UKIP 5%, Green 3%, BNP 2%.
  • Amongst broadsheet readers: Con 42%, Lib Dem 25%, Lab 24%, Green 4%, UKIP 3%, BNP 0%.
Yes, that's correct. They couldn't find a single BNP supporter who read a broadsheet newspaper. Are we surprised? No.

So, to summarise (with tongue firmly in cheek!). For success the BNP needs a constituency in the Midlands; with a high proportion of under-35s; who live in social rented housing; are in social groups C2, D and E; and only read tabloid newspapers. And even there they would only just climb above 5%!

Seriously, there will be areas where the above demographic combines with one or more of the following - an active local BNP group; incompetence/ idleness in the mainstream parties; a particular local issue which benefits the BNP. And where that happens, on a very local basis, the BNP will poll well above their national levels.

None of this polling means that we can relax, or that we can ignore the danger of BNP progress at the general election. But what it does mean is that despite the election of two MEPs, despite Question Time, despite all the boasting, despite the lies and distortions in the popular press playing to the BNP agenda; despite all this the BNP have failed to make any significant progress in winning the hearts, minds and - especially - votes of the vast majority of the British people.

EDL yob fined for swearing at policeman

1 Comment (s)
An English Defence League supporter has been fined for his role in the organisation's October protest in Manchester city centre.

Lee Howarth, 24, from Milnrow in Rochdale, was arrested at Piccadilly Station on October 10, after shouting abuse and swearing at police officers. Hundreds of EDL supporters gathered on the day to demonstrate. Manchester magistrates' court heard yesterday how Howarth, who is unemployed, persisted in swearing at police despite repeatedly being told to 'calm down'. With his fists raised, Howarth responded: 'Think you're a big man? Make me.'

Howarth was drunk at the time. Philip Lythgoe, defending, said Howarth accepts he swore but that it was in response to being 'pushed around by police'.

Chairman of the bench, Iain Simms, said: 'Police are there to do a job and you don't expect them to be shouted and sworn at.'

Howarth pleaded guilty to a public order offence of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour and was fined a total of £100. The EDL claims only to oppose radical Islam but supporters were seen at the October demonstrations making Nazi salutes. Around 1,500 people joined a counter protest by Unite Against Fascism and the two sides faced-off for five hours, separated by police in riot gear and on horseback.

A total of 48 people were arrested during the day and the demonstration left the city with an £800,000 bill.

Manchester Evening News

Review of the Year 2009: The BNP

3 Comment (s)
The British National Party did not create the political earthquake its devotees yearned for in 2009. But there is no doubt that it sent tremors through the political establishment during the most successful year in its relatively short history. The far-right party won two seats in the European Parliament to add to its toehold on the London Assembly and on councils across England.

Nick Griffin enjoyed unprecedented visibility after he appeared on BBC1's Question Time – an invitation that supporters and detractors alike said conferred respectability on the BNP leader. Above all, his party received more column inches of newspaper coverage, and more minutes of television bulletin time, than at any time since its creation in 1982.

The BNP picked up 6.2 per cent of the vote in June's elections, a modest rise from 4.9 per cent five years earlier.

But it was enough under the proportional electoral system to win seats in North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber for Mr Griffin and the former National Front activist Andrew Brons.

It also demonstrated its ability to target potentially fertile territory, such as Swanley in Kent, where the party pulled off a surprise council by-election victory in February. Four months later, it gained its first three county council seats – in Lancashire, Leicestershire and Hertfordshire.

The BNP can rely on a hard core of support – polls put it at just 2 per cent of the vote – but it tends to prosper when the turn-out is low and support for mainstream parties evenly divided.

Next year, its hopes will rest on its east London heartland of Barking, where Mr Griffin will need a formidable 15.5 per cent swing to oust Labour's Margaret Hodge.

The BNP leader will have the advantage of being better known than ever. The frenzy of publicity accompanying his Question Time appearance has seen to that.

The moot point is whether the exposure benefited Mr Griffin, who was nervous and rambling in the face of an onslaught from panellists and the studio audience. Although there were mutterings on the far-right blogosphere about his performance, the BNP insists many will have seen him as a victim, with Mr Griffin protesting he was subjected to a "lynch mob".

In the meantime, he faces two tricky problems. Following a House of Lords ruling, he needs to win approval from his membership next month for a rule change that would allow non-whites to join the party. The BNP, which spent nearly £600,000 during the European contests, also faces a considerable challenge in raising cash for the general election. In August, Mr Griffin appealed to members: "We need £150,000 to keep the wolves at bay and to ensure our survival!"

The question now is whether the party peaked in 2009 after riding the wave of public hostility to politicians, or whether it has the groundswell of popular support – and resources – to repeat its success in election year.

The Independent

Nick Griffin's core values

5 Comment (s)
Click on image for full-size

December 21, 2009

Secret neo-Nazi documents published

25 Comment (s)
Everything but Nick Griffin's letter to Santa is about to hit the net
11 membership lists about to go online

Wikileaks is in the process of making a cache of documents and files from eleven different neo-Nazi organisations readable, and readily available, online. The membership records and private messages are currently being formatted to make them easy for non-techies to read and will be released on the Wikileaks site shortly.

The organisation got massive publicity last year when it published a BNP membership list handed over by a disgruntled ex-member.

The raw data is already available but needs formatting so: "your grandmother can read them and google can find them... Journalists won't write about it otherwise." The site is asking for volunteers with enough database skills to be able to expand fields and dumping to text. The compressed data is about 54MB.

The internal documents include more than just membership lists. There are what seem to be private internal messages, forum posts and email addresses. Groups who have lost data, or had it stolen, include Aryan Nations, Blood and Honour, White Revolution, Volks Front and the Hammerskin Nation.

The data should be available online from the usual sources shortly.

The Register

Why Auschwitz sign's theft chilled me

3 Comment (s)
The "Arbeit macht frei" promise on the gates of Auschwitz must stand as a reminder of the lies on which the Holocaust was built

The theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" sign from the gates of Auschwitz extermination camp is more than sinister. It is an act of abuse against the world's most powerful testament of the depths of depravity to which man is capable of sinking.

The Holocaust was a terror of such magnitude that its repercussions still drive the actions of people not born when the crematoria of Auschwitz and the other camps belched forth their obscene fumes. My own family was not immune from its effects. An uncle, Bernard, a joiner by trade, was one of the first British soldiers to enter Belsen, the camp in Germany to which remaining occupants of the extermination camps were force marched in the dying days of the war. What he saw there was so seared into his memory that he suffered periodic mental illness for the rest of his life.

Other witnesses emerged with a determination to reveal to the world evidence of the systematic slaughter. Among them were inmates of the camps themselves. Survivors of the Holocaust have played a key part in its influence on contemporary politics. They overcame unspeakable trauma to deliver the lessons of the Holocaust to succeeding generations, speaking in schools, colleges and universities, addressing public meetings and placing their ordeals on record.

I have been privileged to know some of them. Leon Greenman, who died last year, is believed to be the only English Jew sent to Auschwitz. In his 90s Leon was still addressing packed public meetings at which he would display his tattooed concentration camp number, 98288. He was driven by an awareness of the importance of his role as a first-hand witness of the atrocities, and of his duty to testify while he could.

Members of Leeds-based Holocaust Survivors' Friendship Association continue the work. I am proud to number among my friends activists Arek Hersh, Trude Silman, and Eugene Black, all Holocaust survivors. Their courage is beyond admiration. But their numbers are dwindling. The youngest are in their late 70s and were teenagers when they fell victim to the Nazis' final purge of Jews in the latter days of the war.

I cannot imagine the feelings of Holocaust survivors when they saw the reports of the theft of the words "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") from the gates of Auschwitz. Many read them at first hand as they entered the camp in 1944 when the last huge swathe of victims was despatched from Hungary.

The theft of this symbol filled me with horror, reminding me of the continuing attempt by Holocaust deniers and apologists to erase evidence of the depravity of nazism. Indeed, the theft risked symbolising the nazism's resurgence, and the continuing growth of racism embraced and promoted by organisations such as the British National party. With the sign now returned and five suspects arrested, however, reports are quoting the district police chief denying that those responsible are members of a neo-Nazi group.

It is worth remembering that now, as in the 1930s and 40s, lies are the foundation on which the philosophy of racism is built. The Holocaust itself depended on deceit for its implementation: promises of relocation, a new life in the east, and at Auschwitz the words "Work sets you free." Even as the victims of the gas chamber were undressing for their "shower" they were told to memorise the numbered hook on which they had hanged their clothes, in order to reclaim them afterwards.

The preservation of Auschwitz is vital. It is the world's most powerful remaining symbol of the ultimate outcome of racism.

Peter Lazenby
Comment is free

Is BNP leader quitting now while he's ahead?

14 Comment (s)
The British National Party has been at the forefront of politics in Stoke-on-Trent for the past seven years, since outsider Steve Batkin stunned sceptical observers by coming third in the 2002 mayoral elections.

Since then, while more established political parties have crumbled and lost ground, the BNP has seized upon the slightest sign of weakness in its opponents.

Mr Batkin may have been a lone figure in the council chamber in 2003, but within five years he was joined by eight more members. In the same period, Labour's once total grip on power evaporated, leaving the party with little choice but to go into opposition for the first time in the city council's history. The Conservatives have had to form a tenuous alliance with centre-right independents to muster enough numbers to occupy key political posts.

The recent emergence of the Stoke-on-Trent Independent Group not only cut the Conservative and Independent Alliance to just seven members, but also made the BNP the outright third largest political group in the city, just five seats behind Labour.

When last year's mayoral referendum took place, the BNP backed the campaign to retain the elected mayoral system, leading many political commentators to speculate openly about the possibility of a BNP mayor running the city. In short, the BNP under Alby Walker's leadership had become a major political force. But that all changed on Wednesday evening when Mr Walker sent a tersely-worded email to council officers stating that he had quit as leader.

Of course, he would not be the first senior political figure to stand down for personal reasons. But the email made it clear that he was stepping down before his group had even begun to appoint a successor. In fact, that is not likely to happen until January. Then, when The Sentinel contacted deputy group leader, Councillor Michael Coleman, three hours later, he said he knew nothing of the resignation.

Leadership changes happen, but stable political parties try to plan ahead to smooth the transition and reassure their members and supporters. The BNP is not a localised council group operating in its own tiny bubble of influence. It is part of a large, organised political body with its own national and regional leadership structure. It is unthinkable that anyone in the BNP's hierarchy who knew of Mr Walker's intention would let him make his announcement without carefully managing the situation.

But party leader Nick Griffin certainly seemed to have no knowledge of the crisis developing in the city he likes to call the jewel in the BNP's crown. Speaking from the climate summit in Copenhagen, an obviously flustered Mr Griffin said: "I'm afraid I don't know anything about this. I've no idea what's happening in Stoke-on-Trent."

Clearly party chiefs, like the council group, did not know of Mr Walker's plans until after he had executed them.

When he confirmed his resignation that evening, he not only admitted that he was unlikely to stand for election to retain his seat in May, but also refused to say whether he would remain with the party at all. One source close to Mr Walker has suggested the announcement was timed to prevent someone else leaking the news of his planned resignation to "stab him in the back". But the fact that his own group did not know what he had done, even hours afterwards, implies that the attack he feared was expected to come from within, rather than from rival parties.

Since Wednesday, the group has been displaying a united front once again, and members are bullish about its chances of making yet more gains at the polls. Mr Coleman confidently expects to take 10 more seats in May and a further 15 in 2011. But he may have given an insight into the real mood within the group when he said: "It is going to be a difficult 18 months ahead of us. It's getting harder now, not easier."

He also said that he felt Mr Walker had "done the sensible thing" in resigning now, to let others take on the burden of fighting three Parliamentary and 20 council seats next year, as well as all 45 council seats in 2011.

Up until now, the BNP's successes have been victories against the mainstream parties on the back of mounting public discontent with New Labour, and the Blair and Brown Governments. It would seem that Mr Walker certainly has done the sensible thing – he is quitting while he's ahead, before the progress he has made begins to falter.

The current balance of power within the council means that, in order to continue their meteoric rise, the BNP is soon going to have to vie for votes with the independents – solid community candidates who are not shackled by party dogma and whips or hampered by the conduct of their representatives in Westminster.

Mr Walker was facing re-election in May, and would have been a prime target for his political foes. Defeat would have been a massive blow for his party and a major propaganda coup for his rivals. But his departure ahead of polling day means that, should another party take the seat, they will not be able to claim the trophy of toppling the BNP leader, and their victory cannot be recorded as a defeat for the far-right party.

Mr Coleman may make an even stronger leader for the group; only time will tell. But if he fails to deliver on his morale-boosting promises of sweeping electoral gains over the next two years, then he could find himself at the head of a declining party with no political weapons he can use to fight back at the formidable independents.

The Sentinel

Polish police find stolen Auschwitz gate sign

2 Comment (s)
The Auschwitz 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign - damaged but back where it belongs
Police said today that they have found the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign that was stolen on Friday from the gate of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz.

Police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo told The Associated Press that the sign was found in northern Poland. She said police also detained five men aged between 25 and 39 who are being transported to Krakow for questioning. Another spokesman, Dariusz Nowak, said the sign was cut into three pieces, each containing one of the words. He said the police were planning a news conference in Krakow this Monday.

The police refused to divulge any details of the circumstances in which the sign was found or to speculate on the motive of the perpetrators. Krakow police are in charge of the investigation because they are the regional command for the area including the Auschwitz museum.

The sign that topped a main gate at the Auschwitz memorial site was stolen before dawn on Friday. State authorities made finding it a priority and appealed to all Poles for assistance. More than 1 million people, mostly Jews, but also Gypsies,Poles and others, died in the gas chambers or from starvation and disease while performing forced labor at Auschwitz which Nazi Germany built in occupied Poland during World War II.

The camp, which became the world's largest Jewish cemetery, was liberated by the Soviet troops on Jan.27, 1945. The museum is preparing for solemn observations of the 65th anniversary of liberation.

Independent

December 20, 2009

Christmas chaos hits BNP (again) as Chris Jackson and Mike Easter resign

30 Comment (s)
As one of our readers commented the other day, Christmas seems to be a difficult time for the BNP. It was pointed out that 2007 saw the end of the then high-flying career of Sadie Graham and many others, while 2008 saw the chaos that followed the release of the full BNP membership list.

This year seemed to be following the same pattern, though in a less focused way, with the sudden resignation of Alby Walker as leader of the BNP group at Stoke Council, Dicky Barnbrook's embarrassingly poor apology for being a liar, the laughably appalling accounts (which earned the party a £1100 slap on the wrist for tardiness) and a threat of future legal action from the Electoral Commission, plus a swathe of dreadful by-election results.

Now however, things seem to be coming to a head with the resignations of former contender for the BNP leadership (in a rigged election that he couldn't possibly win) Chris Jackson (pictured), his former campaign manager Mike Easter and someone named Kev Bryan, who was apparently the Rossendale Branch Organiser. The resignations are announced in an open letter posted on the mostly defunct jackson4leader site:
'Disbandment of reform Group

What is the point of the BNP if you admit foreigners?

Sadly we have come to the conclusion that the BNP is breaking up and there is no practicable likelihood of it recovering.

In our opinion the root cause of the failure is the Constitution of the Party. The Constitution, that is the Party Rules, makes the Party Leader a dictator. The current leader rather than reforming the Constitution toward that of a normal English association has (probably illegally) made alterations to the Constitution making his removal virtually impossible.

The Party is now a nationalist party in name only and has abandoned many of the fundamental principles on which it was founded.

A further major problem is that of money. Under the Constitution, all money is controlled by the Party Leader. The Party Leader appoints the Party Treasurer and Party Auditor. The Leader has carte blanche to dispose of the funds as he pleases.

This has never been a satisfactory situation, and now that the Party is alleged to be turning over a million pounds a year, is nothing short of a scandal. There have been four different Treasurers this year and the 2008 accounts are way overdue. The Party has been fined by the Electoral Commission for late publication of accounts. This is a re-run of last year when the accounts were also late and when published were endorsed by the Auditor as unsatisfactory.

A separate, but related, issue is the Trafalgar Club. This Club raises money directly to support the Party Leader. No accounts for this club have ever been published and they have not been appended to the Party accounts, as clearly they should be.

We recommend that no further money be sent to ‘Head Office’.

Whilst the BNP has been going downhill, the National Front has reformed itself and now is led by a group of reliable people and has the Constitution of a normal democratic association. Consequently, we believe that BNP members should transfer to the National Front.

Mike Easter
Chris Jackson
Kevin Bryan'
Regular readers will no doubt remember Jackson's failed leadership challenge back in the summer of 2007. Although resoundingly beaten, the results were not quite what Nick Griffin apparently expected, with Griffin himself receiving a mandate from only 39% of the party membership. Were I Jackson, I would regard that outcome as something of a success in itself - it showing the lack of confidence in Griffin that truly exists even in the BNP. However, rather than follow-up the one successful aspect of his challenge, Jackson chose to keep his head down and say nothing very much for the next two years.

So why resign now? The main reasons are made pretty clear in the letter above - the action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to force the BNP to open its membership to non-whites and the financial shenanigans of the party leadership, though we suspect the former is the real reason and the latter is just a handy and always-relevant sideswipe at the morally-impaired Griffin.

It was pretty clear from the moment the EHRC began its action, that there would be repercussions from the hardcore racists in the BNP - one of whom is obviously Chris Jackson. There is though a lot of support for Jackson's views within the party and as Searchlight pointed out during his leadership bid, his campaign was backed by some heavy-hitters: five founder-members, two advisory council members, three councillors, eight branch organisers and 20 election candidates came out openly in his support.

There are mixed immediate reactions to the resignations, though I don't doubt we can expect a LOT more. Griffin-loyalists are, naturally, critical of this trio's announcement and stated intention to join the National Front. One surprisingly witty nazi on Stormfront said;
'The NF may have a name, although like a cheap can of Polish beans, they have a fancy label but the product inside is cheap and of little nutritional value.'
The response was less witty, though rather more cogent;
'Ever since June, which was supposed to have been the BNP's moment of greatest triumph, its members and supporters have been simply walking away. Last month, Andrew Brons spoke at a long-planned meeting in Bridlington which attracted fewer than thirty people, even though BNP members had travelled from as far away as Scarborough, Hull and Leeds to attend. If even a MEP and nationalist of AB's calibre can't draw the crowds anymore something is seriously wrong.'
Over at the North West Nationalist blog, the statements were a little more terse;
'The root cause is traitor Griffin !'
'Fingers in the till anyone?'
'Only surprised it took CJ as long as it did to pack it in.'
The NWN forum was a little more informative;
'I rather think that there will be a bit of a deluge over to the National Front here in the North West.'
'Croydon BNP branch has crossed to the NF, and a large group in Southampton joining next week Strong rumours of Stoke BNP and councillors from other branches crossing over to the NF.'
'I do know that both Burnley BNP & Halifax BNP are quite close to Chris Jackson'
'We must leave crook Griffin with the rubbish personnel.'
Like everyone else, I do enjoy a good disaster movie over Christmas - and the BNP generally provides the best. It's a bit late this year but what the hell - I suspect this one will be a biggie and just as much fun to watch as all the others.

Compliments of the season to all our readers and happy viewing. :-)

December 19, 2009

Fascists show their faces in Liverpool

3 Comment (s)
The fascist BNP today continued their campaign of intimidation and racism on the streets of Liverpool. At around 2pm Andrew Tierney, again claiming to be a freelance journalist, set up his camera tripod directly in front of the Socialist Workers Party stall. This was a clear attempt to unsettle and intimidate people as they engaged in legitimate political activism. Tierney also filmed a local former Big Issue seller who now works advertising for local companies. This man, who has no association with the SWP, was going about his job and became frightened when the camera was put about a foot from his face.

After the police intervened the BNP made it clear that they were not going to disappear and the four or five of them began to attempt to distribute their leaflets to a less than susceptible public. Anti-Fascists soon rallied around and began to arrive at the street in numbers shouting “Nazi Scum, Off out Streets” and “Sing it loud, Sing it clear, BNP not welcome here.” The timely arrival of some Hope not Hate leaflets meant that the anti-fascists had some literature which they could give out to the public revealing the fascist and violent nature of the BNP. These leaflets were quickly snapped up by passers by and left the fascists looking dejected as they stooped to pick their own leaflets off the floor before people realised the reaction they were receiving. One confused lady, who thought we were the BNP, refused to accept a leaflet off me because she wasn’t a racist. If people refuse my literature because they hate the BNP it is fine with as me the message is already out there.

The growing group of anti-fascists soon began to get even louder in their shouts and the BNP group made their way up Bold street. A few of their supporters, mainly young skin head males, joined them and began to shout back at the group with phrases like “BNP all the Way” and “White Supremacy”. Seeing that they were by now outnumbered and were not getting their message across the BNP, who had filmed anti-fascists throughout the two hour standoff, made their way up Bold Street and home. Not the kind of thing we want to have to do the weekend before Christmas but wherever the Nazis show their faces we will oppose them, even at short notice.

Merseyside Coalition Against Racism and Fascism

Hunt for Auschwitz Arbeit Macht Frei sign thieves

5 Comment (s)
Polish police are using a sniffer dog in their search for thieves who took the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign over the entrance to Auschwitz.

Detectives and other police officers were sent to the site of the former Nazi camp where more than one million people, mostly Jewish, were murdered. A replica of the sign, which translates as "Work Sets You Free", has been put up temporarily.

