August 11, 2010

BNP leadership challenge fails

Eddy Butler has failed to obtain enough nominations to challenge Nick Griffin for the leadership of the British National Party this year. After several weeks of campaigning he says he collected 500 signatures from activists and officers around the country on his own forms, which the party does not recognise. He would have needed the support of 840 party members of at least two years’ standing.

Butler says he will not take legal action against the BNP over the unconstitutional rules that Griffin imposed for the challenge because “it would be very costly for us and for the party”. Butler is no doubt influenced by the fact that the BNP is insolvent and already has many unpaid legal bills, so even if he won he would be unable to recover his costs.

Urging his supporters to stay in the BNP, Butler writes: “Rather than get embroiled in legal action we will continue our battle to save our party from destruction at Griffin’s hands through other means”. He also hopes that his supporters will stay in their party positions if they can square it with their conscience.

Butler says that the requirement to obtain the support of 20% of long-standing members was “an impossibly high total”, which is why Griffin imposed it. He also claims that many members did not receive their nomination forms because the BNP’s membership database is “incompetently run” and that Griffin’s action in persuading two “stooges” to stand for the leadership as well complicated matters.

Griffin also used “political intimidation” by suspending many supporters of Butler. For that reason he has not handed in his forms as he does “not wish to compromise anyone”.

On the official forms, which members had to complete and send individually to the party’s official scrutineer, Andrew Brons MEP, Butler only obtained 214 signatures. The stooge candidates, Richard Barnbrook and Derek Adams, got 23 and four signatures respectively, while 971 people ticked the box indicating that they were satisfied with Griffin’s leadership.

The failure is testament to the fact that most BNP members do not go to party meetings or follow the various blogs that have exposed the gross mismanagement in the party and the way in which Griffin and his consiglieri, Jim Dowson, are using it as a cash generating machine for themselves. Griffin’s main interest now is in securing re-election to the European Parliament in 2014 so that he qualifies for a pension when he eventually leaves office.

Whether Griffin will allow any Butler supporters to remain in official party positions is unclear at this stage; likewise whether Butler’s supporters will want to stay in a party in which Griffin and Dowson are now even stronger than before.

Many activists, though not the bulk of the ordinary members, are now well aware that Dowson owns the BNP, that the party is insolvent and has been managed incompetently, and that Griffin never hesitates to lie blatantly to preserve his position. Many have already said that if Butler’s challenge fails they will leave, though most are undecided whether to join one of the tiny opponents of the BNP on the far right or to form a new party. Neither option is attractive for them.

Lee Barnes, the BNP’s former legal officer who resigned yesterday, can be expected to reveal more about what has been going on in the BNP, now that he has seen the truth about Dowson, whom he has described as the “Gollum” of the BNP and Griffin’s “cut price Rasputin”.

Most recently Barnes has described Arthur Kemp’s March of the Titans, a huge tome much praised by Griffin’s BNP, as “a regurgitated sub-SS handbook” and its author as a “Rhodesian Nazi terrorist” who “hates everyone and everything and believes everyone on the planet is below him”. According to Barnes, Kemp was known in the party as Napoleon. We look forward to further insights such as these.

Searchlight / HOPE not Hate by Sonia Gable

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

In your face. Eddy and his band of misfits obliterated at the count! Ha

Anonymous said...

All this has left a deep fissure in the BNP.

There are now effectively two factions within the Party. It may take a year or two to come to a head but it will happen eventually and they'll be a split. The only thing which could possibility prevent it is some stunning set of election results but I can't see that happening.

Anonymous said...

"In your face"

Anti-fascists couldn't give a shit about the eventual winner (they're all fascists of one type or the other). We are only interested in seeing the BNP damaged as much as possible. Sure, an election contest would have furthered that process but we are hardly crying in our tea over it failing to occur.

The BNP are deeply compromised internally as well as externally (in terms of ongoing poor election results) and that is good news.

Nick 'donate now' Griffin and Dowson are proven incompetents and that isn't going to change. The further decline in the BNP's fortunes will only exacerbate the problems. Extremist parties in decline always turn in on themselves and I reckon what will happen in the BNP over the next few years will be similar to what occured in the NF in the 1980's as the exactly the same people are running the show. Dowson too will probably disappear when the money supply dries up.

It was always a win-win situation for us.

Anonymous said...

great result ..With Griffin in charge the bloodletting , the legal cases and the complete lack of commonsense will continue
For anti-facists this was by far the best result

unplugged from the matrix said...

