June 05, 2010

BNP not 'open and honest' says East Midlands councillor

One of the British National Party’s few remaining councillors has joined the growing calls for a challenge to Nick Griffin’s leadership of the party.

Graham Partner, who holds one of the party’s two seats on North West Leicestershire District Council, says the BNP is not “being managed in an open and honest way”. Writing on his blog he comments: “I see people are being expelled for asking questions about the accounts and have to wonder what is there to hide. Therefore I conclude there is something to hide and I don’t like it.”

Drawing on his council experience, he notes: “Some good activists have been lost over recent years simply for speaking out. This is not acceptable to me either. I believe in people’s rights to challenge everything in the same way as scrutiny operates on the council. The answers are not always what we hope for but we still ask and don’t get sacked for having the nerve.”

In a reference to the widespread accusations that the party is being run for the benefit of Griffin and his “consultant”, the anti-abortion extremist Jim Dowson, Partner declares: “How can I be expected to encourage people to join, knowing that it is run as a personal empire where the members are merely a source of income.”

Partner would welcome a challenge this year to Griffin’s leadership but believes the new constitution makes it impossible. “I am totally supportive of anyone who wants to challenge for the leadership on the grounds of democracy and if Nick wins again then so be it. The constitution is a farce and designed to make it near impossible to instigate regime change. Those who voted for the current version must be deluded if they think that is democratic. What is more, I haven’t got a clue who the Founders are and would think collecting the required number of nominees as impossible.”

Party members were required to vote for the new constitution at an EGM in February under extreme pressure to settle the action brought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over the party’s discriminatory membership conditions. If the BNP had not agreed to admit non-white members, the resulting legal proceedings might have prevented the party contesting last month’s elections.

However Griffin used the party’s desperate position to insert clauses imposing onerous requirements on anyone wanting to challenge for the leadership. Members could only vote for or against the constitution as a whole, without amendment and without even seeing these clauses, which were not presented to the meeting.

Under the new BNP constitution candidates for the chairmanship, who must be “voting members” (members of two years’ standing who fulfil activist and ideological training requirements) with at least five years’ continuous party membership, must secure the signatures of 20% of all party members with at least two years’ membership and 20% of all voting members. They must also by supported by 10% of the members attending a general meeting of the “Founders’ Association”, a body that is separate from the BNP but in which all party assets are vested. The constitution does not define the Founders’ Association but it is understood to be people who were paid-up members before the constitutional changes and are still members.

Griffin has promised to resign from the chairmanship by the beginning of 2014 to concentrate on securing his re-election to the European Parliament in June that year. Partner says: “If Nick Griffin is to step down in three years time, there will be a leadership contest anyway so let him accept a challenge now and save the Party three more years of squabbling and membership losses”.

Partner himself will not be a candidate. Apart from the fact that he does not rate himself as a speaker, is not interested in being chairman and would not want “the workload or the travelling about that Nick does”, Partner would not qualify as his party membership has lapsed. “Belfast [the BNP’s purportedly efficient call centre run by Dowson] were supposed to ring me on May 28th but failed to do so, therefore my five years continuous has been broken, ruling me out as a candidate and voter.”

Hope not hate

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cue the campaign accusing the guy of being "Searchlight"/a Special Branch tout/a Zionist agent.

The BNP ain't a normal party and they play dirty against anybody who goes against the leadership.

DisgustedOfTunbridgeWells said...

"I see people are being expelled for asking questions about the accounts and have to wonder what is there to hide. Therefore I conclude there is something to hide and I don’t like it."

They've realised this after how many years of dodgy accounts that the auditors wont sign off on?

Anonymous said...

So he sat there and waited for a telephone call that never came. doh as he not heard about picking up the phone and making a call himself?

tulip

Anonymous said...

It looks like the WDL gig in Cardiff today was a washout:

http://socialistworker.org.uk/art.php?id=21440

Anonymous said...

BNP not 'open and honest'....yep, just about sums up their collective mindsets :-)

Anonymous said...

I would say 60% of supporters and members want Griffin to go. Then they can chose a fresh face with no baggege or connection with him or his ilk. Bet you're shitting yourselves.

