July 28, 2010

Friends and other enemies

While most trade union leaders have of late found a good deal to occupy their minds and their time as draconian government spending and job cuts loom, the general secretary of at least one alleged "fighting union" has other concerns that he clearly feels to be far more pressing than such bothersome trivialities as protecting and promoting the employment prospects of his members in the hard times to come.

These, after all, can be quickly disposed of in a few stock cod-radical phrases posted on the website of his "one big union" and regurgitated in a press release that will (for a fee payable to his friend Graham) then be posted on a free PR website, where it will attract its customary level of feverish disinterest and disappear without trace.

Patrick Harrington/Sharp, general secretary of Solidarity, director of the Third Way "think tank", newly-coined BNP employee and fantasist par excellence has been extremely busy on Facebook just lately, patiently scanning his list of "friends" for any who link to the numerous enemies of the Very Important trade union leader and Political Thinker - a man so Important that he maintains his own Wikipedia page as a reminder to the rest of the world of just how Very Important he is.

Should Harrington discover the name "Simon Bennett" lurking amongst the friends of his Facebook friends, then the general secretary of the "fighting union" will employ some of his ample spare time to send a message warning that Bennett was responsible for "crashing" the BNP website on the eve of the general election and might use the personal details of those who link to his Facebook page in unspecified but detrimental ways. It would therefore be "unwise" to maintain a link to Bennett.

Mark Walker, also with more spare time on his hands than is healthy, performs the same service as the sneaking Harrington, but goes a little further in his "friendly" advice, warning that retaining Bennett as a Facebook friend might be "construed as disloyalty".

Things must be getting desperate when trade union general secretaries and leading Griffinites begin to act like pre-adolescent school children and are driven to scour the pages of something so shallow as Facebook looking to rubbish their enemies - but then, Harrington and Walker both possess the type of mind that eminently suits them to such infantile activities.

Having made no secret of his support for Nick Griffin, and having openly attempted to exercise a negative influence upon the nomination gathering process on which a challenge to Griffin's leadership depends, Harrington appears to have forgotten that his Third Way and National Liberal Party websites were hosted gratis by Bennett, who also owns the domain names. Not unnaturally, given the vitriol pouring down upon him from the Griffin camp, Bennett revenged himself by pointing the two domains at his YourBNP website.

Harrington, being Harrington (and sometimes being Sharp), thinks this most unfair, and so, while other trade union general secretaries devote their time planning for the difficult political and industrial struggles to come, the general secretary of the "fighting union" scrabbles about in the nether reaches of the Internet pursuing yet another of the personal vendettas that have peppered his less than illustrious career.

While Harrington gets on with what Harrington does best (which is not very much at all), the man he induced to undertake electoral spoiling duties at the behest of Nick Griffin flounders.

Richard Barnbrook, much pitied but largely abandoned to his own devices, appears to have been thrown into the laps of the Walker brothers, who are humouring him hugely. It was via Barnbrook's Facebook page that Mark Walker sent out some of his ominous "friendly advice".

Ultimately doomed by his initial association with the Butler camp, Barnbrook is the pliant prisoner of the Griffinites who captured him, painfully eager to please the guards set to watch and control his every move, cushioned from the reality of his humiliation by the carefully maintained illusion that he really is mounting a serious independent leadership challenge.

Doubtless the Walkers have difficulties in preventing a matching pair of sly smiles from stealing across their lips as they listen to the wretched Barnbrook's plans and make approving nods in all the right places. Their job as his wards includes that of keeping Barnbrook busy, and to that end the GLA member is in County Durham to help in the campaign to have Adam Walker elected to Spennymoor Town Council.

For the occasion Walker has produced a cheap word-processed leaflet in which he says that a path he helped to clear was "drastically needed", and seems, as BNP people are prone to do, to elevate the influence of the lowest and least influential tier of governance well beyond its bounds, asking: "Why do we need to produce council, benefits, medical and police documents in umpteen different languages and provide and pay for expensive professional interpreters?"

Why indeed, since this is not something likely to trouble Spennymoor Town Council?

How well Walker's campaign is progressing might be gauged from a post made on Monday evening by Richard Barnbrook on his new blog, presumably in an unguarded Walker-less moment: "I have to laugh, or I would 'Cry'.... So fare today 3 people turned out to canvas in Spennymoor!" (sic).

Not very well at all, then.

Still, while at least some microscopic BNP activity is taking place in the north-east, elsewhere

BNP activity flourishes according to the BNP website, which seems to report a fresh outbreak every other day. The trouble is that the bulk of these "activities" appear with a suspicious regularity to be concentrated in the north-west, the home turf of regional organiser, tall tale teller and Griffin goon Clive Jefferson.

These reports are invariably accompanied by photographs of a very few people who have apparently sold a very large number of BNP newspapers and delivered impossible quantities of BNP literature to an adoring public. New members are just falling out of the heavens, and talk of breakthroughs and successes to come abounds, much as it has for the past several fruitless years.

Breakthroughs and successes require money and activists, both of which are in increasingly short supply as donors are loath to throw good money after bad and members walk away in disillusionment or entrench themselves in the rival leadership camps. But no matter,

Nick Griffin has signposted the road to electoral heaven on the BNP website in a mini-manifesto entitled "What Is Going to be Done", coincidentally (and wisely) decamping to France for his holidays before anybody can ask, "Exactly How Is It Going To Be Done?".

A screed of praise to Jim Dowson intermingled with the same hopelessly unrealistic but fine-sounding plans that have been thrown at the jaded membership of every failing political movement since time began, I don't propose here to discuss at length that which Griffin and the BNP cannot possibly achieve.

"What Is Going to be Done" may sway the gullible, as it is intended to do, with its magic vote-winning computers, mobile homes that dispense iced water and suncream on hot days, and a 30-acre BNP place in the country, but all of this requires money, and huge amounts of it. But money is something the BNP does not have - in fact it does not have it to the extent that it owes ever increasing quantities of the national currency to an ever growing list of unpaid creditors.

Unless Griffin has found for the BNP a sugar daddy, one who pays the rent rather than one who screws the party and departs in the morning without leaving so much as a discreet farthing on the mantelpiece, then his plans for the BNP will need to be retitled "What Is Not Going To Be Done". As

Honest Eddy Butler points out, the needless EHRC case has so far cost the BNP £300,000 with more to come, both Michaela Mackenzie and Mark Collett are in a position to bankrupt the party, as are any one of a "frightening" number of creditors not as emotionally bound to the BNP as Mackenzie and Collett.

By way of example, according to Butler, who we have no reason to doubt, the party's Midland depot is now four months in arrears with rent and council taxes, and the telephone, gas and electricity bills have not been paid. These debts alone must already amount to something between £5,000 to £10,000, and there is no obvious way in which they can be met.

The recent spate of hysterical postal appeals, as we know from other sources, have brought in desultory returns even when backed up by emailed variants, not even enough to cover the £5,000 cost (Butler's figure) of each appeal.

So the grand plans of "What Is Going to be Done" are so much stuff and nonsense, as its author is well aware, since the BNP will be lucky to own a rubber stamp by the end of the year, let alone contemplate moving into a 30-acre complex somewhere in the Midland countryside.

Since throwing down the gauntlet, Eddy Butler has presented himself as the "honest man" candidate, one interested in financial transparency, the guy who's on the side of the members, yet his remarks at a campaign meeting held in East London on July 20th would suggest there are limits to his more agreeable traits, and there are circumstances in which he would turn a blind eye to corruption at the top.

Here we must stress, as Butler repeatedly stresses, that what follows is hearsay - though it is hearsay he frequently returns to, and it is the same hearsay which underpins his campaign to unseat Nick Griffin. Butler clearly gives far more weight to it than he is prepared to admit to in public.

The story, as told by Butler, is that in mid-March the then BNP staff manager Emma Colgate visited treasurer David Hannam at his new office. While Colgate was there Hannam received a call from Nick Griffin, which was overheard by Colgate (Butler is hazy as to how, suggesting that Hannam had the speakerphone switched on). Griffin, it is alleged, asked Hannam to pay off his personal credit card in a sum, Butler says, that amounted to six figures. Hannam apparently demurred at the idea of using party money to pay Griffin's personal debts, but Griffin "had a bit of a go" at Hannam and ordered him to pay.

Hannam then said to Colgate that there were "all kinds of bad things going on in the party, to do with the party's finances - serious stuff".

Serious stuff indeed. Serious criminal stuff, if any of this is true.

Colgate then told Eddy Butler, at that time the BNP's national organiser. Publicity director Mark Collett became aware of the allegations, and soon after Hannam forwarded a recording of a private conversation he had held with Collett to Griffin, who then sacked Colgate, Butler and Collett from their positions, and, just as the BNP election campaign opened, ran to the press and police with wild tales of death threats which were to dog the BNP until polling day.

Explaining this at his campaign meeting, Butler says: "In discussions I said, look, if this is true ... we're in the run up to a general election campaign. If we don't do well and we don't get all these seats, and we haven't got all the momentum with us - which would make up for everything, frankly, wouldn't it? - then we'll have to raise the issue..."

This seems a fairly clear indication that before his sacking, Butler was minded not to press the matter of the alleged credit card payment provided the BNP did well in the general election, and would have happily kept his inside knowledge of the alleged transaction from the membership in those circumstances.

This strange ambivalence does not sit well with the "honest man" image Butler is at great pains to project. Misuse of funds for the alleged purpose recounted by Butler is common or garden corruption. There is no sense in which corruption can be vindicated, no situation in which suppressing knowledge of it will "make up for everything".

It is noteworthy that the mental circumlocutions afflicting Eddy Butler seemed also to afflict the audience to which he recounted his squalid little tale. He had, after all, just told them that their money had allegedly been stolen, but that would have been made up for if only the BNP had performed better in the general election. Not one member of the audience took issue with him.

And finally, those of you of strong constitution who flock every Sunday morning to listen to the latest instalment of the Green Arrow's "Voice of the British Resistance" may have been alarmed to learn from the constipated-sounding Voice that the "growth of babies born to foreign women has doubled."

The Voice does not enlighten us as to the cause of this unparalleled phenomenon, but we're fairly certain it is related to the heavy ingestion of alcohol on the part of an amoebic intellect seized by a compulsion to record dotty internet podcasts in the darkness of a coal bunker situate somewhere in South Wales.

Perhaps a friend - or even an ex-friend, if, courtesy of Harrington, he has one or two to spare - should have a word?

23 comments:

AndyMinion said...

Excellent article. Maybe we should find out just what is needed to call in the Old Bill over an allegation of fraud. Could the call come from an ordinary BNP Member? From a potential "Witness"? Or can anyone raise their suspicions?

Gosh, I'm looking forward to seeing their accounts...

Anonymous said...

As usual a great piece of writing that I have no doubt will be read over and over on certain bnp forums depending on who they are supporting.

I would raise the issue of Dickys fb site, it seems this government may well be right about one thing, the standard of teachers in this country, I understand both Walker brothers were/are teachers, yet they are obviously posting as Dicky on his fb and his blog, cos he dont have a clue, and they certainly dont have a clue when it comes to the understanding of dyslexia

tulip

Anonymous said...

"While Colgate was there Hannam received a call from Nick Griffin, which was overheard by Colgate"

If true (and it's a big 'if') then presumably their would be a recording of this conversation somewhere. BNP internal security and/or Special Branch tap the phones of senior BNP members as matter of course.

Anonymous said...

Beats the hell out of me WTF they're fighting over. A load of debt?

Good stuff Denise. BTW, where's Ketlan, still under the patio?

Anonymous said...

As usual a great piece of writing that I have no doubt will be read over and over on certain bnp forums depending on who they are supporting.
.................

I noticed that too. Maybe they should have Denise over to ref their scraps?

Anonymous said...

Just read through a very interesting letter from Hannam that has been posted as a thread on democracy forum.

sorry Im not techy enough to transfer it over, but Im pretty sure one of our friends on here will be.

tulip

Anonymous said...

Kenny Smith and some of the December Rebels are in court with Griffin in November. Griffin's been avoiding it for years but the excuses ran out. More costs on the way!

Denise, you don't seem to like Harrington very much. I knew him in the RMT. A real A1 creep with a damp handshake who thought he was 10 times smarter than everyone else. Yeah, that smart nobody will ever employ him again so he's got to grub about from what he can get from the BNP.

BTW, he reckons he's not on benefits and is self employed. He came off incapacity because BDC's are forcing everybody to be reassessed and that lazy good for nothing had no chance. The self employed bollocks is so he can say he's not employed by the BNP, even though he is.

A carbuncle on the carbuncle of humanity.

Anonymous said...

"Harrington... I knew him in the RMT. A real A1 creep"

I concur. I attended a 'political soldier' meeting in the late 80's and met a lot of their leading lights afterwards. First impressions of Holland, Graham Williamson and a guy called Mark Alder were quite good but Harrington came across as a very reptilian character. Kinda sinister in a way.

Kev Scott loves The Jam said...

I see that Nutzie central site is proclaiming that Walker is standing in a 'by election', no mention of the status of the election?

Is it town council..... the report on there makes it seem like an mp sort of by-election.... Jeez when will the chuffwits see through this sham?

Kev Scott loves The Jam said...

Oh, you don't need to publish this, but I am just reading the Griffin (or, in reality, Dowson) penned 'what is going to be done' shite.

I could wax lyrical for ages about it, but heres a snippet:
"iv) Finally (for now) we need within a year to have bought, converted and equipped a mobile home or similar vehicle to create a mobile publicity production and data-crunching centre.

This would mean that instead of trying to find a spare room in which to cobble together a temporary campaign office, we would instead drive into crucial campaigns a mobile office, printshop and activist support facility (hot tea and bacon butties in the winter, iced water and suncream for follicly-challenged activists in summer)."


Does dowson have an old mobile library vehicle that he got for a song on ebay that he is about to sell (AKA lease) to the BNP for an extrortionate amount?
Stick a knackered photocopier in it, park up next to maccy D's for free internet and chuck in a couple of £10 a month mobiles and hey, the BNP have a 'mobile office' whilst Dowson gets about £200k a year for it.

This pair spin a class act that Tony Blair must be getting jealous of!

Oh, and apparently there is the "scandal of the racist sexual grooming of young white girls by Muslim men".... shhh about the Kimberley then!

And apparently "Solidarity" has 500 members???????

"community clean-ups to Adam Walker's recent footpath building project".... ???? The only footpath I know he built was from teacher to no-mark? Unless he built one from his front door to the garden gate (will bnp accounts show the receipt for B&Q?)

"A budget is therefore going to be set aside for an Instant Response Activities Organiser in each region. This will pay for the equipment and materials we need stockpiled ready to go, and to hire transport."... Transport? Dowson again?

"So we're going to produce several sets of Truth Truck skins"... ahhhh!
" Finally, by the time I step down as leader, I aim to have well underway a serious programme to buy and equip a full, permanent, central England training/communications/administration/distribution centre. "..... A farm in Welshpool maybe? Yours for 20K a year, 10year lease minimum.

And to end... "Gary & Helen BNP Gold Members... get a fucking life.

Kev Scott loves The Jam said...

Oh, you don't need to publish this, but I am just reading the Griffin (or, in reality, Dowson) penned 'what is going to be done' shite.

I could wax lyrical for ages about it, but heres a snippet:
"iv) Finally (for now) we need within a year to have bought, converted and equipped a mobile home or similar vehicle to create a mobile publicity production and data-crunching centre.

This would mean that instead of trying to find a spare room in which to cobble together a temporary campaign office, we would instead drive into crucial campaigns a mobile office, printshop and activist support facility (hot tea and bacon butties in the winter, iced water and suncream for follicly-challenged activists in summer)."


Does dowson have an old mobile library vehicle that he got for a song on ebay that he is about to sell (AKA lease) to the BNP for an extrortionate amount?
Stick a knackered photocopier in it, park up next to maccy D's for free internet and chuck in a couple of £10 a month mobiles and hey, the BNP have a 'mobile office' whilst Dowson gets about £200k a year for it.

This pair spin a class act that Tony Blair must be getting jealous of!

Kev Scott loves The Jam said...

And part 2........... gawd, I couldnt let this lie!

Oh, and apparently there is the "scandal of the racist sexual grooming of young white girls by Muslim men".... shhh about the Kimberley then!

And apparently "Solidarity" has 500 members???????

"community clean-ups to Adam Walker's recent footpath building project".... ???? The only footpath I know he built was from teacher to no-mark? Unless he built one from his front door to the garden gate (will bnp accounts show the receipt for B&Q?)

"A budget is therefore going to be set aside for an Instant Response Activities Organiser in each region. This will pay for the equipment and materials we need stockpiled ready to go, and to hire transport."... Transport? Dowson again?
"So we're going to produce several sets of Truth Truck skins"... ahhhh!
" Finally, by the time I step down as leader, I aim to have well underway a serious programme to buy and equip a full, permanent, central England training/communications/administration/distribution centre. "..... A farm in Welshpool maybe? Yours for 20K a year, 10year lease minimum.

And to end... "Gary & Helen BNP Gold Members... get a fucking life.

Anonymous said...

The BNP have a big thing about mobile homes, in last years budget for B & D they proposed putting a mobile home site in the borough and putting all the homeless families in them.

Wonder if Dowson has a mobile home business?

tulip

Anonymous said...

From Eddy Butlers blog

"Collett charges dropped

No evidence to substantiate the allegations of threats to kill

This morning Thursday 29th July Humberside police contacted Mark Collett and
informed him that there would be no further action taken with respect to
allegations by Nick Griffin and James Dowson in March this year about telephone
call threats to kill.

These malicious accusations were deliberately spread to the world media by Nick
Griffin and James Dowson at the outset of our General Election campaign and at a
stroke undermined the work, commitment, and loyalty of our brave candidates our
hard working activists, and generous donors.

This act of treason by Nick Griffin and James Dowson destroyed our election
campaign at the outset.

This is just further evidence that Nick Griffin's time as leader must come to an
end."

John P said...

Collett has had his charges dropped the the accounts have not been published.

The British National Party and the party’s Regional Accounting Unit were both granted an extension to the deadline for submitting their statements of accounts. Both have failed to deliver their accounts within the extended deadline so the party will be fined a minimum of £500 and the accounting unit will be fined a minimum £100, this figure will increase if the accounts are more than three months late.

Anonymous said...

This fantastic!! I thought the Decembrist rebellion & the membership leak (the 1st one) was jolly good entertainment but the bitter infighting since the May election has been tremendous.

I'm looking forward to the insolvency of the BNP - I mean Mssrs Griffin & Darby who will be personally liable when all the chickens come home to roost. Can a bankrupt serve as an MEP?

Surely the Electoral commission will have to something about the accounts?

gtm

John P said...

Dave Hannam put a statement out yesterday on the BNP website about the accounts which includes this:-
"This was most recently notable in the last General Election where expenditure was incurred without the knowledge of the party treasury or centre. In fact, during the latter stages of the GE, it looked like the party would exit the campaign in the black. Only later was it discovered that some officials has incurred expenditure that was both unauthorised and previously unknown to the Treasury department."

Anonymous said...

In response to John P I read Hannams report as well and found the item you are flagging up very interesting, who can Hannam be referring to?

tulip

Anonymous said...

Butler: "This act of treason by Nick Griffin and James Dowson"

The rhetoric is hotting up!

Can't see how this thing can end in anything other than a split, whoever wins.

Anonymous said...

From Griffin/Dowson's "What is to be done" (a title BTW lifted from an old pamphlet by that renowned British Nationalist, Vladimir Lenin !):

"We would instead drive into crucial campaigns a mobile office, printshop and activist support facility"

Sounds impressive to the naive but only one "office" and of little use in a multi-constituency general or Euro election (can see the thing being broke down at the side of the motorway given the miles it will be clocking up!)

Instead of addressing the deep structural problems inside the BNP and preparing it politically for changed circumstances in the new decade, Griffin/Dowson are just thinking up ways to spend even more cash as if throwing money around will solve things.

They'll learn.

Anonymous said...

can someone verify something for me. walker is trying to get elected on a town council.is that the same a parish council,, therefore non political. Jesus they really milk it

Anonymous said...

"Jesus they really milk it"

They need to get elected to anything at the moment as they are desperate to trumpet any success to their depressed supporters. Unimportant, low key elections with a tiny turnout are perfect in this respect.

Kev Scott loves The Jam said...

Anon said:",can someone verify something for me. walker is trying to get elected on a town council.is that the same a parish council,, therefore non political. Jesus they really milk it

Town Councils
Town Councils are just a civil parish where the title of the council is styled 'Town' rather than 'Parish' council. Similarly, the chairman of the council is styled 'Town Mayor' rather than 'Chairman'. The laws governing town councils are the same as for parish councils.
from: http://www.hertsdirect.org/yrccouncil/localgovorg/townparish/

The heady heights of town councillor in Spen will put him frighteningly in charge of:

The Town Council carries out all its current objectives by providing
services in the following areas...

> Allotments
> Cemeteries
> Jubilee Park
> Open Spaces and Recreation Grounds
> Town Hall
> Community Halls
> Supporting Community Activities
> Spennymoor "in Bloom"