BNP deputy leader resigns

Simon Darby has resigned as deputy leader of the British National Party. However unlike many others in the fascist party, he has not fallen out with Nick Griffin. In fact his resignation is a convoluted gesture of support for the beleaguered BNP leader.

Griffin and Darby have been spooked by Nick Cass’s support for Eddy Butler’s challenge to Griffin’s leadership. Cass, the former Yorkshire regional organiser whose picture, with his wife and children, has appeared on many BNP election leaflets as the typical wholesome British family that votes BNP, is very popular in the party and is likely to attract further support for Butler’s challenge.

Cass is being promoted as Butler’s “running mate” for deputy chairman. In an attempt to take the wind out of the challengers’ sails, Darby, who has been deputy leader since 2005, claims the post has “absolutely no constitutional standing”.

Darby is being disingenuous to say the least. He claims the position of deputy leader was created as an “ad hoc measure” by Griffin when he was facing the possibility of imprisonment on charges of inciting racial hatred (on which he was eventually acquitted). That may be so, but he in fact supplanted Scott Maclean, who was then deputy chairman of the BNP, a position that does have a role in the party constitution. It is this role for which Cass is putting himself forward.

Darby’s resignation, with immediate effect, is presented as an attempt to take the “distraction” of the deputy leadership out of the leadership election, as if that would somehow make Cass go away.

Darby also cites his “self-imposed demotion” (so the deputy leadership position does have some meaning then) as giving him the “moral right to ask that others at least exercise responsibility and restraint”.

He rather spoils his attempt to occupy the moral high ground when he calls for an election that avoids “setting nationalist brothers and sisters against each other by repeating enemy lies and black propaganda about the current leader and his team”. Where is the plea for Griffin’s supporters, in particular his communications chief Paul Golding, to desist from spreading vicious smears and lies about Butler?

Griffin’s most sycophantic supporter, Paul Morris, who blogs under the name Green Arrow, was quick to reject any notion of a civilised and honourable contest. “I would also be interested now, in receiving the names of all those who sign Butlers nomination forms, in order that I may make public all information that I may gather on those people who are either deliberately trying to destroy the BNP or those stupid enough to support them,” he wrote less than three hours after Darby’s resignation.

For good measure, Darby concludes with his own snipe against Butler. “Don’t wake up one morning later this year to find that we’ve lost Nick Griffin and his team, and replaced them with a jostling, squabbling, unstable, untested and indecisive coalition.

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate