BNP gets ready to rumble

The gloves are well and truly off in the BNP’s leadership election battle.

The two heavyweights of British fascism, the MEPs’ Nick Griffin in the right corner and Andrew Brons also from the ultra right corner, have come out punching at each other and their corners are pretty feisty too.

On their mirrored BNP website, challenger Brons’s team has described the proposed amendments to the British National Party’s constitution as proposed by the Griffin corner as “a shocking and gross perversion”. For the first time in his charmed life as a BNP leader, Griffin knows he is well and truly up against a heavyweight challenger with the pedigree to deliver some quite cutting blows against his rocky leadership.

Having been involved in Nazi politics since the 1960’s, unlike Griffin’s predecessor John Tyndall who founded the BNP, Brons has managed to not be photographed wearing Nazi uniforms, so this time old Nick is up against a suited and presentable former politics lecturer who managed to put Griffin on his backside more than once when they last went head to head in the 1980’s when they were in the NF, and Brons grew tired of Griffin’s antics then too.

This contest appears to have finally brought the BNP to life. After a good couple of years of diminishing resources and returns for all of the begging letters and smears that Griffin and his team have invested in, Brons is somewhat of an ogre of considerable intellect in comparison to Griffin. With Brons is one Arthur Kemp, a south African who once worked for the South African security services there and another former trusted ally of Griffin.

Kemp points out that “the amendments which have now been distributed to members are NOT the proposals which were submitted online”.

The challengers to Griffin’s twelve years of rule have been calling for a totally new constitution, while Griffin is accused of trying to amend the constitution to ensure him five more years in power, which would take him up to a respectable early retirement age. Elections are currently fought and won by Griffin by virtue of an almost impossible list of hurdles set for challengers and their supporters to be able to even vote. Members at first agreed to these bizarre terms when it was suggested as a good way to stop black and ethnic minority members launching a coup against the party. Having suggested an entirely new constitution, Kemp has due reason to be bitter; the former web editor and ideological guru drafted the new constitution that was approved at a previous conference but never implemented. Now Griffin has called an EGM to make amendments to the old constitution further ensuring his tenure until such a time it seems likely, that his daughter can take over the role as party leader.

At the wedding of a Liverpool BNP sycophant recently, Griffin held court this very idea, convinced that it was what the vast majority of party members wanted.

But Brons is fighting back. In his corner are a weighty load of BNP members and former members, who have been expelled or suspended for not endorsing the idea that Griffin is God like and brilliant.

It looks like this going to rumble on for quite a while until the magical date of June 26th when I hope to be able to bring you an up to date blow by blow account of what is happening inside the BNP’s EGM when all of those still standing, will get to slug it out for the future of the BNP.

As I’m not an independent referee over this fight, I’m firmly in the Griffin corner. After a shaky start, his service to antifascism over the last two years have been commendable.

Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate / Searchlight