A liar and a coward: Butler goads Griffin

Eddy Butler ramped up the pressure on Nick Griffin following a farcical "organisational meeting" held in Dagenham on Thursday evening, from which Butler and his supporters had been banned by an unnerved Griffin.

Butler's personal blog report on the events of the evening constitutes one of his most savage attacks on the beleaguered BNP leader to date, employing the word "lie" seven times, "lies" six times, "liar" three times, and "lying" once, in a statement that leaves Nick Griffin looking deeply foolish and very guilty.

The "reform" leader repeatedly sneers at Griffin and brazenly attacks his personal integrity in what appears to be a transparent attempt to goad Griffin into taking precipitate action against himself and his supporters.

Butler relates how, despite being warned by letter not to attend the Dagenham meeting on pain of disciplinary action, "Everyone turned up!" while "A group of suspended members waited outside the venue with gags on their mouths, holding up placards reading ‘Gagged for telling the truth’."

"Griffin sneaked into the venue and locked himself into the meeting room for forty five minutes sweating with his security entourage," Butler gloats, then details that Griffin put his security goons (who included Clive Jefferson) on the door armed with a revised list of those to be refused admittance.

"Pandemonium broke out," says Butler, but in the disorder several reformers got past the goons, one threatening to call the police if Griffin's men laid a hand on him, though some were hauled out of the meeting room.

One of those refused entry was former goon Jay Slaven, who our readers will remember hustled Griffin away from the egg throwing incident outside parliament last year, and who brutally chopped the throat of an innocent (black) female pedestrian engulfed by Slaven, Griffin and several other panicking fascists, who then trampled her body as she fell to the ground.

Interestingly, Emma Colgate, one of the BNP's last remaining councillors in the south east, was also refused entry. Colgate has kept a low profile so far, but her transformation from BNP to "independent" councillor in Thurrock cannot be long in coming.

Butler and ourselves (via another source) agree that about sixty people eventually got into the meeting, leaving between fifteen to twenty excluded. As many attending came from outside London, this turnout tells us much about the woeful condition of the BNP in the capital.

In his hubris, Nick Griffin claimed that ninety attended the meeting, which he described as "long and productive". In fact Griffin talked and talked, and lied and lied (as Butler has it), leaving almost no time for questions.

Describing this, Butler is scathing. "A poor excuse for a man," he says of Griffin, adding that the BNP leader's speech was "boring and nervously delivered by a perspiring and stammering excuse for a man", and "Virtually every word than came out of Griffin’s mouth was a lie."

Griffin's account, needless to say, differs markedly from that of Butler and a "reform" supporter who sat through the meeting. Griffin claims (or, being careful, says he was "told") that he spoke for an hour and answered questions for two, which is not what we have been hearing.

On the BNP website a report, detailing the organisational changes to be made in the London region, has the same flavour as the legendary tale of the man who re-arranged the deck-chairs on a sinking Titanic. Griffin has split London in to five new "regions", with Griffin trusties installed as local organisers - though he clearly trusts none of them enough with the post of regional organiser, which he retains. What, exactly, these new organisers will organise isn't clear at all.

Butler's report can be found on his personal blog, and speaks for itself. It is angry, contemptuous, and above all provocative, viz:

GRIFFIN IS A LIAR – VIRTUALLY EVERTHING HE SAYS AT A BNP MEETING NOW IS A LIE.

HE CANNOT FACE ME IN FRONT OF BNP MEMBERS AS HE KNOWS I WILL DESTROY HIS LIES AND LEAVE HIM A PATHETIC AND WASTED WRECK IN FRONT OF EVERYONE IN THE AUDIENCE.

IF GRIFFIN HAD THE COURAGE OF HIS CONVICTIONS HE WOULD NOT ACT LIKE THIS. HE IS A COWARD.

News from the north east, that was also news to us, is to be found at the head of Butler's report, where he claims that "twenty five long standing members – officers, candidates and activists from South Tyneside and Morpeth" resigned en bloc from the BNP on Thursday in protest at Griffin's "tyrannical actions", which included the sacking of regional organiser Ken Booth.

In the north east Adam and Mark Walker are looking increasingly isolated as the local membership evaporates around them, and were recently obliged to import a small number of the similarly evaporating Liverpool activist base to help out in Adam Walker's campaign for election to Spennymoor Town Council - a campaign the BNP has perhaps misguidedly hyped beyond its importance, most especially in light of Walker's disgraceful comments prior to VJ-Day that Japanese war criminals "were doing what they thought was right at the time", which is returning to haunt him.

Also helping out (or was he really being guarded?) in Spennymoor was Richard Barnbrook, also isolated, though for different reasons, and since cast adrift.

Barnbrook appears to have acquired either a ghost-writer or an extremely helpful "friend" to help him keep his barely-regarded blog up to date, and continues to labour under the delusion that he has any use at all to Griffin and the BNP.

In a "Message to voters and supporters", Barnbrook, with touching sincerity, says that he had despatched a missive to "head office" (by which he means Nick Griffin) in which he set out his own observations of the current disputes and suggestions on their resolution.

This missive is so naive and child-like we can only assume Barnbrook's ghost-writer had great troubles in maintaining a straight face as he tapped it out. We have no way of knowing whether the following suggestion gestated in Barnbrook's mind or that of his unseen helper, but as part of the drive to root out infiltrators Barnbook recommends that polygraph tests be imposed on everybody at the level of regional organiser and above, apparently including (rather cheekily) Nick Griffin.

"I have not yet had any response which indicates to me that action will be taken on the points that I raised," Barnbook concludes.

Richard just doesn't get it, does he?