December 03, 2010

BNP says election campaign cost under £30,000

Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s moronic national treasurer and elections officer
The British National Party promised to spend nearly half a million pounds on its general election campaign. In the event it paid out a mere £29,460 according to its election expenses return published today.

When the BNP launched its general election campaign fund on 10 April, it claimed it had already raised £275,000 towards the £455,000 cost of its campaign, and had paid £100,000 towards the £150,000 cost of printing 15 million leaflets “specially designed by industry experts to ensure maximum response and impact”. Either that statement or the party’s election expenses return – or both – must be untrue.

People who responded to the party’s appeals to “to save the country that our War Heroes fought and died for” by helping “the BNP get elected to local councils and to Parliament” must be wondering where their donations went.

The BNP has also breached electoral law by not having its expenses return audited. Parties that spent more than £250,000 on last year’s European election and the general election combined were required to submit an audited account. The BNP’s return showed expenditure of £313,217 on the two elections, but the box for the auditor’s name and address was blank.

Another unlikely element of the return, which was signed by Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s moronic national treasurer and elections officer, is the nil figure for unpaid invoices, despite revelations by former BNP officers that the party owes printers and other businesses large sums of money. Eddy Butler, who unsuccessfully challenged Griffin for the BNP leadership in summer, commented today that several of the invoices included in the return were unpaid.

Most of the claimed expenditure of £29,460 went on leaflets and newspapers, with only £562 devoted to the BNP’s television broadcast. No wonder it was so awful. The return also shows nothing spent on advertising. Yet on 30 April Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, appealed for donations to pay for newspaper advertisements in “working class target areas” in the final days of the campaign.

Another surprising revelation is that Sentinel Publications Limited spent nothing on the election campaign. Adam Walker, the BNP’s staff manager, registered the company as a third party campaigner for the election and BNP members distributed a nasty 12-page antisemitic newspaper in Barking and Dagenham that bore the company’s imprint. Butler recently described it as a “ridiculous anti-Hodge newspaper” and said party activists had to use “black marker pens to cross out an anti-Jewish remark”.

Even if Sentinel Publications Limited persuaded a printer to produce it for nothing, the value of the “notional expenditure” should have been declared.

Meanwhile Griffin has announced that he is to launch legal action to have the “Barking and Dagenham” election result overturned, claiming that Margaret Hodge, the Labour victor, lied during the campaign. Griffin stood against Hodge in Barking in the general election, but now reveals he was so much of an outsider that he does not even know the constituency name.

Griffin’s complaint follows the broadcast of the Channel 4 documentary The Battle for Barking on 30 November in which Hodge was recorded telling a public meeting that the BNP wants non-white people expelled from the country, dropped from an aeroplane or helicopter and left in the sea.

Over the past year Griffin has bankrupted the BNP through a series of reckless legal actions. He appears set on pursuing more of the same.

Hope not hate

15 comments:

hp sauce said...

According to E. Butler

"I have looked at them and found it includes the following:

• Rosettes that are local expenditure as they are sold on to local units

• Random fuel bills – presumably because they were the only invoices that could
be found

• 14,000 booklets that were for the constitutional change EGM! (unpaid)

• Local leaflets

• A distribution company’s invoice that was for Barking and Dagenham

• 100,000 Stoke appeal leaflets (unpaid)

• 50,000 Barking and Dagenham booklets (unpaid)

• 50,000 special edition of Barking newspaper (unpaid)

• 30,000 special edition of Stoke newspaper (unpaid)

None of these are national campaign expenditure."

Tut tut.

Anonymous said...

"When the BNP launched its general election campaign fund on 10 April, it claimed it had already raised £275,000 towards the £455,000 cost of its campaign, and had paid £100,000 towards the £150,000 cost of printing 15 million leaflets “specially designed by industry experts to ensure maximum response and impact”."

What a bunch of f**king liars. Did they think they would never be found out? Surely this obtaining money under false pretences is illegal? It must be fraud at least.

ex-fascist said...

I hope I'm not stating the obvious or teaching granny to suck eggs as it were, but this is the BNP's declared national campaign expenditure and needs to be considered alongside whatever it declared as local expenditure in the individual constituencies.

When the two are tallied together any holes should be easy to spot, and thereafter hopefully to act upon.

I personally do not believe this figure and consider it likely that they will have "lost" some of the items for which suppliers have not been paid.

ex-fascist said...

I should have added that the local items which have been recorded as national expenditure (according to Butler) should also be examined.

If they have also been declared as local expenditure then they have been declared twice, which at best makes the BNP submissions inaccurate. If they have not been declared as local expenditure then the local submissions were incomplete, which is an offence.

My guess is that they were missed off from the local declarations because the invoices had not at that time been paid, or otherwise simply due to incompetence.

Anonymous said...

Jefferson's return claims all the invoices have been paid. Unpaid invoices have to be declared separately and the party would need the permission of the High Court to pay them after the time limit. If he has shown unpaid invoices as paid, the return is fraudulent.

Rah said...

The biggest problem Griffin has got is that, in the past the morons that claim to speak for the BNP on message boards etc have made comments similar to these and it's going to be easy for Hodge to pull screenshots up.
Griffin is on a hiding to nothing....Again.

Anonymous said...

I cannot remember just how many candidates bnp put up for general election, but, if the central party were only completing returns for the GE this figure is woefully light.

When you consider that the average constituency may have 20 wards and leaflets were going out to each ward I would suggest you would be looking at £15,000 to 20,000 in each constituency.

tulip

Anonymous said...

if you knew anything about the BNP you would know that the individual members paid for their own election expenses ,the party only paid for the stoke and barking campaigns

Anonymous said...

Only £30 k - and given their results they still didn't get value for money.

With that suit on, I can picture Clive in the dock. 'No, me Lord, I has only ever dealt in cash before'.

Anonymous said...

After the Euro elections Gri££in pompously stated he now had to be regarded differently, treated as part of the political establishment and other such guff.

Works both ways, fat boy.

John P said...

There were a couple of council by-elections yesterday where the BNP continued their quiet revolution by picking up 4.2% (82 votes) in St Helens and getting a mighty 2.3% (32 votes) in Poole.
It must be getting on for two years since they won a by-election.

Anonymous said...

DOWSON HAS ALL THE BOOKS AND COPIES AND GRIFFIN IS NOT PAYING HIM. END GAME.

Rah said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8141069.stm

The EU should sink boats carrying illegal immigrants to prevent them entering Europe, British National Party leader Nick Griffin has told the BBC.

The MEP for the North-West of England said the EU had to get "very tough" with migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

Pressed on what should happen to those on board, he said: "Throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya".

Anonymous said...

Photographer to Jefferson:

"Step to your left Clive...Now move back a bit...back a bit further....a bit more....further still...."

Anonymous said...

Jefferson is now the BNP top boy, the good thin is that he is he is incredibly stupid. His trusty robin, Adam Walker has now been replaced with Griffins child Jennifer, the pair now call all the shots and do all the money things so I wager it will not be long before the you-know-what hits the fan.