Anonymous said...

He didn't sit there waiting for anything. He has a job to do and does it to the best of his ability. The accounts are a long standing problem but that's not his problem. He isn't a Griffinite or any other ite, just a nationalist who believes in Britain as an independent country in charge of its own destiny.

Anonymous said...

So he sat there waiting for a telephone call from whom and for what?

Why didn't he pick up the phone and make the call himself to whom?

Antifascist said...

'Then they can chose a fresh face with no baggege or connection with him or his ilk. Bet you're shitting yourselves.'

Hardly. We'll deal with it when it happens - that's if Griffin leaves you a BNP to carry on with. The way he's going, there'll be nothing left by the time he goes.

Anonymous said...

Crooks Gri££in and Dowson are robbing the members blind, they need to be investigated by the fraud squad. Gri££in needs to stand down now and go independant the membership are sick of him and his family fleecing the membership.

Anonymous said...

BNP not 'open and honest'?
Ya think?
Takes a while for the message to get through, doesn't it.

Anonymous said...

Apparently Partner's original message has now been removed. Any news/thoughts on this?

Anonymous said...

"Bet you're shitting yourselves."

Yeah, we are. Because the BNP have scores of talented, motivated and charismatic leadership candidates just waiting in the wings, ready to take over. Guys who don't have a violent past (or present), drink problems and sexual proclivities that they keep firmly in the closet!

Brian Ferret said...

No matter who the BNP have as their leader stroke Fuhrer, they will always have racial hatred surrounded in tissue after tissue of lies at thair core. As for Anon at 1.57am, I think you'll find the majority of us believe Britain to be an independent country (some of us believe in an independent England) but unlike the BNP are not fooled by their racism disguised by Union Jackery, belief in the inequality of races in our communities and desire to introduce divided communities like the sort of thing that exists in Belfast, and talk of 'rights for indigenous Britons' when they actually mean rights for whites.

The far Right are so idealogically split the day they unite is the day the sun freezes over.

Anonymous said...

Graham Partner, who holds one of the party’s two seats on North West Leicestershire District Council, says the BNP is not “being managed in an open and honest way”.

Now you know, Councillor Partner the hard way. You've joined a 100% fascist party that's got lots of skeletons in their cupboards and nothing you or anyone who thinks the same as you can do within it will change that.


Though, maybe if your tongue finds the right part of Lord Pearson's crevice....

B31 Antifascist said...

Yeah, we are. Because the BNP have scores of talented, motivated and charismatic leadership candidates just waiting in the wings, ready to take over. Guys who don't have a violent past (or present), drink problems and sexual proclivities that they keep firmly in the closet!

Ready to put the knife in fair and square eh, and try to deny the BNP's racism and core ideology smarter than (and be a more crooked crook than) Nicholas John Griffin??

Anonymous said...

'Then they can chose a fresh face with no baggege or connection with him or his ilk. Bet you're shitting yourselves.'

Erm, that should be extremely difficult for them as Griffin most certainly is not the only racist nazi in the BNP, not by a bloody long way. Drops in oceans come to mind.

Always will be a negative perverted sleazy old white nationalist party it always was.

Anonymous said...

GRI££INS DAUGHTER Jenny Mathys

Is on BNP TV saying the membership is now over 14000. Lies more lies from Gri££ins ILK I have it on good authority that the membership stand at under 8000 members due to members not renewing because of the Fraudulent goings on with Dowson and the Gri££in Family.

Anonymous said...

I am not a BNP voter or member, just thought I would get that said. I left some time ago. But I have to say that a lot of people would vote for the BNP if Griffin was shot of. It's not as though 'as you keep pointing out' that all they have are brainless idiots. They have many people who would run rings around Griffin without too much trouble. Professionals. You must know this if you are on top of it as you say you are.

Anonymous said...

That corrupt fucker Griffin needs to go asap.



Peter Stafford.

Kev Scott love the jam said...

Nah, Gri££ needs to hang around as long as possible, let the little factions slowly splinter away until it starts to resemble that bit in Life of Brian.... "Nah, Judean Peoples Front, bunch of wankers" etc etc