The theft on Friday has caused outrage in Israel, Poland and elsewhere. The theft of such a symbolic object is an attack on the memory of the Holocaust, and an escalation from those elements that would like to return us to darker days," said Avner Shalev from the Yad Vashem memorial centre in Jerusalem. "I call on all enlightened forces in the world who fight against anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and the hatred of the other to join together to combat these trends."

In Brussels, European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, appealed to the thieves to return the sign. "Give it back out of respect for the suffering of over a million victims, murdered in this Nazi camp, the biggest cemetery of humankind," he said.

The wrought-iron sign was half-unscrewed, half-torn off from above the death camp's gate between 0330 and 0500 on Friday, said a police spokeswoman. Investigators say at least two people would have been needed to steal the 5-m (16-ft), 40-kg (90-lb) sign.

Police said they were reviewing footage from a surveillance camera that overlooks the entrance gate and the road beyond but declined to say whether the crime was recorded, The Associated Press news agency reports.

Auschwitz museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt said it might have been too dark for the camera to have captured images. He said the thieves apparently carried the sign 300m (yards) to an opening in a concrete wall. The opening was left intentionally to preserve a poplar tree dating back to the time of World War II. Four metal bars that had blocked the opening had been cut and footprints in the snow led from the wall opening to the nearby road, where police presume the sign was loaded on to a vehicle.

Another police official said earlier that while all leads were being considered, police were focusing on a theft ordered by a private collector or a group of individuals. It is the first time the sign, made by Polish prisoners, has been stolen since it was erected in 1940. A 5,000-zloty ($1,700; £1,050) reward has been offered for information leading to the capture of the thieves.

Auschwitz, which receives more than a million visitors a year, has been run as a state museum since 1947. Germany recently pledged 60m euros ($86m) to an endowment fund to help preserve the camp.

BBC

A very British pop festival on Clapham Common

11 Comment (s)
Rob Hallett (above) wants his “Festival of Britain” to promote national pride and challenge the extreme Right’s definition of patriotism — “I’m fed up with the British National Party stealing the Union Jack.”

He said the line-up could include Annie Lennox, Rod Stewart, Jarvis Cocker and Lily Allen, and that there would be a fashion show with British designers such as Vivienne Westwood.

“There will be no Stella, no Carlsberg, no horrible fizzy German stuff, only British ales,” he said. “No hot dogs, but bangers and fish and chips. I want to celebrate everything that’s British culturally and musically. I’m going to get great British singers singing with the BBC Concert Hall Orchestra — just British songs, written by British people.”

The event will be held on Clapham Common because “the man on the Clapham omnibus symbolises Middle England. It will be a family event, from noon to 9 o’clock, more civilised [than Glastonbury], it won’t be too loud and there will be no profanities.”

Times Online

December 18, 2009

Arbeit Macht Frei sign stolen from Auschwitz

10 Comment (s)
Sign that spanned entrance to former Nazi death camp in Poland removed overnight
Thieves removed the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign that spanned the entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp

The iron sign bearing the Nazi slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" that spanned the main entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp was stolen before dawn today, Polish police said. The sign with the German words for "Work Sets You Free" is believed to have been stolen from the gates of the Auschwitz memorial between 3.30am and 5am, when museum guards noticed it was missing and alerted authorities, said a police spokeswoman, Katarzyna Padlo.

The five-metre-long, 40kg sign across a gate at the main entrance to the former Nazi death camp in southern Poland, where more than 1 million people died during the second world war, was unscrewed on one side and pulled off on the other, Padlo said. A spokesman for the Auschwitz museum, Pawel Sawicki, called the theft a "desecration" and said it was shocking that the tragic history of the site did not stop the thieves. In Brussels, the European parliament president, Jerry Burzek, appealed for the sign to be returned "out of respect for the suffering of over a million victims".

Another museum spokesman, Jaroslaw Mensfelt, said the thieves carried the sign 300 metres to an opening in a barbed-wire gap in a concrete wall. The opening had been left intentionally to preserve a poplar tree dating back to the time of the war.

Fifty criminal investigators and a sniffer dog were sent to the grounds of the vast former death camp, where barracks, watchtowers and the ruins of gas chambers stand as testament to the atrocities inflicted by Nazi Germany on Jews, Gypsies and others. The sniffer dog led police to a spot outside the wall where the sign left an imprint in freshly fallen snow, then to a roadside where the sign appeared to have been loaded on to a getaway vehicle. A 5,000-zloty (£1,000) reward has been offered to anyone who can help track down the perpetrators.

Padlo said there were no suspects but police were pursuing several theories. Another police spokesman told TVP Info television: "The whole area is under surveillance. There are many cameras there. We are now analysing the film. I hope we will find the trail."

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance centre in Jerusalem, told Reuters the theft was "an attack on the memory of the Holocaust". Noach Flug, president of the International Auschwitz Committee in Jerusalem, said it "deeply unsettles the survivors" and the sign "has to be found".

Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said the thieves were guilty of desecrating a site of immense importance.

"If they are pranksters, they'd have to be sick pranksters, or someone with a political agenda. But whoever has done it has desecrated world memory," he said. "Auschwitz has to stand intact because without it, we are without the world's greatest physical reminder of what we are capable of doing to each other."

Sawicki said the museum authorities had already replaced the sign with a replica, which was used briefly a few years ago when the original was being repaired.

The original sign was made in the summer of 1940 by non-Jewish Polish inmates of Auschwitz in an iron workshop at the camp. After occupying Poland in 1939, the Nazis established the Auschwitz I camp in the southern Polish city of Oswiecim and initially used it for German political prisoners and non-Jewish Polish prisoners.

"We believe that the perpetrators will be found soon and the inscription will be returned to its place," said Sawicki.

The slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" was used at the entrances to other Nazi camps, including Dachau and Sachsenhausen, but the long, curving sign at Auschwitz is perhaps the best known. More than a million people visit the Auschwitz site every year, but the barracks and other structures are in a state of disrepair and Polish authorities have been struggling to find the funds to carry out conservation work. This week, Germany pledged €60m to an endowment that will fund long-term preservation work – half the amount that Auschwitz memorial museum officials say is needed.

Guardian

Children of Hate - Fighting Back Against Racist Parents

10 Comment (s)
Sixteen-year-old Stephan Mills rejected his father's racism despite years of indoctrination.
Psychologists say that is more common than many people think. Stephan's mother says that
thanks to her ex-husband, Stephan "had to relearn [how] to be a civilized human."

When Stephan Mills was 10 or 11, his father sat him and his older sister down after supper one night and told them that if they ever became emotionally involved with someone of color, he would kill them.

"I just nodded in agreement," said Stephan, now 16.

The incident seemed normal to a boy who for years had been steeped in his father's bigotry. Arthur Kemp, a South African white supremacist who has ties to British and American hate groups, indoctrinated his children with racist and anti-Semitic beliefs from the time they were very young. Stephan mostly adopted those views as his own. Several years ago, however, he rejected all that his father stood for. The experience would radically change his life and lead to his ongoing estrangement from his father, who's now divorced from his mother and believed to be living in England.

"Stephan's resentment toward his father is based partly on the fact that, in his sister's words, he had to relearn to be a civilized human," said his mother, Karen Mills. (Karen and Stephan Mills live near Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Intelligence Report interviewed them by phone and E-mail).

There was a lot to relearn. Arthur Kemp "was a very involved and doting father" when his children were small, Karen Mills said. He read to them often, carefully choosing books he felt would reinforce his ideology. Among them were the original "Noddy" series, English children's books that featured Golliwogs, dark-skinned caricatures that were later removed from the text because they were deemed racist. In one of Kemp's favorite Noddy books, the Golliwogs steal Noddy's car. Kemp enjoyed telling his children that the Golliwogs' theft of the car amounted to typical behavior for blacks.

But it wasn't only in books that Kemp found justification for his racism; post-apartheid South Africa offered plenty for him to complain about. "He tried to imprint on the children how bad Africa and everything here was," Karen Mills wrote. After striking workers toppled trashcans, for instance, "Arthur took the children into the main streets of the town and made them walk among the rubbish."

He also forbade socializing with non-white children. If they arrived at a friend's party to find that a black child had also been invited, Kemp made his children go home. When Stephan was six, his father reluctantly took him and his sister to swimming lessons at a public pool where one of the children turned out to be black. "He told us to get out and that we were leaving," said Stephan, who now uses his mother's maiden name. "I was still pretty young so I didn't really understand what was going on."

Kemp's attitude didn't change even when his children's health was at stake. When the family was living in Britain, he plucked his 6-year-old daughter, Joanne, from the dentist's chair rather than allow her to be treated by an Indian dentist, Karen Mills said. As a result, she suffered for three days with a tooth abscess.