Absolutely no surprise there then. As if anyone could take Griffins party of him. There is so much info come out now about them though they may still be there but there finished. Good riddance to them.

Anonymous said...

@ Anonymous

We'd rather Griifin stayed in the 'driving seat'. Better 'the idiot we know'etc. He's doing a a far better job of demolishing the BNP that any of us ever could.

All this Butler challenge, barnes resignation is all of a bit of a red herring. The news that Griffin has been summoned to committal proceedings at the High Court because of his flagrant contempt of Court is far more interesting. He is finally facing a stretch of well deserved porridge.

In your face? Rather egg on your face methinks! The BNP is financially insolvent & unless some lunatic millionaire is willing to sink £100,000's into the party then the game is over. The fact that well informed (Darby, Barnes) insiders had distanced themselves from the party hierachy shows the game is up.

gtm

Anonymous said...

'He [Bitler] also claims that many members did not receive their nomination forms because the BNP’s membership database is “incompetently run”'

- He could have got the details from WikiLeaks.

Anonymous said...

"Griffin’s main interest now is in securing re-election to the European Parliament in 2014"

Funny how a party that professes to hate the EU is desperate to get elected to it's parliament!

Did someone say, "Gravy Train"?

Anonymous said...

"Eddy and his band of misfits "

You got a leader with a glass eye.
A head of security who has no balls.
Elections officer with a limp.
Wingfield - A Joe 90 who writes a blog.
A reverend who isnt.

christ of they aint misfits what are?

Anonymous said...

"Griffin’s main interest now is in securing re-election to the European Parliament in 2014"

The party is finished griffin is a one man band of greed and his lust for money.Now he has got the euro salary and pension the members can go take a running jump its the simply nick fuhrer party from now on and no one can stand on the great fuhrer's feet !

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 9pm

Why are you having a go at disabled people? Why don't you leave that to the fascists?

I'm sure you meant well, but slag them off for their corruption and politics, not their disabilities

Dirty said...

Oh I get it now...the BNP were created so we can laugh at them! LOL

Anonymous said...

Griffin's freakshow of a daughter is waiting to take over what remains of the BNP when Cyclops retires to Croatia.

NewsHound said...

BNP ATTENDS FAR RIGHT CONFERENCE IN JAPAN: -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/11/bnp-far-right-conference-japan

bennie said...

Now he is no-longer a member of the BNP, Looney Lee Barnes has been bigging up the EDL and has added his support for the upcoming riot in Bradford.

http://leejohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2010/08/edl-and-bradford.html

He says: "the EDL MUST MARCH IN BRADFORD!"

Bye-bye, BNP, and hello! EDL, says Lee Barnes.

Anonymous said...

Looks like little Hitler's still in charge.

Silly Nazis!

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately the BNP booted out 2 of their biggest PR liabilities - the vile Mark Collett and Charlotte Lewis, but they've retained their biggest liability - Nick "Gas Chambers?" Griffin, and lost alot of keen (if not necessarily talented) activists in the process.

A few BNP enthusiasts are starting to realise BNP propaganda about "democracy" and "free speech" is a sham, but we need to keep on kicking them, and kicking them hard, even though their down, as with a bit more hard work Anti-Fascists can make sure the far-right are consigned to in-fighting and political oblivion for at least another 20 years

Keep up the pressure!!!

Anonymous said...

Mistake Butler, and the other challangers, have made is they arent giving their challenges long enough. Griffin spent ages garnering support, even denying he wanted to be leader until he was sure he had the level of support required, took him years not months. Even had a magazine backing him and the, then, 'modernising' bnp. Butler should know all this, he was involved with that and the lioninsing of griffin at that time.

However this result will be good for us as it leavesa the BNP more factionalised than ever before :-)

anarchist said...

If he wasn't going to mount a legal challenge, I wonder what he thought was going to happen.

Anonymous said...

"Now he is no-longer a member of the BNP"

Did Barnes resign from the BNP completely? I thought he just resigned his position as Legal Officer within the Party.

Anonymous said...

Medway River Ward
David George CRAGGS (The Conservative Party Candidate) 617 (44.6%)
John Alun Charles JONES (The Labour Party Candidate) 544 (39.4%)
Garry HARRISON (Liberal Democrat) 104 (7.5%)
Steven Richard KEEVIL (The Green Party) 45 (3.3%)
Brian Christian RAVENSCROFT (British National Party) 39 (2.8%)
Ron SANDS (The English Democrats - "Putting England First") 33 (2.45)