When his children grew older, he allowed them to listen only to "white resistance" bands. Rap, especially, was prohibited. Although baseball caps, sneakers, baggy pants and big T-shirts were in fashion, he considered these items "ghetto nigger" clothing and wouldn't let his children wear them. He also relished showing them articles and statistics that purported to prove that blacks were inferior. He contended that blacks could never be race car drivers because they have poor depth perception, that they cannot swim because their bones are too dense, that they are not as intelligent because their brains are smaller.

"The children were actively encouraged to be vocal about their views and to challenge their peers," Karen Mills wrote. "In Stephan's case in particular, this resulted in him being ostracized and made an outcast as he followed his father's lead."

Stephan said he had few friends until his first year of high school. At times, he suffered from depression because his father's brainwashing had so alienated him from his peers, his mother said.

"I wasn't really someone that people wanted to hang around with," Stephan said. "They regarded me as weird because I was constantly talking about Hitler."

Karen Mills said she initially went along with her husband's views to please him, but the marriage grew troubled as he devoted himself increasingly to far-right politics. She refused to read his opus on white superiority, March of the Titans: A History of the White Race, and criticized him in front of their children.

With his marriage collapsing, Arthur Kemp became violent, especially toward Stephan, Karen Mills said. Once, when Stephan was about eight, he hit his son's face until his nose bled and blood spattered on the bedroom wall, she said. He stopped only when the maid's screams brought Karen rushing into the room and she pulled Kemp off Stephan. Later, Kemp allegedly beat Stephan while his mother was at work. The backs of Stephan's legs were so swollen that he could not bend them to get into his bath. "If you ever hit my child again," she told Kemp, "I'll kill you."

Still, she did not report the incidents to the police. "You try to block it out because maybe it's more than you can deal with," said Mills, a lawyer who now works for the South African government. "You hope that it'll resolve itself and turn a blind eye."

Kemp dismissed the allegations from his former wife in an E-mail to the Intelligence Report. "It is all a pack of lies from a mentally ill person," he wrote. "I am disappointed that you would stoop to exploiting a person with severe psychological problems in this way." Karen Mills responded that Kemp has always claimed she's mentally ill simply because she disagrees with him.

Mills still feels guilty for allowing her children to suffer what she now sees as both physical and emotional abuse. "Why couldn't I do something?" she asked. "I just never stood up to him."

Kemp's persistence in forcing his beliefs on his children — along with his disengagement from their lives as he immersed himself in white nationalism — led them to question their father and the values he espoused, Karen Mills said. In a September 2008 post on the anti-racist site Lancaster Unity, Stephan called his father a "racist ass" and said he should be deported to South Africa. He wrote: "I remember almost every night when we would ask for a bedtime story (when most NORMAL fathers would read their children a normal book) he would instead tell us stories about how the white race was all supreme and then read us chapters from his horrible book "March of the White Titans" [sic]. Well dad if you ever read this or even hear about it I just wanted to let you know that I HATE YOU!! You have no idea what i went through at school because of you, you twisted my mind and made my entire childhood a horrible misery."

As his wife and children lost respect for him, Kemp withdrew further from the family. Karen Mills believes that's because they no longer fit his image of the model right-wing family that would help him achieve his political goals. "His political beliefs are the absolute be-all and end-all of his life," she said. "I think the reason why he's cut the children off is they don't conform to his political beliefs and aspirations."

Instead, "he began to seek out people who admired him and particularly his book," she recalled. "The admiration, and in particular the view of him as this great right-wing academic, became his main driving force."

He left the family in November 2006. "Picture this situation," Stephan wrote in November 2008 on Lancaster Unity. "I am fast asleep on thursday morning and when i wake i find that he is gone and then i receive a phone call from him telling me he is on a flight to London… THIS ASSHOLE DIDNT EVEN HAVE THE MANNERS TO SAY GOODBYE TO MY FACE!! I have not seen my father in now [a]bout two and [a] bit years."

Karen Mills said Kemp has had almost no contact with his children since the divorce. "I don't think there's any way that Arthur could fix the broken relationship with Stephan," she said. Nonetheless, "Stephan has gone through something of a catharsis." In addition to his posts on Lancaster Unity, he chose to discuss his father when he was assigned to give a school speech on someone who had influenced him — only he said his father's influence had been entirely negative. Now, his social life is improving, and he has resolved to be as unlike his father as possible. "I am stuck with some of his traits and characteristics — Mom used to joke with me that I have the Kemp laziness gene — but definitely not his political views," he said.

Yet there's no bringing back the years he lost to his father's hate. "You," he wrote to him in the September 2008 Lancaster Unity post, "will never understand what you have done to me."

Southern Poverty Law Center